Knowadays Avis 

In the year I have been using them, I have found Knowadays to be a friendly and responsive organisation. I have been given a lot of help and advice by all the Knowadays people I have had dealings with.

Positives:
Subject matter was well presented.
Reasonable price when compared to courses offered at local college and universities.
Extremely helpful and patient tutors.

I'd give the Becoming a Proofreader course itself four out of five stars.

Area(s) of Improvement (aka the reason the course gets four out of five stars):
Since Knowadays has partnered with Proofed with a work guarantee, having a module devoted to proofreading/proof-editing non-fluent English would go a long way toward preparing learners for working with Proofed. In addition to having that module, having multiple practice documents would allow learners to put knowledge to action. The Becoming A Proofreader course consistently repeats proofreading is the nuts and bolts of grammar, so the only changes should be spelling/grammar issues. However, Proofed receives quite a bit of non-fluent English documents that require what they call “proof-editing” as part of their standard proofreading remit. This is nothing like proofreading and I felt woefully underprepared and undereducated in this aspect.

Hard Analysis (aka the reason the experience gets three out of five stars overall):
I invested in this course, in part, because passing the final assessment with 80% or higher guarantees a "paid work trial to fast-track client experience." On the Becoming a Proofreader information page, where you can Try For Free or Buy Now, Knowadays makes a point of saying professional proofreaders make an average pay of $25/hour per salary.com. Having lost my job earlier in the year, this guarantee had a lot of appeal: a flexible schedule, working from home doing something I'm passionate about, and paid work (all dollar amounts are USD).

However, you have to dig through Knowadays's blog archives to find an article titled "How Much Can You Earn with Proofed?" (originally published in April 2023, updated in August 2023, accessed in December 2023). It says:
>Proofed pays $9/1,000 words, which comes out to $.009/word, regardless of document type (creative, non-fiction, business, academic, other). (Note: $.009/word appears to be lower than the industry standard for freelance proofreaders. As of December 2023, editorninja.com, grammarist.com, omproofreading.com, and scribbr.com indicate the standard industry rate for proofreading is $.01–$.04/word for most types of writing. Fiction and non-fiction pay on the lower end with business/sales and medical/STEM writing on the higher end. Yes, Proofed is a proofreading agency and should take their cut because they are bringing clients to you, managing the billing/invoicing, and running a business so you don’t have to.)
>At Proofed, beginning freelancers can make $12–$16 per hour once they start working with confidence.
>At Proofed, pay can increase to $18–$24 per hour with experience.

Knowadays's blog further notes, "As you can see, by working with Proofed, you can take on your first documents as a professional proofreader and start paying off the cost of training with Knowadays not long after you complete your courses." While technically true, it could be a very slow road to paying off the $499 course cost. Here’s my current timeline:

>I completed the Becoming a Proofreader course with 80% or higher in May 2023.
>My Proofed onboarding began in mid-June 2023 and was finished in mid-July 2023.
>My paid, 10-document trial (all documents were under 1k words) began in mid-July 2023 and was completed in early October 2023. It took nearly two and a half months to pick up 10 documents to work on.
After passing the trial, my word count limit increased to 5k. As of mid-December 2023, five months after starting at Proofed, I have not picked up enough work to pay for the Knowadays's Becoming a Proofreader course. Some freelancers have noted that, even after a year with Proofed, they sometimes aren’t able to pick up work for a month at a time.

I include this as part of my review because I think there are a lot of people like me who believed the work guarantee would allow me to earn a more sustainable income sooner. Fortunately, I am in a position where my husband makes enough money to support us both while I use this opportunity to gain work experience. However, not every person considering the Becoming a Proofreader course is in that position and they might be extremely disappointed in how the work guarantee may pan out.

I just completed the Becoming A Proofreader and Becoming An Editor course bundle. I have learned so much more than I expected to! Both classes were challenging, well-organized and focused on preparing me to work as an editor or proofreader which is exactly what I wanted. I had very helpful interactions with several different tutors and I felt like help was available whenever I had a question. My favorite part of the courses was the review session with a tutor after finishing the final assignments. I met 3 different times with Simon and found our sessions so inspirational. I wholeheartedly recommend Knowadays courses if you are looking for a real challenge and a path toward work in the profession.

Knowadays excels at providing the knowledge and skills necessary for a successful proofreading and editing career. Their tutors are always quick to respond to questions and are more than happy to provide any additional assistance as needed. I would highly recommend Knowadays to anyone pursuing a career as a proofreader and editor.

Thank you
1000.000000

Update: Make sure to read the response from Knowadays so you understand the offer with Proofed completely.

Although this is a great course, please do NOT take it solely for the claim of guaranteed work at Proofed. There is no work to be had once you pass your trial period. I have been on the editor portal and slack channel at Proofed for an entire month, auto-refreshing the page every 10 seconds, 6 hours a day, and have managed to get one document. It is absolutely disappointing. If you are truly ready to freelance on your own, this is a good primer in proofreading and editing. Otherwise, you might want to consider a course that has more information about working on your own and starting a business.
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Overall, I enjoyed both the courses that I took with Knowadays. I am well-prepared with the knowledge and resources necessary for a freelance proofreader. So much great advice!

The editing course was also quite good, but it did not prepare me very well for the final. It required skills I needed to gain since I have little experience with the type of writing I was tested on. That was disappointing, but I still learned many skills applicable to a freelance career.

In the end, I paid to retake the final for the editing course. The second version of the final was much closer to what was taught in the course, so I did quite well!

The tutor support team was so responsive and so helpful!

The Knowadays course on Becoming a Proofreader was so thorough and rich with information and resources. I have learned so much from this course, and I will continue to utilize their resources going forward as well. My tutor was so helpful in explaining verb tenses to me. It was enlightening. If you really want to test your proofreading knowledge or want to step into a new career, this is your course. It not only provides you with useful information, but it prepares you to be a professional in the field.

The Becoming a Proofreader course from Knowadays was very thorough in the information it covered. It was easy to understand and engaging. I feel well prepared to start on my new career in proofreading at their partner, Proofed.

I was very impressed with this course.

The editing course and the proofreading course offered valuable and thorough information. The tutors, especially Laura and Simon, were very helpful and supportive. Overall, I had a great experience.

The courses and and their many resources are comprehensive and incredibly helpful. The Tutor Team and Customer Support respond promptly and politely.

If I could give more than five stars to Knowadays, I would. The course is brilliant. So informative, with easy to follow modules, quizzes and blogs.
If you have any problems you can just email the tutors and they will get back to you with very detailed answers. If you are still struggling, they will stay in contact until you are happy.
If you pass the assignment, you are offered the chance to work with their parent company, Proofed.
If you do not get the required grade, you can arrange a meeting via the internet with one of the wonderful tutors where they will go over everything with you in detail.
All in all, I would recommend this course to any budding proofreaders.

The courses are very well structured. Easy to follow, yet challenging enough so I felt I was truly learning. The courses offer lots of content, and I loved that they include hyperlinks to extra content so I can devolve deeper into a specific concept. I highly recommend Knowadays courses.

For a virtual self-paced learning experience, I felt surprisingly well-supported by the program. There is always an opportunity to reach out to someone if the content doesn't make sense or if you have a specific question to run by an expert. The content is laid out clearly, and the module quizzes helped to keep me on track.

Good course content with supportive feedback and help from the tutors.

The Knowadays BAP course delivers what they say on their website. Packed with relevant material and easy to navigate. They also have a great support team and exceptional tutors.

A must for anyone who wants to become a professional proofreader. What is great is that you can do the course at your own pace and redo certain modules whenever needed. There is a lot of information provided and the support team are always very quick to respond and very friendly to deal with.

Challenging, but well-supported by a responsive, thoughtful team. Course allows you to work at your own pace. Plenty of resources. I’m glad that I made this investment.

It was a well stuctured course, comprehensive and easy to understand. The feedback provided was excellent, and those giving it were both friendly and very helpful.