Month: June 2015

A student lance review

Check the side bar for my reviews of other sites where you can get help with your homework.

This is my review of StudentLance.com, an online market place where students and tutors meet. The concept is very similar to online market places where services are sold. Don’t feel like reading my entire review, here’s the basic gist: It’s like every other online homework solving site when it works. It’s quite buggy and from testing out the site went down quite a bit but when it works its a decent site but nothing that makes it really stand out. Still recommend schoolsolver.com over it but not by much.

For those who don’t know how these sites work basically, a student will post a question or a problem that he wants to get solved. Any tutor who can solve this inquiry will post a solution. This is not the actual solution to the problem but a quotation of how much the tutorial services cost. A student can post requests in many fields of expertise such as Humanities, Economics, Law, Mathematics, Natural Sciences, and much more.

Website Interface

The website interface is very straightforward. The requests from students are found in one page and solutions are found in another. The problem is that the Request page is not working. You can click or tap on it a thousand times until your fingers are sore and it will not budge.

The Solutions page works and here you will find poorly written titles of solution offered by who are supposedly tutors! If you click on the detail of the solution, you would be horrified to find out that it is empty! It does not even specify if the $15 rate is per hour or for the entire project.

The website has no FAQs and generally, it feels empty. It is like as if an amateur blogger put this site up in a poor attempt to capitalize on the popularity of online service market places.

Fees

The fees are not that bad. Although it is free register and post, Student Lance charges 15% from the tutor for every successful sale. Though the rate is acceptable, what you do not realize is that they will charge you a total of 25% for every purchase afterward. And their reasoning? They said they will charge you 25% because they will keep your solution posted on the site, therefore exposing you to more students who need your tutorial services!

I firmly believe that students should not bear the weights of transaction fees which kinda disappoints me that Student Lance charges $0.70 from the student if he deposits less than $10 in his account. This means that the buyer now has a lower purchasing power than the actual money he deposited. One odd thing though is that Student Lance charges $3 for every withdrawal made! So the seller gets 25% and then he has to pay an extra $3 for withdrawal. For a $10 transaction, the seller only takes home $4.5!

That’s assuming that you dont take an early withdrawal, but if you do that, you will be charged an extra 3%!

Asking a Question

The interface for asking a question was all right, seemed to work but the funny part that I found was pretty much all the tutors wanted to be paid outside of the site. Though with this site I really had no problem with that as there doesn’t seem to be any sort of refund policy so whether you pay on the site or off there is no protection. For my review of student lance I thought it best though to keep it on the site.

Quality of Answer

I posted the same sort of question that I post on all the other sites, an english essay (1.5 pages double spaced) and a complex math homework assignment. I was pleasantly surprised at the quality of the english essay  though the math homework did have some errors.  Overall I can’t say the quality was that bad and that was a pleasant suprise.

Conclusion

As a user who needs some questions answered this site was a diamond in the rough. While I cant say it was the best site to pay someone to do your homework (I still reserve that for School Solver in terms of overall quality) I’d say that this site would probably be my second choice. I’ll still have to see how it holds up when I review it being a tutor.

To see my review of homework market as a student check out my previous post linked here

For those who don’t know Homeworkmarket.com is one of the many online essay mills/homework answering sites that a freelance writer could choose to work for. Unfortunately, though such websites might lure in many struggling writers with the premise of earning easy money in return for writing a few papers, the reality is that those promises often end up becoming nothing more than empty words. Therefore, if you are an aspiring writer who is looking to build your career while earning within the comfort of your own home, it is best if you think twice before you apply for such writing websites. Here’s why.

1. You will become a slave to your client’s whims.

Though homeworkmarket.com might provide online tutors with the option to pick their own clients and working schedules, it is possible that when you agree to do someones homework they might start asking you for changes or a sooner deadline. Also, since you are obligated to supply your clients with unlimited revisions, you will most likely need to work for days on end until they are fully satisfied. Unfortunately, these revision requests will not bring in any added income so all your hard work and simply a way to satisfy a clients needs. Failing to do so will result in negative feedback or a rating on your profile which can be catastrophic for getting more work.

2. You are not entitled to copyright protection.

Though you will need to do all of the research and actual writing on your own, the website will typically claim all of the rights to your finished work. However, since you are writing for the benefit of your clients, the subjects and concepts that you tackle might not be of immediate interest. Regardless, it is still recommended that you take care not to put too much of yourself out there since you will not be able to stake any claim on your written works in the future.

3. Hard to get a footing in as a new tutor

Unfortunately, as mentioned above, rating and feedback are key to getting people to agree for them to do your homework. With the system in place at homework market the early adopters and first users are the ones with most feedback and ratings thus they are almost always going to be selected to do the assignments over you who has no ratings or feedback. This gives rise to the scenario where you can apply to do hundreds of questions with literally no chance of being selected to do the homework/assignment/essay.

4. You will not earn any professional writing credit.

Unfortunately, essay mills such as homeworkmarket.com are widely touted as unethical online businesses. Also, though the website might claim that they have a roster of professional writers working behind the scenes, the website possibly applies much less stringent requirements on its many applicants. This means that many of the other tutors that you could end up working with or competing against are actually non-native English speakers who are simply desperate to earn the next dime. Since such writers are likely not above plagiarizing other people’s works, having them as your colleagues will not likely benefit your writing credits or resumé.