Study.com Review

Quick bookkeeping update: tons of stuff added to the Free Web-Based Tools for Writers page!



Study.com runs on a content mill model, but everything they commission is published on their own site. They basically bomb out the SERPs with tons of pages describing degree programs and how they work. The endgame of all this is selling their own test prep courses / certificate programs and also doing paid referrals to various university and college programs.

They're able to bomb out the SERPs with all these pages because they pay writers an absolutely terrible rate for their work. In spite of the awful pay, they are extremely persnickety about how articles are written and referenced and the amount of time this takes just makes the whole deal even worse.

NATURE OF WORK AND PAYMENT

They do appear to have freelancers creating course content for them; I didn't personally experience that aspect, however. The bulk of their writing work is in creating SEO pages that target just about every search phrase under the sun for degree programs, career prospects, salary figures and other higher education-related concerns. This is listed under the perpetually open "Article Writer" listing.

They pay out bi-weekly (usually on the 1st and 15th) exclusively through PayPal.

The rate of pay is a little odd. They pay a flat pre-tax rate of $20 per 500 words. Most articles have a target length of either 500 or 1000 words ... however, they may ask you to do extra for no added compensation, or some editor will go wild with suggestions and those suggestions could potentially tack on hundreds of words of extra unpaid work. So if 500 words is the suggested article length, you're only getting paid $20 even if it clocks in at 750 in the end.

That breaks down to about four cents per word, IF everything goes as well as possible and you don't have to exceed the target word count. That's a poor rate for crummy content mill work, but the terms and conditions here force you to produce much better work than you would get away with passing off at Textbroker.

They have a very fussy (and annoying to access) internal style guide that you have to follow to the letter; for additional fun, the requirements shift depending on the type of article. They also want every factual claim you make sourced with a link - not inline on the page, but just for the convenience of the editors. So basically, you're doing the editor's fact-checking job for them at a rate that is not even suitable for the base writing work.

SITE HISTORY / LEGITIMACY

At the very least, this is a legitimate business that is unlikely to stiff you or run off with your money.

The site got started as "Education Portal" some years ago, initially a free resource for video courses that was in the earliest wave of stuff like Khan Academy and Coursera. They shifted to "Study.com" a few years back and started making a profit by selling subscriptions to access the course content they generate, plus also doing referrals to actual schools through the SEO articles they ask you to write.

The company is based in good ol' Mountain View, CA (the Silicon Valley home of Google). I guess they pay contractors shit because of their rent. Anyway, while I feel their pay and terms are exploitative, I can't say they didn't handle everything else in a straightforward manner. Communication was fine and payments came through like clockwork.

INTERNATIONAL ACCESS

They do list most of their positions as being available to "multiple countries", but I have not been able to find a list of what exactly those countries are.

They do ask a bachelor's degree or a demonstrable amount of previous related content writing experience as a prerequisite for the article writer position, however.

STARTING OUT

First of all, it's a virtual guarantee this outfit will always be hiring. It's the classic churn-and-burn model; sucker in some naive or desperate content creators, then run them ragged until they flame out or find something better. I'd be surprised if anyone but the biggest masochists or the Hungriest of the Mungries stuck with this place more than a handful of months.

You start out with a test that gives you several writing prompts based on the style and structure of the articles you'll be doing. If you're a decent writer, it's not very difficult.

You then launch into their content management system and can begin taking available assignments as you please.

FINAL VERDICT: NOT WORTH IT

You know, if they just paid people fairly, this would all be OK. I wouldn't be against fussy editing and extensive revisions if paid appropriately for the time it takes. Outside of the pay and the demands on your time, Study.com actually seems to have their stuff together and is a decent enough place to work. And I did like that there are virtually no deadlines; after you claim an assignment or receive a revision request, you can leave it sitting for more than a week without anyone seeming to give a damn.

4 cents per word (maximum) isn't going to cover what they ask, though. All the "extras" that editors ask for, from creating tables using their oddball internal system to having to link every single fact to being asked to rewrite hundreds of words because of some rando's arbitrary style preferences, add up to far too much research and revision time to make a 4-cent-per-word rate anywhere near sustainable or worth any good writer's time.