My goodness me, what a disappointment editavenue.com is. It looks so easy, you register as an editor, and, as long as you can effectively proofread and edit, in comes the work! However, take a moment to pity who are foolish enough to believe this, its own publicity.

The site promises payment of commissions to editors; their job: to edit projects submitted by persons who are having difficulty with their spelling or grammar. The site, editavenue.com, usually has about nine pages of 'available editors'; the first few editors have thousands of pages against their names thus encouraging would-be editors to sign up in the hope of achieving a second income. Regrettably, I was one of those people who did so. I found a site which is at worst an outright scam and at best the most unjust, dictatorial and dehumanising environment imaginable.

I was very impressed that, within just a few days of posting my credentials and paying its sign-up fees, editavenue.com was receiving many projects for consideration and proofreading directed to me. I spent hours in faithful service correcting these and waiting for my commissions to arrive. And waiting. And waiting. When I finally did enquire, some three months later, and having 'earned' some $100 for my efforts (editavenue.com had taken $150 off as their fees for 'promoting' me) where my $100 was, they informed me it would be sent to me as a monthly check because this was the option I had selected.

Well, no actually. I'm not an American, I don't have an American bank account and a $100 check is therefore useless to me and I would never have selected that option; indeed I would never have signed up with the site if payment was not via Paypal. The 'editors' department yesterday was having none of that. "You selected monthly check". No evidence. No regard paid to my protestations to the contrary. Just a blanket, and quite unjust, statement that they would not pay me by any other method.

Whilst I was musing on this however, I sat down at my computer, logging in, as I always do at 09:00am this morning. Inside my e-mail were three 'Project Warning' e-mails, all sent within two hours of each other and all informing me that 'You have not started your project within a reasonable time.' The first one had arrived at 12:00pm, the second at 14:00pm, the third at 16:00pm. Then, at 18:00pm, an 'Account Deactivated' e-mail had banned me from the editavenue.com site forever.

However, try as I might, I could find no trace of an e-mail ever informing me that the said project ever existed. Being banned also carries with it the immediate eradication of all of one's e-mails, and projects, worked on through editavenue.com. So, by banning me, editavenue.com effectively stopped me from even being able to access my account and prove to them that, well, actually, their technical department was the problem and I had done no wrong.

Why would any site want to treat an editor faithfully logging in each day and correcting everything that came his way with such a summary termination?

Well, we only have to stop for a moment to consider the chain of events to be sure that this is a cleverly orchestrated scam:

1. editavenue.com offers a 24-hour turnaround for some projects - so, even if I am kind to them and imagine that, perhaps, someone contacted me just before 12:00pm with a 24-hour turnaround project, I logged in today at 09:00am, a full three hours before that project would become due. By that time I had already been banned for not completing it!

2. editavenue.com defers responsibility - there can be no questioning of 'the editavenue.com system'. Of course, I was rather mortified to sit down this morning and find it had decided to terminate my services when it had never actually notified me there was a project to complete. If I do not have an e-mail from them, it stands to reason that it wasn't sent. After all, I got all of their ones 'warning' me to finish it! But would they listen to my quite reasonable e-mails saying so? Of course not. Another blanket response: "We are not interested in promoting your services as you refused to provide these on your last project." Um, well no, as I told you in my e-mail, I didn't get a notification, just six hours worth of warnings and a ban! And, so they say, I 'refused'. Refused?! Kind of like shouting through the door of an empty house "Would you like a job this evening?" and then, the next morning, telling the owner, "We understand you REFUSED a job last night!"

3. editavenue.com always seems to have nine pages of editors 'available' for work on its site. Now you have to ask yourself why this number never increases. I was on there just yesterday, at position number 40, having edited just 74 pages. I had the dreams of getting to those at positions 1 and 2, apparently, so editavenue would have you believe, earning thousands of dollars by doing a job you love. The answer however is that editors are dispensed with so that they can be removed from this billboard, to make way for the new recruits.

So there you have it. editavenue.com is the exploitation of those who sign up to it in quite a clever manner. If my experience is anything to go by, it keeps all new editors (after they had paid their sign-up fee of course) for a few months and then dispenses with their services when they ask for their payment. And how it does it is incredibly duplicitous and underhand. Those running it, well they must be making a fortune on the back of this exploitation - they simply wait for their editors to go 'off-line' so they can send them a barrage of e-mails relating to a project that was never actually requested and then summarily terminate their services for not being able to complete it.

This is a very sad situation, as there is clearly quite a market for the services it is offering. That is, there are lots of editors happy to proofread for very little payment because they enjoy doing it - and there are lots of students who need to have their work proofread. All the students who use editavenue.com get a very good deal, although I suspect they are blissfully unaware that the person who sat up all night poring over their work received absolutely nothing for doing so.

As for being an editor for editavenue.com, it will take everything you have heard about earning an income from home and bring it hideously to life. It is a thoroughly dehumanising experience. Perhaps if you are an American citizen, you do actually get your money without being accused of not fulfilling your contractual obligations. Alas, to a certain extent editavenue.com only confirmed what I expected. That is, throughout all the time I worked for it, whilst all the projects flooded in - and the commissions started piling up! - I fully expected it to rip me off. In that, naturally enough, I have not been disappointed.