specialist

marketing manager

Studiosity

First of all, most of Studiosity's strong points can be attributed to its very intuitive and user friendly online platform. I give massive credit to the IT department and the programmers who maintained and developed this because it really is a great platform to use that makes life so much easier for tutors. The work culture is also very supportive in terms of employee rapport. They have chatrooms for you to mingle with other tutors and discuss the work or just about anything. The work is also flexible that you can have your own schedule.
Aside from that, I do not have much else to compliment this company. Their HR and quality assurance departments are really hit and miss. HR do not reply to emails and it is extremely difficult to get them to reply to you about anything. Even when they do reply, it's always corporate platitudes and, often, unhelpful information.
Training materials are also inconsistent and, at times, outdated, and contradictory. Their "training" consists of reading a bunch of PDFs and then spending a few weeks being attached to a "mentor". The issue is that, because their training materials and the assignment examples they gave contain contradictory guidelines, "mentors" often perpetuated these inconsistencies in their feedback by linking you back to these documents. Then, if you have more questions and concerns, they deduct your performance scores because you "did not improve" or "failed to follow guidelines". You can go the majority of your training following the outdated guidelines until realising that they did not provide you with any meaningful feedback to correct these contradictions. The " mentors" also wait until the last minute to tell you the specific guidelines that you have not been following, only to then flag you as "not meeting requirements" when the training had been very inconsistent and when they had not even given you enough time to clarify and implement these changes.
Furthermore, the amount of work you are also expected to do is definitely not commensurate with the pay and the requirements they have. The platform makes things convenient, but that only means that they expect even more out of tutors when they do not pay tutors anywhere near the deserved amount. They charge by the estimated time it takes to finish a document. If a document takes an hour to complete and the pay is $16, you actually will, realistically, only get $8 or $10, sometimes even lower, due to the amount of expectations that they have for that length of document. If a document is very well written and you do not find any pressing issues, they still require you to fill that time by writing out paragraphs and paragraphs of platitudes. If you find that you are taking too long to finish your assignments and want to use certain shorthands like "Ex:" for "example:", they do not allow that. Even if those shorthands are universally understood by everyone and you have already made an effort to indicate what they mean to students, you still have to literally write out the entire phrase " for example you may revise as follows:". You always have to write in full sentences and paragraphs, which wastes time and only serves to "show students that you have read their submission". I am sure that most of the exemplars they gave as models during training were all submissions that exceeded the expected amount of time to complete them. You will realistically never reach a point where you will finish a document within the expected time.
There is also another clear flaw with the model to charge by word count. That is, if a document is very short, but it is so poorly written that you need to provide an even higher degree of feedback than usual, you will not get paid for that extra time. I will be very clear on the fact that charging by word count is a very flawed model that does not account for this factor. It is very common to get a 15 minute submission only to have that time balloon to 30 minutes, just because you need to follow these arbitrary guidelines to fill time. A good way to rectify this issue is to pay you overtime for such documents but at half the rate or even three fourth. That way, you are not penalised for going overtime but are also encouraged to be effecient with your time. I'm sure they would never do this though, purely because the company only cares about its bottom line and not the tutors who provided their talents and dedication; hence, by proxy, they do not really care about the students because if tutors can't even make a living, how are they expected to provide comprehensive and constructive feedback. Students are also expected to use this service and pay because this company has attached itself to several universities, making it a monopoly on this aspect. It is a very exploitative model, both to students and tutors.
If you are smart enough to be a tutor or a teacher, be your own independent contractor and charge at your own rate. Do not give this company your talents and time. 

I worked in a number of positions for different services at Studiosity as a remote contractor. Aside from upper management, I've seen it all. For this, I'll speak mostly as a Subject Specialist (one of the contractors who does the work with students.)

Typical day: Log in and wait for work. This can take hours in slow months, with some days nothing at all, but when the company gets too many contractors, it can still take a long time during school season. By the time I left, the Writing Feedback service had way too many specialists and there was not enough work to go around anymore for two busy seasons. It was incredibly frustrating to not have any work available at all and be waiting with almost 100 other specialists/contractors to do work! There used to be fewer specialists, but then the demands for the service (students and schools using it) got unbearable and corporate needed to do something to make sure they still delivered on under-24-hour promises. So they hired too many people.

What I learned: It's a decent service, but it seems that there is a turnaround issue with positions. I often see job postings for the company and there have been a number of times where personnel changed. I also learned that students have wildly different expectations for the service compared to what is delivered. Whether that's from false advertising or just lack of knowledge, who knows, but it was frustrating to have students get upset with my work when I was just doing what Studiosity's guidelines instructed me to.

Management: There is no contact between the contractors (the 'subject specialists') and management. Management does their corporate thing and talks to universities about their product, while the specialists do the review work or interact with students.

Workplace culture: It's very difficult to know who to talk to. There is a sense of disorganisation because training materials are not consistent and there are a number of small teams doing different things. You can't criticise the company or point out flaws or negatives when talking with other specialists. I think the majority of people are contractors, while there is a corporate/staff team in Australia. I felt like an outsider compared to the 'real' Studiosity team, even when I did crucial work.

Hardest part of the job: Making enough money. It's clear that it's a casual or part time position, but in order to maintain a service providing feedback in under 24 hours to the schools, large numbers of contractors are brought in and there is not enough work to go around. There are strict guidelines to be followed to ensure you don't edit or rewrite work. You just comment on things and hope students improve. Communicating with management is difficult.

Most enjoyable: The work itself could be enjoyable, so long as you knew what you were doing. I felt like I was making a difference in student's lives.

Bottom line: This is not an editing or tutoring job. It's in between tutoring and critique. If you'd rather tutor students, do that instead. Make sure you have very good English skills, but don't try and teach grammar to students because most of them don't know what a clause or a comma is. I used to be able to support myself with this and one other part time job, but when I left, it was because I was making a desperate 20 dollars a week in the busiest season, instead of a comfortable 200 a week like I used to before they couldn't handle their growth.

It's minimum wage rates and you need a degree, and that honestly is the most degrading part of not being able to make steady income (of any amount) from this gig.

The job has quite a bit of flexibility in when you choose to work, and the quota you need to reach is low. However, this is hampered by seasonal demand and your own location. A lot of the time, work is spent waiting in a queue. Most of the work comes from Australia, and the a lesser extent the UK. Other locations tend to have far less demand. Therefore, if you are in say, Canada, the hours with the most demand may be through the night or other suboptimal times.

The pay structure punishes you for doing more work; if you spend more time giving feedback and making it in depth, it's worse for your pay, as you're paid for the estimated amount of time a document takes. Sometimes it's possible to hit this goal or in less time, but a lot of the time, it's common to exceed the time spent working, as the estimated time doesn't take into account the amount of feedback that you need to adequately provide. Basically, the more effort and detail you put in, the less pay you get in practice. It's not uncommon to take longer than the hourly rate, even over time, since you sometimes have to nitpick to hit the threshold to return the feedback to the student.

While most of the requirements for feedback are reasonable, sometimes you are expected to provide more feedback than is really necessary, even though you are told that students are supposedly also correct their mistakes, and that you're not supposed to proofread. That said, it is not especially heavy-handed, and you can work fairly independetly.

For the amount of effort you're expected to put in, the pay is not very good. You want to provide a decent amount of feedback, but a lot of the time, you're not really incentivized to do more than the minimum, and as mentioned before, you end up getting paid less for more effort. The pay bonus threshold can be hard to reach, and it is rather paltry. 

The oversight/"mentoring" you receive tends to be fairly relaxed, although at times not quite reasonable, where it wants you to do more and more over time in terms of feedback quality. As far as I'm aware, change to pay appears to be collective. Management does send emails that keep you updated on seasonal ebbs and flows and other happenings. They also seem to suspend some contractors work in certain months, while allowing others to keep working on the same job.

I wouldn't recommend this job if you need steady work or pay. This is in part due to the dependency on the school season, as well as your location. This is acceptable if you really cannot find something else or have a low amount of expenses/others can support you, but if you want to feel like your time is being respected and valued for what you put in, I wouldn't recommend working here.

Pros:
- Fully remote with flexible hours.
- Relatively interesting work that involves advising students on how to improve their academic writing and formal communications.

Cons:
- Nominal pay rate is slightly above minimum wage according to the company's estimate of how long it will take to do each review (this is based on word count).
- Actual pay rate is maybe one half to one third of minimum wage if you actually provide a level of feedback (reasoned advice on how to improve argumentative structure and persuasive language) that would be of substantive benefit to students and that would satisfy the company's quality assurance standards.
- Significant decline in the availability of work over the last year, likely partly as a result of students turning to AI editing services, and also there are indications that the company is massively overstaffing in order to compete with the fast turnaround times of AI, since now even during the end of semester crunch the average turnaround time for students is usually under two hours.
- A typical day nowadays might consist of waiting in queue for five or six hours for a chance at receiving one assignment that only pays a few dollars for 15 or 20 minutes of estimated time that in reality likely takes 30 or 40 minutes or more.
- Best chances are to work during the absolute peak periods (mid week daytime Australian working hours towards the mid to end of semesters for Australian school years), but even then nowadays oftentimes you will still be spending half of your time waiting in queue unpaid (it just so happens that the queue connectivity is pretty glitchy, so this is something you have to constantly monitor if you want to have a chance at receiving work).

Summary:
When I write in the title that this job is less profitable than a lemonade stand, that is not hyperbole, for I legit suspect that ten-year-old kids can do better!

This company is awful. Not hands-down the worst job I've ever had, but extremely frustrating to try and work for. 

First of all, expect to work nights. Not evenings. Nights. They're based in Australia, so there are basically no papers submitted during the day EST. Typically, it's around midnight to 4 AM, depending on how a particular semester goes. 

They advertise their contract jobs as being "paid per hour", but they're actually paid per piece. Studiosity estimates a (way too short) return time based on word count and then, based on this, claims it's paid per hour. It's not. Peak seasons, there *can* be a solid eight hours of work per day--this is at most three months at a time, followed by three months of being blocked from the work portal for most contractors. 

Not only are their onboarding materials extremely text heavy and basically impossible to absorb (it's just way too much information at once, and I studied humanities; it's very text heavy). They also constantly provide conflicting instructions. So there are things that the training materials say you'll be fired for, that you're then told to do by Quality Assurance and "Academic Services". There are frequent problems with their invoicing portal, so sometimes it's hair-raising to try and submit your weekly invoice before the cut-off time.

I would NEVER recommend working for their Connect Live service. The onboarding is even worse (disorganized to the point it will cause you a break down trying to understand what's expected of you), and the students are rude. Mentor feedback again contains instructions that conflict with company policy. 

Students from all walks of life and different skills in writing will submit to the service for feedback. Some students, as can be expected, will need more help than others. When work is available, it is easy to log in and work on submissions for as long as you are willing. During the busiest periods, there is technically enough to do 40 hours a week, but looking at essays during this 40 hours is particularly exhausting, so I wouldn't recommend that.

The hourly wage is a bit undesirable. Most tutoring services start at $20/hour, yet Studiosity only offers $15/hour. During very busy periods, they offer incentives and bonuses which can make this position somewhat lucrative. They also don't offer wage increases for tutors who have been with the service for awhile and whose work is rated generally highly by students. There are also training documents that contractors must review on their own (unpaid) time, and sometimes we are limited as to what we can do with students.

While they say they are open to suggestions, I had an idea sent to academic services that went completely ignored. A senior tutor also confronted me once stating that something I was doing was against their guidelines. When I reviewed the guidelines, I found the tutor's statement to be inaccurate. When mentioning this to the tutor, I was (surprise) not met with a followup response. So this company ignores suggestions from their most dedicated workers, and hides when their unjust criticism is challenged.

The pay is minimum wage, but only if you can actually complete the papers in the allotted time frame, so most people will make less than minimum wage. They get away with this by calling everyone a "contractor," but then they micromanage your submissions (which should not happen if the workers are truly contractors).

So, you might think, "well, I can just submit papers faster so that I make minimum wage." However, their reviewers will complain about your work if you do not give, say, 30 minutes of work to a paper that is allotted 15 minutes of pay. Now, the only thing I found is that there was enough miscommunication between teams that you really didn't have to take any of the advice that the reviewers would give you, but this does create an unnecessary amount of stress on the workers. This would be alleviated by increasing the pay per page (or, the expected time to complete each page). The excuse from Studiosity that other services pay even worse isn't a justification; it just serves to show precisely how predatory these companies can be.

The entire business model basically functions on high turnover and extracting free labour from struggling undergrads. If you do end up working for this service, don't be pressured into spending 30 minutes or an hour on a 15 minute paper. If they allot the work as 15 minutes, then just do what you can in 15 minutes. The reviewers will complain no matter what you do.

This is a remote contract, so it can be done anywhere there is an internet connection. I am not technically an employee, so I do not receive any benefits or a standard salary. The pay is piece rate and depends on how much I do. How much work I do depends on people submitting to the service and how quickly I can take the work before someone else does. Some times it is very slow and the pay is very low.

The management is great. It's remote, so we don't have anyone micromanaging, but there's also the possibility that there's no communication. However, this isn't the case at Studiosity. The team of managers responsible for the contractors are great-helpful, communicative, encouraging, and understanding.

A decent way to make a bit of extra money, but not dependable enough for fulltime salary or a way to pay the bills, unless you're really dedicated to spending many many hours picking up work, when there is work.

PROS
- work from home (or a cafe, or a library)
- meaningful assistance to students
- social atmosphere with other remote contractors
- payment is fair

CONS
- unpredictable work load
- piece work, which means the unpredictable work load leads to lower pay
- intellectual work, which can lead to burn out fairly quickly if you don't know how to pace yourself, and can make the pay seem lower because it's hard to stay engaged for fulltime hours

The training and mentorship was great process, with immediate feedback after helping a few students. The type of work was something I was familiar with, and in general a great resource for students in need of extra help.

I would liked to have continued with them, but I was in need of reliable full time income. The time zone difference from me to many students wasn't an issue, but your work (and therefore income) is dependent on how many students are looking for help in your field, a short window of time (tended to be after dinner to late evening, or about 4-5 "busy hours" on weekdays) as well as how many tutors are in the same 'stand-by position' waiting to be connected with a student. You may have a constant stream of work for a few hours, or you could be waiting idle for hours with nothing to do (and thus no pay).

As the group grows, and more schools / institution join, I could see this being a great place to gain experience, possibly make connections, and generate semi-reliable income, or as a source of extra money when the tutor has some spare time in their life.

I enjoyed working for Studiosity for about a year and then the manager changed. Things weren't as good after that but I stuck around for a total of three years. Where previously there had been individual feedback and a mentor assigned to work with tutors, after the management change there was suddenly only generic feedback and the mentor vanished. When I asked if the mentor was still available, I got no reply. I took a break from the work but when I tried to reactivate my account this year, I was told my work quality wasn't good enough. This was a surprise as I have worked successfully as a tutor for many years, had received no negative feedback (just the opposite, in fact) and my student feedback was 5/5. 

The work is fine for a side gig but the company has a habit of understaffing and then expecting tutors to work well over more a full-time week during busy periods. When tutors complain about the workload, the company over hires and there's not enough work to go around. 

Top Job Titles	Average salary
Specialist 3 salaries reported	$17.50 per hour
Marketing manager 1 salary reported	$85,000 per year

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