Frequently Asked Questions

Q: What is this all about?

A: Student of Fortune is an online tutorial marketplace for those who need or can offer help on homework. Huh? Actually, it's quite simple:

If you're a student, just post a question you're struggling with. We'll send your question to all of the tutors on Student of Fortune, and those expert in the subject will write custom tutorials to teach you how to answer your difficult homework assignment (and others like it). Pick a tutorial that looks good, buy it, follow up with questions until your aha! moment, learn the material, and ace all of your classes!

If you're expert on a subject, write great tutorials to earn lots of money, even thousands of dollars... all for helping students to learn!

One more thing - people can post both questions and tutorials. So, if you're really good with calculus but lousy at geology, earn money helping students with calculus in order to get the geology help you need! We bet you never thought your calculus would be integral to deriving knowledge about rocks.

Q: How does asking a question work?

A: To ask a question, simply click on the 'Ask Question' link. Fill in all the fields with whatever pertains to your specific question. Decide how much money you would be willing to pay for a custom tutorial and then just hit 'Submit Question'. Once that is done, your question will be posted to the Student of Fortune site for tutors to access and help you out! Hooray!

Q: What is the offer thing?

A: The offer is basically how much you'd be willing to pay for a custom tutorial on how to solve your problem. If the question seems pretty easy, you could offer as little as $0.25 for the solution. Of course, if you want someone to teach you how to solve difficult calculus problems, you had best be prepared to offer a bit more money for their help. Keep in mind that tutors are going to be naturally attracted to higher offers. But that's not to say that easy, cheap problems aren't appealing too! If you post an easy question, offer to pay $0.50 and someone can guide you to an answer without having to do much work, they might be inclined to give you a quick tutorial. So, in the end, the offer is just how much you're willing to pay for a custom tutorial for your problem

Q: Wait, I have to pay for tutorials?

A: You only have to pay for tutorials you want to see. Here's how it works:

1. You post a question.
2. Tutors post custom tutorials in response to your question.
3. We'll then send you a bunch of tutorial previews. If a tutorial looks good to you, you can buy the whole tutorial.
4. The money you pay goes to the people who provided the tutorials in exchange for their work.

Think of it this way: would you want to spend a lot of time writing up a great custom tutorial that teaches someone a totally tough concept for free? Of course not! So, think of the money you pay as the benefit the tutors get for helping you out.

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-offer question and gets an awesome rating for it, that'll influence their overall User Rating more than a rating from some lower-offer question. We've implemented this system because we basically assume that high-offer questions are going to be more difficult to answer than lower offer questions, and we want to weight the ratings as such.

Q: I can earn money for tutoring?

A: Yes, of course. Let's say you know everything there is to know about coconut farming. You're an expert in coconut farming... it's basically all you do all day. You login to Student of Fortune and look for questions other people have posted about coconut farming. And, wow, you see a question you know the answer to. Write up a custom tutorial that will teach the student everything they need to know in order to answer the question. (You've done a good job if they can answer other questions that are very similar.) If your students like the preview for your custom tutorial, they'll buy it and you'll earn the price paid for the tutorial minus our fees... that's why its important to post good long tutorials instead of just giving people short answers. See? we told you it was simple.

Q: I'm worried about putting money in my account

A: Don't worry. We take the security of your money very very seriously. Like we said above, though, you don't have to deposit money to start posting tutorials. Give Student of Fortune a try, first, and see how it feels. We're confident that your worries will be allayed pretty quickly.

Q: What's the deal with referrals?

A: We're not a pyramid scheme, if that's what you're thinking. It's a really simple idea: You refer a friend to the site. They sign up listing you as their referral. From now on, you make 5% of all the money they spend buying tutorials. You basically make money for doing nothing. Not a bad deal, huh?

Q: What's the best type of tutorial to provide?

A: More is always better. When we send the random 20% of your tutorial to the question-asker, we will also let them know how long the overal tutorials is. Remember that students are here to learn how to solve tough homework assignments, not to turn in your work as theirs. Always, always, provide more than a one-line answer to a question. Explain each step of how you got the answer you did. The better of a job you do teaching students how, the more likely students are to buy your tutorials and rate your work highly.

Q: Is this cheating?

A: Great question. Let's start out by asking a few more questions... Is using Wikipedia cheating? How about participating in a study group? Reading the textbook? What if a friend proofreads a paper for you? What if you search for something on Google?

The truth is, any resource, online or otherwise, can be used for both learning and cheating. All of these resources are different and have only one thing in common: you, the student. So, before you use Student of Fortune or any other resource, ask yourself:

• Do I have my instructor's permission to use this resource? For instance, you wouldn't open your textbook during a closed-book exam, right?
• Do I have an honest desire to learn, or am I just trying to get someone to do my homework for me?

We think that the University of Southern California's Director of Student Judicial Affairs and Community Standards, Raquel Torres-Retana, sums this all up nicely in a article in USC's Daily Trojan about Student of Fortune:

If (students') purpose was having someone else do their work, that would be viewed as a violation. But if people are using it as a tutor, then it's a tutor. It's the same online as it would be getting help at your neighbors apartment.

Student of Fortune is not endorsed by any univeristy or any university personnel

At the end of the day, we believe that most students don't use Student of Fortune to cheat, and that we make a big difference in helping people learn. Here's what some students have said about the tutoring they've received on Student of Fortune:

• "Explanations were easy to understand and only wish that I had known this kind of help was available earlier."
• "Wonderful to work with and very helpful. More helpful than my own professor."
• "Great work! You gave great examples and explained everything. Thank you!!"
• "Your detail goes far beyond what my Lewis & Loftin book offers. If you not a teacher you should be. Cheers!"

We invite members of the community and academia to comment and provide recommendations regarding our service and policies. In fact, we encourage you to send an email to the site's founders. Of course, not everyone's experience is the same and results may vary, but we believe most students have been highly satisfied with our service.

Q: Do you guys have any sort of policy against cheating?

A: Yes, and we take this issue very seriously. Please review our Academic Honesty Policy for more details. Students and tutors must agree to our Academic Honesty Policy to use our service.

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. All of the other sites made us sign up for monthly subscriptions or just wanted to sell us term papers. We just wanted to get some honest help without having to deal with monthly fees and all that nonsense, so that totally sucked. So we built Student of Fortune.

Q: Can I buy advertising on your site?

A: We do not offer advertising opportunities on the site.

Q: Explain this Ask Question thing to me

A: Here's how it works: Let's say you have some math problem you can't figure out, no matter how hard you try. You post your question on Student of Fortune and, under 'offer', you put a monetary value on your question to entice people to help you work through it. Once you post it, your question becomes available to the whole of the Student of Fortune community.

Then let's say that Bob, a math genius, noticed your question and decides to write a custom tutorial for you. We will send you a snippet of Bob's tutorial (so you can't just run off with the whole tutorial without paying Bob--not that you would do that) and if you think it's good, you pay Bob for the whole tutorial. We then send you the tutorial Bob wrote and--BAM!--You now know how to solve tough math problems! It's sort of like Neo learning Kung Fu in "The Matrix," only with less wires sticking out of your neck.

Q: How do I select the tutorial I want?

A: Once people have posted tutorial for your question, we'll send a random 20% portion of their custom tutorial 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 tutorial 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 custom tutorial from them. You can even buy more than one custom tutorial for 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 Student of Fortune how to organize your question. When other users are browsing for students to tutor, 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: 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 request a tutorial.

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 a custom tutorial that teaches the student how to solve the problem (don't just give them the answer), submit it, and if they think it's a good tutorial, they'll pay you for it!

Q: What is this offer thing?

A: The offer is how much the student is willing to pay for a great tutorial that teaches them how to solve their question (and others like it). So if they buy your tutorial, 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 -- stuff like servers, bandwidth, advertising, customer support help, and kitty food are super-expensive. Unfortunately none of us make enough money in our day jobs to pay for all of this, so we have to take some percentage of the payments to keep this whole thing running. Please see our friendly Fees Page for more information about this.

Q: Can I post a tutorial on my own?

A: Sure! Let's say you did a really really good job solving a really tough math problem, like showing all of your work and even writing a little bit about what you were doing in each step. You can upload this as a tutorial for other students.

Q: How do I get my money?

A: Now that you've answered a bunch of questions and have amassed a small fortune exceeding the GDP of a few nation-states, visit Withdraw Funds to request a PayPal withdrawal.

Q: Explain this Purchase Tutorial thing

A: When asking a question or when browsing other user's questions, you may find a tutorial you want to purchase. We provide you with a random 20% sample of the tutorial so you can ensure it looks good. If you decide you want to buy it, all you have to do is click "Buy Tutorial" and we'll send you the complete text of the tutorial as well as placing it in your Tutorials Bucket.

Q: How can I tell if a user's tutorial is what I want?

A: In order to make sure you end up buying help you'll be happy with, we provide you with a number of ways of verifying the quality of a tutorial:

1. We provide you with a random 20% sample of their tutorial. You get a chance to look over the general quality of their writing and how much effort the author puts into teaching you how to solve the problem.
2. We provide a summary of the tutorial’s total overall length and the number of images or files it may have attached.
3. There's a good chance that both the tutorial and the author who wrote it have been rated by other users. It is always riskier to buy tutorials authors who aren't rated or have low rating.
4. We also recommend looking at previous comments about an author. These comments are left by others who have purchased tutorials from this author before.

Q: I've bought my tutorial now what?

A: Take time to carefully read the tutorial and try to work through your problem with the help that your tutor has provided. If you have other similar questions from the same assignment, try solving a few of those too. If you don't understand something, ask your tutor for a clarification. Once you've figured it all out, rate the quality of your tutor's help so that other users can see what you thought!

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 Student of Fortune account. We'd like to emphasize something here: This is real money! The money you earn by selling tutorials is deposited here, and you can withdraw from it at any time. You can also deposit funds from outside sources into your Student of Fortune account in order to ask your own questions of the Student of Fortune community.

Q: Do I have to pay money to start posting tutorials?

A: No! You can sign up for a Student of Fortune account and immediately start posting tutorials, thereby earning money. No initial deposit is required. Pretty cool, huh?

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 help us help you. Everything will be fine, we promise.

Q: Explain the Tutorials Bucket to me

A: The Tutorials Bucket is a place where we put all the tutorials you've ever purchased so you can refer back to them later. When you purchase a tutorial for a question, we'll email you the complete text of the tutorial as well as placing it in the Tutorials Bucket. That's pretty simple, huh?