by Katie Zager

Listen to the story!

Wow, I really need to get some money this summer. But between travel and camp, I don't have enough time for a full time job. The solution to this problem came to me one day while I was simultaneously doing my homework and looking for a job. I decided I could sell all of my old grade A Essays and term papers online to Web sites that, in return, promise to send me a nice little check every month.

Myessays, Academon and 123helpme are all .com business that are part of, and this is for real, an online industry that buys, sells and trades student papers from all around the world. Some Web sites offer tens of thousands of papers for download. And some of these Web sites promise earnings of up to $1,000 a month, depending on how good your paper is, and how many people actually download it. But while looking around, I found the important information buried under pages of "Frequently Asked Questions." The truth is most sites take a pretty hefty commission of up 50 percent. A perfectly average essay, such as mine, would only earn about $100 a month.

Also buried on those sites are disclaimers like, "this paper it to be used for research purposes only," but the sites have no control over what the customer actually does with them. Yeah, I'm sure that average buyers really have the word research on their minds.

Still, $100 month, for virtually no work, is better than nothing. So I was ready to get started. I had several options as to where to sell my paper, including auctioning it off on E-Bay. But, this is where I hit a few roadblocks. Most sites require you to be at least 18, and preferably a college student. Academon.com, has a 14-day review process, to see if you're paper achieves their standards. I wonder what such a committee would think of my old eighth grade essay? My second option was E-Bay. CD-roms filled with papers sell for about $5, and judging by all of the positive feedback, it seemed to be a successful product. I hit a snag when filling out the seller ID page. I don't have a credit card. Unable to find anyone willing to lend me their credit information, immediately shot that idea out the window.

You see, I didn't exactly have the full support of my mom, who is morally opposed to helping anyone cheat. As any teenager would, I simply dismissed this as my mother taking the moral high road, again. But as I started thinking about the prospect of some lazy kid out there getting credit for my work, and some shady Web site owner getting money for them, selling my papers didn't seem like such a good idea anymore. However, I was determined to see this through, so I got a second opinion on selling papers from Chad Sant, my Language Arts teacher at Service High School.

"I think there is something to be said about the lack of integrity within those people. The fact that they would kind of prostitute their work to allow anybody else to leech off their work to me is pretty disgusting from an intellectual integrity standpoint," Sant said.

So, maybe selling my papers online wasn't the best idea I've ever had. But one thing I learned is there's no way to make easy money without sacrificing something, be it a few hours of your valuable time, your pride or your integrity. Maybe I should just get a real job after all. Anyone need a pet sitter?