CloudCrowd (www.CloudCrowd.com) is a new outsourcing, work at home agency that is taking a unique approach to freelance work. They provide their workers with small tasks, that are manageable in a short time frame and therefore easy to fit into almost any schedule, and they pay you the following day for the work you’ve completed.
Companies provide CloudCrowd with projects requiring a variety of services that range from language translation to writing and editing to online research, and more. CloudCrowd then takes these projects and breaks them into smaller, easier to manage tasks. They then list these tasks on their job pages.
When a member of CloudCrowd has time to work – say when your child is down for a nap – they simply sign on to their Facebook account and access their CloudCrowd application, looking for tasks they can complete in they time they have available. These tasks pay anywhere from $.01 to $14.95, depending on the length of time and expertise needed to complete the task.
All work that is completed by 5 pm Pacific Time will be paid by midnight the next day. In order to be paid, however, you must have a working PayPal account.
Is CloudCrowd a Scam?
On the contrary, actually. CloudCrowd is a respected crowdsourcing center that has been reviewed and praised by magazines such as BusinessWeek and Entrepreneur.
They respond to two different needs within the industry right now. First, companies that need to keep overhead down can do so by outsourcing major projects. Second, people who need work now can earn money by completing these projects for CloudCrowd on their own schedule.
CloudCrowd understands that certain tasks must be completed by humans – not computers – in order to be done well. So they have created an independent workforce of over 50,000 people and counting to do just that.
How You Can Be Successful with CloudCrowd
First, CloudCrowd rates its workers on a Credibility scale of 1-100. As a new employee, you are given a rating of 30 and you cannot exceed 50 until you have been an active employee for longer than one month. After the first month, your rating can go all the way to 100.
To raise your Credibility score, you must successfully complete your tasks in the correct way. This means following the instructions perfectly and providing the employer with the correct work they required. If you do the job incorrectly because you did not follow the instructions, or the work you provided was considered wrong or bad, it will lower your Credibility rating.
CloudCrowd also allows you to “Skip” a task after you’ve chosen it if you realize that you don’t know the answer or can’t complete it the way the employer needs. Choosing to Skip a task will not negatively affect your Credibility rating, but doing a task and failing it will. In addition, if you fail the task you are given, you will not be paid for it.
Also, CloudCrowd has certain tasks that anyone can do – like researching things online – or tasks that you must have “Credentials” to do. To get a Credential on CloudCrowd you must pass an online exam in that area. If you fail that exam, you will not be allowed to take it again, so make sure you are ready before you attempt it.
Overall, CloudCrowd is a great opportunity for those looking to fit some extra work into a busy schedule, or those who don’t have a full time job right and for whom every little bit helps.
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I tried to pass the editing test so I could see if the articles for the level 2 writers were any better, but I failed the editing test both times. They direct you to a Chinese or Korean web site to edit and give you an hour, telling you it will be 80-100 words, but they also say that if the site has five paragraphs or less that you must do the entire page. Both times in a row, I ended up with 750-1000 word pages to edit. The first time I was rejected because a direct quote on the company's page didn't make much sense in English (but there were no guidelines given for proofreading a direct quote) and the second time I was rejected because the editor did not like my use of parallelism in a series. The second rejection dropped my credibility too low to even write general articles anymore.
I am not doing any more work for Cloud Crowd, and I highly recommend that writers interested in online content go elsewhere. This place does pay promptly, which is the only reason it is 2 stars, but almost every content writing site out there pays weekly now. There's no reason to use Cloud Crowd for anything. The workers are expected to monitor other workers, which leads to a core group of individuals seemingly vested in keeping others out to reduce competition and to preserve their profits (since they make more money for rejecting people than for accepting them, it would seem.)
The English was so horrible that I had to think long and hard just to get a vague idea of what the writer was attempting to say. You are spot on! In order to do a good job, a person definitely must have a decent knowledge of the subject AND they need to communicate with the original author. Otherwise the only thing you can do is take a guess. And that is pretty much what I had to do in order to get the test done.
And you should be pleased to know they rejected me for what was said to be "Awkward ESL phrasing throughout; comma errors" In fact, here is the work I actually did. I wouldn't mind having a second opinion: ------------------------------------------------- Original Writing:
Cangzhou City Hengtai Machine Co., Ltd. is an annex to set research, innovation, development, production and sales as one of the large-scale private enterprises, the company has passed the ISO9001 quality system certification, the company has special equipment and precision CNC foreign professional and technical personnel. ****Have the capacity to produce all kinds of Tuolian, Paixie machines, shields, cooling pipe products, and have the capacity to produce export products and domestic-made products needed in all areas of powerful, occupy the high ground of domestic and attracted domestic and users of peer - A high degree of concern, the company in the country similar products manufacturing industry has obvious advantages. Company covers an area of 5,600 square meters, the new plant is expanding and plans to introduce more advanced countries of the equipment, and train more staff to go abroad to learn new technology to the introduction of new equipment.**** --------------------------------- Edited Version:
Our company has the capacity to produce Tuolian, Paixie machines, shields, and cooling pipe products. We have many advantages over the domestic manufacturing companies of our buyers. That is why we put a lot of focus on attracting international business and exporting our industry products to other countries.
Cangzhou City Hengtai Machine Co. covers an area of 5,600 square meters and has plans to expand with a new plant. From there we will begin serving the equipment needs of even more developed countries by hiring and training more staff. This new staff will then go abroad to learn new technology. The newly acquired knowledge they gain will be used to create newer and better products. -------------------------------------------------
I am not saying my revision is perfect, but I think I did a pretty good job-especially given the original material. I have been rejected for credentials three times. Always for very minor mistakes that an editor could have corrected literally in a few seconds. If they want your writing to be absolutely perfect, they should only hire editors and let them do all the writing.
I will browse it every now and then when better-paying sites are slow, but it's out of morbid curiosity. There are most definitely better writing sites out there, even if you only have a small amount of time to work.