teacher

software engineer

senior software engineer

product manager

office coordinator

Study.com

PROS

1—Payment was timely (twice a month via PayPal).

2—The in-house team was polite. Their correspondence tended to follow a template (so don't expect much in the way of personalized feedback), but the tone was still respectful.

3—There was ample opportunity to work on multiple projects while teaching yourself new skills. Since moving on from this line of work, I've been able to use many of those same skills in a more rewarding environment.

4—The schedule was fairly flexible, although some projects required more regular availability. Reviewers were expected to edit for clarity plus accuracy, provide useful feedback to writers, and publish assets soon after checking them out (ideally on the same day, since writers didn't get paid until their pieces were approved).

5—Contract renewal was pretty likely (renewal was in September on a yearly basis).

6—There were smart and talented writers and reviewers along the way.

CONS

1—Pay rate was quite low. Reviewers got paid hourly (somewhat better off than writers, who were paid a pittance per piece); still, tight review target times substantially limited what you could bring in for an honest day's work. 

2—Increasingly unrealistic guidelines made it more difficult to do a decent job. For example, reviewers had a certain target time for completing text lesson reviews. While that time limit was likely an underestimate to keep study.com from paying reviewers too much, it wasn't insane. 

Then, a new text lesson project appeared while the previous project was quietly left to gather dust. The text lessons in this new project were twice as long as the previous ones, had very silly SEO requirements, and frequently involved less experienced writers. 

And the new time limit for these lessons that required at least twice the amount of work? Exactly the same. Basically, it amounted to a pay cut.

This was a recurring issue across multiple evolving guidelines, part of the company's push for quantity over quality. As the years wore on, I found myself under-reporting my time more and more frequently.

3—High turnover and frequent hiring created additional issues. Many writers and reviewers eventually left for the first two points. At the same time, study.com was growing and hiring more contractors from all around the world. Plenty of these new writers and reviewers did decent work, but language issues added another layer of complexity to communication and editing. Plagiarism also became more of a widespread issue. Around this time, I noticed more long-term contractors heading for the door. 

4—Poor content management system. It was slow. Enough said.

5—Limited advancement opportunities. I enjoyed more success with raise requests in my earlier years, but past a certain point, my pay rate stagnated no matter how many additional projects or responsibilities I pursued. While trying for a full-time position with the company could've been an option, I never seriously considered it: I didn't want to become more a part of the current system than I already was.

And yet I stayed. In addition to having some misplaced sentimentality for what the company once was, I still cared about the content and the other long-term contractors who also remained. I told myself that I would keep adapting and embracing each new challenge.

Looking back, I realize there's a difference between embracing a challenge and setting yourself up for failure day after day.

It finally took a push from a loved one to convince me to leave. 

Anyway, that was my long-term experience with study.com, and it was a relief to let my contract expire. Fair enough if you want to treat study.com as a resume builder or a source of supplemental income, but I would strongly advise against getting sucked into the job like I did.


As a freelancer with Study.com you get the short end of the stick. Only by spending 2 hours or less working on an assignment can you make a pretty decent freelance rate--however, there is little work available at any given time. If you're lucky, you can get 1-2 lessons to write a week and then wait anywhere from 2-4 more weeks to get through the review and revision process. The rate I was offered was $60 per article, which appears to be their average offering. 

For that $60 you are expected to research, entirely on your own without any provided resources or access; you are then tasked with turning that research into a 1000-2000 word lesson with SEO optimized key terms. When you receive an article for the first time you are given an SEO header map that details what your sections should be about, titled, and what keywords need to be used. You are also provided with a quiz, the answers to which need to be in your lesson. Additionally at the end of the lesson are FAQ's that your lesson needs to address, and you need to answer. 

During my first lesson I discovered how asinine feedback is. Key terms need to be used exactly as written for SEO optimization, but the person creating the header map is not always capable of reading comprehension. In cases where a key term is offensive, inaccurate, or unrelated the lesson writer is required to submit a help desk ticket to ask for permission to not use it. Any issues with the header map must be addressed this way, which can be tedious. Next, the editors and reviewers who work with you appear to be given different instructions than the writers. On multiple lessons I was given information that directly conflicted with the instructions and training I had received during onboarding, though to their credit whenever I said as much the editors/reviewers allowed me to proceed as trained. 

Your work will not be paid for until a reviewer approves it and publishes it. If you get a slack reviewer, this could take 2-4 weeks of waiting, checking for comments, and changing things over and over again until they're satisfied. Some reviewers are nitpicks who will wait until you've altered every single sentence you've written to match their subjective opinions, others will give you little to no feedback except that it needs to be fixed somehow. All reviewers respond with what appears to be a preexisting template for lesson reviews, however they are inconsistent with their feedback. Some reviewers will actually go into what they found, provide examples, etc. while others will give little to no guidance but still send your lesson back. 

So long as you get those specific reviewers, you'll get paid. They tell you exactly what they want fixed, you fix it, and in a week you're paid. However, if you have a reviewer who doesn't respond to your comments for weeks at a time, doesn't elaborate when you ask for clarification, or just otherwise seems to not care about your lesson you'll be stuck constantly going back and forth for a month. 

Overall, this job doesn't pay enough. If you were just writing based on information they'd provided, it'd be a sweet freelance gig--but they expect you to do so much research, find very specific images from only two sources, work with reviewers who range from lazy to perfectionists, and wait around until work is even available. 

I do not recommend doing this job unless you're genuinely just looking to add some writing pieces to your portfolio in your spare time. 

Study.com is an education related website offering articles and videos focused on college students and those wishing to pursue higher education, previewing different schools, careers, majors, and various other subjects along with tutoring services. As a consumer, it is perfectly fine, but as an employee, I have mixed feelings about my time working there.

The best part is certainly the payment. I started there making $10, as have others I've recommended to the company that were hired. Base pay for all employees seems to be above minimum wage. Additionally, after a month or two of working there, I was promoted and given a raise equaling $12.

The downside to this comes with your position as a freelancer. Your wages are this high because the company does not legally have to (nor do they) provide any benefits. As a write/editor, do not expect to receive any form of compensation for your work outside of your salary, which they give you twice monthly as a direct deposit into your PayPal account.

Given that this is remote work, I am able to set my own hours and work virtually whenever I feel like. In addition, articles to work on are kept in a communal pool for checkout, meaning that I can continue to write for as long as that specific set of work is available. It is advantageous to work around the standard 9-to-5 California time, though, as that seems to be when the majority of employees who review your work will be active, meaning you can more easily find help for your issues or questions more promptly.

On the subject of help, management is one of the worst parts of the job. No one on the management or reviewing side is particularly disagreeable, but they are all completely unreliable. If you send in a question or need support at any point outside of the 9-to-5 timeframe on a weekday, you will NOT be receiving a response until the next business day. Everyone, including IT, takes the weekend off.

This can be particularly frustrating when it comes to reviewers. Articles are only recorded on your invoice after a reviewer has checked and approved your work. Regardless of how many articles you actually complete at a time, it is entirely dependent upon this second set of people to check your work before you can be paid for it. This falls into a similar issue as management, as few people work beyond those hours, weekends, or (the entire week of) holidays.

In summation, while Study.com offers a good service and has decent pay for what you do, it is not a company you can expect to advance in. If I still work there five, ten, or twenty years from now, I do not expect to be making a single cent more than I do now.

As a freelancer for study.com, I have mixed feelings. I am a writer. Whenever you write anything whether it be a lesson, quiz, outline, etc., It gets reviewed by a reviewer. Some reviewers are good and some are bad. The reviewers are also freelancers. Some of them think they are geniuses and are so above you. It can be quite aggravating to deal with them. I've also felt that some of the core staff who respond to help tickets can be kind of rude. Everything you write has to be politically correct, which can be tedious. A reviewer can turn you in for plagiarism before even giving you an opportunity to correct the mistake. It seems that reviewers are favored over writers, which is ridiculous considering the writers are the ones who actually create content. Everyone knows not to plagiarize, obviously, but sometimes math, science, and business content can be so specific that it is near impossible not to use similar phrasing. Your contract can be terminated for plagiarizing. Also their definition of plagiarizing is over the top. They do one year contracts. There is no one to directly contact if you need help. You will not get a phone number or email address for any person. Instead, any time you have an issue, you have to submit a help ticket and someone will respond to you within 1-3 days. The pay isn't great, but you work from home so there's that. You have 7 days to complete a project from the time that you check it out. If you select a project and then decide you don't like it, you can send it back to the pool. They pay twice a month, on time, via PayPal only. I wouldn't recommend working for study.com to be honest. If you need extra money and need to work from home, this is okay, but there's probably better opportunities out there for people with degrees. 

I'm a part-time freelance writer who uses multiple platforms, including Study.com. I typically work during incentive periods, which last during the final week of the month. I'm not sure how Study.com is managed, or if it is managed. All of the editors I have corresponded with via comments are super nice and knowledgeable. They clearly know their stuff. However, I sometimes have to wait several days if not weeks to receive an editor for the work I have submitted. Editing is either highly inconsistent, or the style guide changes every few days. The culture is generally positive -- I've never received a mean comment for my admitted atrocious grammar (compared to some other writers, who have flawless verb tenses and prepositional phrases!) -- but I spend most of my time waiting for responses to my pieces. That's definitely the hardest part of the job. I do enjoy further my knowledge of historical events and social trends, but I wish I knew when I was going to get pieces returned for edits and publication!  

Cons: 
Besides the very little pay and the many hours you spend doing research, this job is "meh".  My biggest complaint is that the editors' feedback was not consistent across the board. One editor would tell me one thing. When I would apply it to my next asset, the new editor would tell me it was wrong. A few of the editors were condescending and inflexible. 
The outlines were often confusing and not very clear. It was up to the editor to interpret what you did or did not cover. Very frustrating!!! It was luck of the draw if your editor was helpful or just plain rude. Not worth the very small payout unless you love to write and are looking for experience.
Yes, the work was sporadic. Maybe one asset a week, two if you were on the ball. Consider that you will spend at least two to three hours minimum in research and citing your sources. Research can also include finding public domain pictures and sourcing them. Then, however long it takes to write, and finally the edits. I think I averaged $6 an hour when all was said and done. (I am not a super-fast writer so if you are...you'll make more an hour.)
Pros:
Many of the editors were responsive and easy to work with. I did like being able to choose what I wanted to write.  I enjoy learning about new subjects so that was a plus. 
Verdict:
If you work full time and looking for a little extra cash on the side, this might be a good fit. Especially if you are able to get assets and have responsive editors.  Good luck!

I was with the company for about 3 weeks before they let me go. They claimed part of my lesson looked similar to another website that I never even visited. In this day and age it is sometimes near impossible to write up something that hasn’t already been written but they didn’t even give me an opportunity to correct it.  I was hired on as an art history writer but found out that a lot of the lessons were not related to my major. So I did have to use a few outside sources. If they had actually offered me the work I signed up for maybe that wouldn’t have been a problem.
Actually had my doubts about the company when I started my first week. It took the entire week for me to get my first lesson published and they will not let you work on anything else until your first lesson is published. I made a whopping $50 for the whole week I worked on the lesson. After doing the math I made less than minimum wage for how long I worked on that project. So I knew this was not going to be a long term thing but I certainly didn’t think it would end so soon. Seems like they’re looking for reasons to let people go. I also noticed that the amount of projects was dwindling fast.
For the amount of work they’re asking for compared to the pay, I wouldn’t even say it’s worth it just to get experience. They want grad level work for pennies.

What is the best part of working at the company?
The time is flexible, giving you the freedom to choose when to work and when to disconnect

What is the most stressful part about working at the company?
One of the most challenging aspects is the inconsistency in work quality checks. One QA may approve the work, while another, using the same criteria, may reject it. This likely stems from a lack of proper knowledge or understanding of best practices among the people assigned to these roles. This is so stressful for people who want to deliver good work, instead of just counting hours.

Another is that they robbed me of about three days worth of work because I had to go away for half a day for about six days during my tenure. The accountant told me that they do not pay half-days, which is ridiculous because they had no hesitations accepting my half day work.

What is the work environment and culture like at the company?
Very detached work culture. Communication with the supervisors are just through email.

What is a typical day like for you at the company?
Get in, get work from a spreadsheet, and submit finished work to the same spreadsheet. Repeat.

Working as a contractor for Study.com is like continually having someone slap you in the face. The standards for their writing are unbelievable, especially for the lack of pay that you receive. When you do figure out ways to make money, they start sending work back. They will accuse you of using a template (which isn't allowed) or "self-plagiarism." You will not make minimum wage with this job, ever. The pay is too low and they expect too much from someone. The site that you write on is not user-friendly at all. It is full of technical glitches and plain hard to use (this is coming from someone who is tech-savvy). When work is sent back, they are mean and vindictive about it. They will treat someone who is highly educated as if they are the most stupid person in the world. This job really beats you down and makes you feel worthless. It is not worth the pay or the hassle. I recommend that you stay far, far away from this company. Go write for a company that will respect and appreciate you, not belittle and barely pay you. They certainly do not care about the people who are asking questions or wanting to read their articles. 

A typical work day is I come around 8 or 8:30 (but that is just me, people come in between 7AM and 10AM) and look at our sprint backlog or any tasks I had started the day before.  I am a software engineer in test so I may also look at bugs people have filed, file some myself, and/or look at the nightly test results.  I am part of a feature team that has 2 week sprints and does all the typical scrum ceremonies.  I work in a cross functional team that includes product managers, designers, developers, and data analysts. We also have innovation time, where you can work on projects that interest you outside of the normal sprint work. The hardest part of my job is finding the balance between testing and agility that every one is comfortable with. 

But by far the most enjoyable part of my job is the people! I have made so many awesome friends at study.com, and everyone is friendly and approachable!!

Top Job Titles	Average Salary
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Office coordinator 1 salary reported	$25.50 per hour

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