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Smart Crowd Review – Scam or Can You Make Money With It?

Smart Crowd Review – Scam or Can You Make Money With It?
WFHR EditorWFHR Editor
9 min read

Last updated: July 5, 2024

If you’re looking to make a few bucks working online, taking on data entry jobs is one way to do it. Smart Crowd is one such platform that claims you can accomplish just that. In this review, we take a closer look at the platform and share if it’s legitimate or a scam.

It’s sort of unfortunate how most of these seemingly legit data entry jobs turn out to be scams. Some push you to buy an upgrade, and some never pay. Taking this into consideration, it’s never a bad idea to do some research of your own before getting started with a program.

What is Smart Crowd

Smart Crowd (formerly known as Virtual Bee) is a platform that offers data entry jobs. It was originally launched in 2001 under the name Key for Cash. It was later acquired in 2012 by LionBridge Technologies Inc. which decided to revamp the platform.

Smart Crowd Logo

The company currently employs thousands of people; however as you would expect, the pay isn’t handsome. This is because of the hard limit that comes with these since most of their jobs require no specialized knowledge.

Lionbridge acts as a middleman platform to gather job listings and makes them available.

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How It Works:

It’s easy to get started with the platform. All that’s required is you should be a minimum of 18 years of age. The registration process is simple, and anyone can join for free.

Smart Crowd Registration Page

Once the signup process is complete, you will receive an email with a link to a questionnaire. You will be asked several questions; it helps them find tasks that best suit their interests.

Smart Crowd Questionnaire

You must clear a few tests to prove your competence in your selected subjects. Since there are a lot of people competing for jobs on the platform, you will have to show your worth.

Each of the following tests rewards scores that can go up to 100. As of right now, you cannot retake tests either. Once you’ve obtained marks for a test you’ve taken, that’s your final score.

Smart Crowd Available Evaluation Tests

These tests target specific areas:

  • English Reading Comprehension – you will have to answer 10 questions after you go through an article written in English.
  • Business Address Matching – To Lionbridge, attention to detail is of utmost importance. You will be presented with two addresses, and your job will be to match them. The higher your matching accuracy is, the better your odds.
  • Reading Comprehension (Foreign Languages) – you will love it if you’re a polyglot. If you speak a second or even have a third language, this will surely boost your chances. Smart Crowd is an international platform, and scoring well in this area will work wonders. Some of the languages include Chinese, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Russian, and Korean.

Lionbridge Smart Crowd Jobs

With the freelancing platform, you can choose between the following jobs. None of these require specialized skills though, and can be done by anyone:

  • Ads quality rater – review ads on clients’ websites and provide feedback. Whether or not you think they’re effective – share it all in brief with the platform.
  • Internet assessor – as an assessor, you will evaluate companies’ websites and gather data. You may want to list the issues you find and suggest other improvements.
  • Translator – as a translator, you will translate content written in one language to English and make it accessible to a larger English-speaking audience.
  • Search engine evaluator – you will evaluate search results to see if the results are relevant to the user query (the search term you entered).
  • Social media evaluator – evaluate people’s social media accounts, more specifically business pages, and check for quality issues/improvements. It’s required for you to have an Android/iOS device that is not older than 3 years.
  • Map quality analyst – you will test out the maps you find on web properties and check for issues. If there are suggestions, your job will be to note them down as well.
  • Test associate – your job will be to prepare test forms and help build surveys. This needs some creativity as you need to come up with ideas like what needs to be tested.
  • Transcriptionist – You will have to provide transcription for audio files in English and other languages. Listen to them carefully, and type them out. You need to have a flair for typing, though.
  • Voice data collection – for creating specific software programs, these gather various voice samples. The readers will record their voices and submit them once the samples are ready.

Is It Worth It – The Income Potential

Humorous image of a printer producing $100 bills in warm lighting.

It’s surely legit, but you’ll make peanuts doing data entry tasks. Your typing skill is the only skill that will come in handy. However, the reward-to-time ratio isn’t the best one there is. There are many better ways to make a living with your online ventures.

It really depends on the type of jobs you’re awarded in the system. Depending on your expertise, it could range between $1 and $30 an hour.

Unless you could really use a few bucks for every hour of work you put in, these jobs are simply not a good fit for you. Also, you can’t expect to make a living with this since the competition is steep. You should instead invest that time to learn a real skill that will pay dividends for years to come.

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Fors

  • Free to join – it’s free to register with SmartCrowd.
  • Open for all regardless of country, citizenship, and education levels.
  • Easy tasks can be completed by anyone and require no specialized skills.
  • Work is both time and location-independent. You can work from the comfort of your couch when you ‘feel like it.’
  • Legitimate business opportunity for everyone – as long as you have the desired skill set.
  • If you lack time and are looking for a second income stream, this may be an option for you. It could bring in regular part-time work if you clear the evaluation process with a good score.

Against

  • Very low-income potential – unless you could accept jobs for as little as $2-3 per hour, these won’t serve you well in the long run.
  • Very competitive because any person can do it from anywhere in the world. For the same reason, the jobs are limited. Too many people applying for ‘too few’ jobs.
  • You can’t get jobs right away. You need to clear the initial evaluation stage and clear it with a more than ‘acceptable’ score. You need to outscore the majority of your competition.
  • Boring, monotonous work with no challenges whatsoever.
  • There’s a 20-hour work limit per week, but you won’t even come close to this. Most platforms’ jobs require no more than one hour a day and are hard-capped around that time frame.

See Related: Simply Hired Review

Is Smart Crowd a Scam?

No, Smart Crowd is not a scam. The platform has been going strong for nearly two decades since its inception way back in the early 2000s. The company is definitely a legit one, and you can expect to make some cash on the side.

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The jobs are limited though, and it’s not hard to see why. There are too many applicants applying for the same jobs. The platform is super competitive as one would expect, and you will have to get excellent grades to be even considered.

Unlike most of the Smart Crowd reviews, we can’t sugarcoat things. If you have the required skill sets and don’t mind working for a tiny hourly wage (most jobs pay little), definitely give it a go.

That being said, we still can’t recommend the system to our readers since there’s a hard limit on how much you can earn with it. It still can be an option for students looking to work 30-45 minutes a day for a quick buck.

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