Is Smart Crowd a scam or an awesome way to make some extra cash online working from the comfort of your own home? I've seen similar platforms out there, but is this one a step up from those?
Let’s take a look and find out…
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Company Name: Smart Crowd (Virtual Bee)
Owners: Lion Bridge
Price To Join: Free to join
My Rating: 5.5/10
~ Smart Crowd Review ~
What Is Smart Crowd?
Smart Crowd used to be known as “Virtual Bee” but more recently changed its name to Smart Crowd in a bid to appeal to a much broader audience. It is also known by the name of Lion Bridge. Getting confused? For the sake of this review we’ll stick with Smart Crowd.
Smart Crowd claim they are the world’s largest provider of online work at home tasks on the entire internet. It’s a platform that is free to join and, from what I can gather, is open to people from a worldwide audience.
Lion Bridge has been providing work from home jobs for over 20 years now. They are a global company based in the USA.
Currently there are more than 100,000 workers signed on with the platform, but you do have to be over 18 years of age to participate.
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How It Works
The idea of the site is to complete small tasks and earn small rewards for your efforts. It’s like a bunch of virtual assistant jobs, hence the old name of Virtual Bee.
When you join the Smart Crowd stable you are choosing to work for yourself, fitting in the tasks around your own personal schedule. You are free to work your own hours and work as much or as little as you desire. There are no employment contracts between yourself and Lion Bridge
Now to be honest you don’t earn much as a per hour kind of rate on this platform, therefore it tends to appeal more to people who live in countries where everyday wages are really low, such as the Philippines and India. Obviously the faster you can accomplish the assigned tasks though, the better your hourly rate will be.
You are not required to commit to being a long-term worker on the Smart Crowd platform, so long as you complete the tasks you do sign up for. For most people this would be an opportunity to supplement their incomes without interfering with their regular schedule (much like doing paid online surveys). But as mentioned, for those living in third world countries, there is the potential for some decent income here.
When you first join you will answer a series of questions so the site administrators know more about you and what sort of tasks you would be best suited to. They also test your English language skills. You then undergo some placement evaluations, which you will be scored on. If your scores are of a high enough level, you will then be put into the system and matched up with appropriate job opportunities when they become available.
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What Are Some of the Tasks?
While the platform doesn’t cover every conceivable task one could do from home on the internet, they do offer a bit of variety. However, there are some core tasks which make up the bulk of the work available through the Smart Crowd platform. Let’s look at the core services:
Data Services
- Data flow, or the acquisition of data through call centres and online forms and the like
- Data mining to gather research data from various resources online
- Data analytics, to determine the useful application of the gathered data
- Data and content research for building global data sets
- Data normalisation, which includes things like cleaning up the data, metadata tagging and classification
Global Testing
- In-Country testing where tests are performed in a specific country for things like new phones, tablets, networks and payment gateways
- User experience testing to determine the user-friendliness of new products before they go on the market
- Functional testing determines whether the product performs the way it is intended and doesn’t break too easily
Language Services
- This is mostly focused on translation services and editing copy so that it will be easily understood in the country it is intended for. Language services of this nature are in high demand, so if you are bilingual or multilingual you are in a great position to get lots of work in this field through Smart Crowd
How Much Can You Earn?
Some people claim you can make up to US $10 an hour doing tasks on Smart Crowd, but the general consensus seems to be more like about $2 an hour, or maybe as high as $5 if you’re fast and the task pays a bit more. So that’s not a very good rate for the majority of people. Doing paid surveys can earn you more than that amount. Plus, there apparently isn’t a lot of jobs to go around and it can be quite difficult passing the tests in the evaluation stage.
Target Audience
This is targeted at a global audience and really appeals to anyone who wants to make some extra cash on the side. Appeals even more to people residing in countries where national wages are low.
What I Like
- Anyone from anywhere in the world can work on Smart Crowd as it’s global
- It’s been around for more than 20 years
- It’s okay for some part-time cash, especially if you live somewhere like the Philippines
- It’s a good resource for those with multiple language skills
What I Don’t Like
- The pay is far too low
- The evaluations can be difficult to pass
- Everyone is competing for the same jobs just like with freelance sites
- Jobs are too few and far between
- You couldn’t make a career out of working on this platform
How Much Does Smart Crowd Cost?
It’s totally free to join up with Smart Crowd. The company earns its money from a share of all the tasks that pass through the platform.
Is Smart Crowd a Scam?
No there is no scam here whatsoever. It just doesn’t pay very much if you are looking for something that will really make a difference to your bank account. Some of the tasks wouldn’t really appeal to a lot of people. Good for people in countries where wages are low, but for others you might make more doing surveys, and that’s saying something.
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Hi Darren!
First of all, I want to thank you for your awesome post and congratulations on your website.
As far as I understood your post, Smart Crowd is pretty much similar to other freelance sites, but you are paid worse? Is that correct?
I understood that you have to pass a test to be eligible to do jobs for Smart Crowed, but I am not sure if I could figure out if there are other primary differences to networks like upwork.
I hope my question is not too stupid 🙂
have a good one
Johann
Hi Johann. Thanks for stopping by. It’s pretty much a freelancer site, but for smaller tasks generally, and the pay does tend to be pretty low. Nothing I would bother with, that’s for sure. It’s not a scam or anything, just doesn’t pay very well for your time. There are a few generic skill tests involved, but places like Upwork also have these.