Frequently Asked Questions


1. General Questions:

Q:What is STUDY SERIOUS all about?
A. Study Serious (studyserious.com) is a dynamic virtual platform where tutors and students interact with each other to learn, earn and survive. Yes, it’s a great earning opportunity for students who are struggling with the student loans and part time job. Students can post their recently completed homework assignments, answers/solutions to this site and help other students get through their homework battle.

Q:How does asking a question work?
B. Asking a question is a simple process. At the Home page locate “Post Question” box and fill in all the fields with whatever pertains to your specific question. Decide how much money you would be willing to pay for an answer and then just hit 'Post Question'. Then follow the direction step by step. Once that is done, your question will be posted to the Study Serious site for all other users to read and answer!

Q:What is the ‘Willing to pay’ thing?
A. The ‘willing To Pay’ is basically a measure of how much you'd be willing to pay for the solution to your problem. If it's some sort of easy problem that's not really important to you, you can offer as little as $0.50 for the solution. However, if you're writing a Master’s thesis and you want someone to answer some sort of gigantichorrible problem, you can offer much more than that. Keep in mind that other users are going to be naturally attracted to high offering price just like in all those mercenary movies. But that's not to say that easy, cheap problems aren't appealing too! If you have an easy question and you offer $0.50 for it and someone knows the answer without having to do much work, they would be very inclined to answer it, even though it's not got a very high price. So, finally the Set Price is just how much you're willing to pay for a solution to your problem.

Q:Wait, I have to pay for tutorials?
A. You'd only have to pay for answers you like. The way it works is: You post a question. Someone answers it. We send you a snippet of their solution. If their solution looks good to you, you can pay for the whole solution. The money you pay goes to the person who provided the solution in exchange for the work that they did in answering your question. Think of it as a great incentive for other folks to be helpful and provide good answers.

Q:How does the User Rating system work?
A. Our User Rating system is designed to help you decide if a potential solution is going to be of a high caliber. Our rating system is derived from the Weighted Geometric Mean - in other words, if someone answers a high-price question and gets an awesome rating for it, that'll influence their overall User Rating more than a rating from some lower-priced question. We've implemented this system because we basically assume that high-priced questions are going to be more difficult to answer than lower ones, and we want to weight the ratings as such.

Q:I can earn money for tutoring?
A. Yes! That's the entire point of the site. Let's say you know everything there is to know about Banana farming. You're an expert in Banana farming. It's all you do all day. You login to Study Serious; you look for questions other people have posted about Banana farming. You see a question you think you know the answer to. You answer the question and, if the person likes your solution, they pay you for your answer. It's sort of like per-solution tutoring. See? It wasn’t that complicated!

Q:I'm worried about putting money in my account
A. Don't worry. We take the security of your money very seriously. Like we said above, though, you don't have to deposit money to start answering questions. Give Study Serious a try, first, and see how it feels. We're confident that your worries will be allayed pretty quickly.

Q:What's the best type of tutorial to provide?
A. More is better. When we send the random 20% of your solution to the question-asker, we will also let them know how long the overall solution is. Users are more likely to buy answers that are more complete and more explanatory, so try to avoid just simply providing a one-line answer to a question. Explain how you got the answer you did, or comments on their paper, or whatever is fitting. The more helpful you are, the more likely they are to buy your answer

Q:Is this cheating?
A. We don't think so! We've built STUDY SERIOUS so that people, be the students or professionals, can ask their colleagues for help on difficult problems. Whether you've got a hard math homework assignment or a PhD dissertation you need someone to look over, STUDY SERIOUS is there for you. We don't put any limitations on the kinds of questions you ask the community, we are just going to assume that you'll do it in a moral way. That's what choice is all about.

Q:Do you guys have any sort of policy against cheating?
A. We've thought long and hard about this. We believe that users who write solutions which not only help provide answers but also help teach how the answers were achieved will be the solutions that are purchased more often than not. And for that reason, we believe that STUDY SERIOUS is a teaching and research tool, not a tool for cheating. But it's up to you how you use it. We're not going to judge you. We're just here to help. Our final words to you are “Be Responsible”, “Do Not Cheat!!!” Keep Learning!!!

Q:So who are you guys?
A. We're just normal students and professionals, like you. As students, we grew frustrated with the apparent lack of friendly help that was available on the web for students. So we built STUDY SERIOUS and we try to stay away from the stuffy legalese of most other sites.

Q:Can I buy advertising on your site?
A. Yes. Absolutely! Just send us a message and ask us about your advertising interest on our site. We will love to work with you on that. Go to Contact Us and leave a message or email at support@studyserious.com

2. Posting Questions:

Q:Explain this Post Question thing to me.
A. Here's how it works: Let's say you have some Accounting problem you can't figure out, no matter how hard you try. You post your question on STUDY SERIOUS and, under 'Willing to Pay’; you put a monetary value on your question to entice people to answer it. Once you post it, your question becomes available to the whole of the STUDY SERIOUS community. Then let's say that John, an accounting genius, noticed your question and decides to answer it. We will send you a snippet of John's answer (so you can't just run off with the whole solution without paying John not that you would do that) and if you think it's good, you pay John for the whole solution. We then send you the solution John wrote and, bam! Your accounting problem is solved!

Q:How do I select the tutorial I want?
A. Once people have answered your question, we'll send a random 20% portion of their answer to you for you to look over. This is done so that the person answering your question knows that you don't have their whole solution without paying them for it. So you can look over the part we send you and, if it looks good, you can buy the complete solution from them. You can even buy more than one solution to your problem if you want, if that seems like a good idea.

Q:What are these categories for?
A. The categories are there to let you tell STUDY SERIOUS how to organize your question. When other users are browsing for questions to answer, they can look through the categories we have listed. So if you're asking a question about Bankruptcy Law, you can select Law => Bankruptcy Law under the categories. If your question spans multiple categories, you can select up to two different categories for your question to appear in.

Q:The category I want isn't an option.
A. A: Please click here, select "Major/Minor Suggestion" and let us know what categories you'd like us to add. We'll look them over and, if they seem valid, we'll add them to our list. In the meantime, feel free to use the 'General' subcategory to post your question.

3. Answering Question:

Q:Explain this Answer Question thing to me
A. Answering questions is easy. All you have to do is look through other user's questions and find one that you think you can answer. Then write up your solution to their problem, submit it, and if they think it's a good answer, they'll pay you for the solution you wrote!

Q:What is this offer thing?
A. The “Willing to Pay” is how much the question-asker is willing to pay for solutions to their question. So if you answer their question and they buy your solution, that's the amount you'll be paid, minus site fees.

Q:Site fees? What's all this about?
A. We need a bit of money to keep the site running. Running a site like this is not very cheap. We are trying to be a fair, easy-going site, but we do have to take some percentage of the payments to keep this whole thing running. Please see our friendly Fees schedule Page for more information about this. We're honest, we promise.

Q:Can I post a tutorial on my own?
A. Well, see if you can answer the current question.... Time's up. No, you cannot answer your own questions. That would be pointless. But you can post Tutorials instead by clicking “Post Tutorials”.

Q:How do I get my money?
A. Just go to your “MY ACCOUNT” tab look for Withdraw Funds and get your money. Our standard method of payment is PayPal. At this time PayPal is the only method to withdraw your earned money.

4. Making Money/My Study Serious balance

Q:Explain this My Balance thing
A. 'My Balance' is the section of your account that keeps track of the money you have in your STUDY SERIOUS account. We'd like to emphasize something here: This is real money! The money you earn by answering other user's questions is deposited here, and you can withdraw from it at any time. You can also deposit funds from outside sources into your STUDY SERIOUS account in order to ask your own questions of the STUDY SERIOUS community.

Q:Do I have to pay money to start posting tutorials?
A. No! You don’t have to pay anything. You can sign up for a STUDY SERIOUS account and immediately start answering questions, thereby earning money. No initial deposit is required. Pretty cool.

Q:I'm having problems with My Balance
A. Please contact our support department. We'll deal with it as quickly as we possibly can. And please, be as descriptive as you possibly can in order to aid our support personnel in helping you. Support@studyserious.com

5. Buying Tutorials

Q:Explain this Purchase Tutorial thing
A. When asking a question or when browsing other user's questions, you may find a solution you want to purchase. We provide you with a random 20% sample of the solution so you can ensure it looks good. If you decide you want to buy it, all you have to do is click "Buy " THE GREEN SHOPPING CART and we'll send you the complete text of the solution as well as placing it in your “Tutorial Vault” if your are a registered user. If you are not a registered user you will receive an e-mail where you will see a link your purchased solution or homework. How easy!!

Q:How can I tell if a user's tutorial is what I want?
A. In order to make sure you end up buying a solution you'll be happy with, we provide you with a number of ways of verifying the quality of a solution. First, we provide you with a random 20% sample of their solution. This is provided so that you can look over the general quality of their writing and their solution's depth of knowledge. We also provide a summary of the solution's total overall length and the number of attached images or files it may have. We also recommend looking at a user's previous comments. These comments are left by others who have purchased solutions from this user before, and they have rated user based on their provided solutions.

Q:I've bought my tutorial now what?
A. After purchasing the solutions, we provide you with the complete solution access. All that's left for you to do is to rate the quality of the solution you've purchased, so that other users can see what you thought!

6. Tutorial Vault

Q:Explain the Answers vault to me
A. The Tutorial ‘Vault is a place where we put all the solutions you've purchased in the past so you can refer back to them later. When you purchase a solution to a question, we email the complete text of the solution as well as placing it in the Vault. Simply think of the Vault as a repository of all the solutions you've purchased in the past.

7. My profile

Q. Where do I find My Profile?
A. My Profile can be found by clicking on the user name or any user to see his or her average rate of feedback or how much he or she earned so far. It also shows users posted materials both questions asked and answer posted.

Q. How do I send a message to another user?
A. When you are in My Profile you will see the link Send me a Message. By clicking this link you will be able to send messages to the user that you would like to communicate. Make sure do not send any personal email address or phone numbers that would cause