conversing with MTurk

The only person i talk to about m-turk is my wife, It is perfect for someone like me who likes to stay at home and work at my own pace. I mention that i love the fact that i never have to work on it when at my own pace. that it's something that is not advertised; at least not that i know of, how i found out about it from ONE site that was mentioning ways to make money while working at home. whenever i have a real good day on m-turk, i mention, happily, how much i earned. on the flip side, and by coincidence this happened on this very hit, there are glitches; not that many, but enough glitches to cause frustration. with this hit, i was unable to submit it the first time i tried; i got that all too familiar "something went wrong" message and had to do the hit againmy wife knows how much we need the money i make doing these hits; that it's now ESSENTIAL money, but it sure helps, especially when an unanticipated expense comes up. i tell my wife that, without overstating the fact, without a doubt m-turk is one of the best things that has happened to me in many, many years. it's convenient money [[What do you mean by "something that is not advertised"?]] [[So I guess you like working from home?]] [[Do you often have good days on MTurk?]] [[What kind of glitches?]] [[Wow, MTurk is really that good that you would call it "one of the best things that has happened to you in many, many years"?!]]

legacy_1 I am not sure why it isn't advertised a lot online. Maybe because the more get rich quick schemes are. People want quick money. The scams and make millions in a week pyramid schemes are advertised heavily. The real work at home jobs and gigs are advertised because they don't pay nearly as much so people don't want to do them. [[So what you're saying is that Amazon is trying to not draw too much attention to MTurk?]] [[It seems to me like MTurk has been kind of invisible for a long time.]]

legacy_3 This was happened even me too, I stated working on MTurk sine 2 years . first time I Had a jackpot ,In that day I really felt some much happy about this site and even I had a night party with my friends and I explain about the MTurk site to my friends so that they can also earn money . [[So you are getting paid enough money to support a partying lifestyle?]]

legacy_4 When surveys don't work properly such as the link not working or if the survey doesn't provide a code at the end. I have also seen where the submit button hasn't worked when you go to submit a hit which is frustrating because you did all that work for nothing. [[Wait... the work you did disappears?]]

legacy_5 I can say that 100% One of the best and the best things was MTurk that comes in my life ,When I Was in the lockdown there was no job opportunity I was in trouble . In that time my friend suggest me to take a look in MTurk , First I was in the half minded ,But now It helps me too solve my budget plan I Really thank full to MTurk [[I can definitely see how, during the corona lockdown, MTurk can provide a unique type of opportunity to earn money. Would you continue doing this work if there is no lockdown anymore?]]

legacy_2 I do Mturk from home because I can do it while being home with my children. My husband works outside of the home and I need to be home to take care of our children. It is nice to be able to contribute a bit with extra income without having to find childcare. I can make money and take care of the kids at the same time. [[Can you concentrate on the work when there's also kids running around?]]

legacy_3_1 Well, i think this is an exaggeration, earning amount to throw a party, maybe that can happen to US workers. When I'm doing well i tend to spend a little more, maybe ordering a dinner, but throwing a party is way too much. [[Do you think US workers get paid better?]] [[What else do you spend a "little more" on when you have a good day?]]

legacy_4_1 Honestly, this rarely happens to me, usually the problems occurs very early during the task so there's really not much time wasted, there were sometimes that i submitted the hit even with the glitch and the requester paid it. What also happens is a survey without code in the end, but in most cases they pay it too. [[But when you did the work and there is something wrong with the system, what do you do?]]

legacy_4_1_1 There is really not much you can do, you depend on the good will of the requester and most of them are pretty honest and pay you if a glitch really happened due to their mistake. [[So would you say the system is unfair?]]

legacy_4_1_1_1 Yes, it is not fair if the glitches happens due to a requesters mistake, but sometimes the problem is in the worker's side, like a task that demands powerful computers or internet and you don't have it. Like i said, must of the time i don't have problems with glitches, usually they happen pretty early and when they happen later most of the requesters are honest and give you fair compensation. [[But what does it say about the platform though, when workers and requesters have to work together in spite of a faulty system?]]

legacy_5_1 Well, I'm from Brazil and you can make here payments above minimum wage due to the devaluation of Brazilian Real, I'm not good with "real" jobs that demands talking to people, i like to do my own things, so MTurk fits very well, because i don't like to lead neither to be leaden, I don't like to receive or give orders, so working on my own pace, without stress and being able to return jobs that I'm not willing to do at anytime fits very well with my personality. [[Will you keep doing MTurk work even if it would pay less than minimum wage?]] [[Do you think that it takes a certain kind of personality to do MTurk work?"]]

Children's are important and at the same time work also important. [[Well, yes of course, I think we've established that.. But let's say you wouldn't need to watch the kids, would you still choose to do MTurk work then?]]

People's needed money and same time know more informations in Mturk. [[You didn't answer my question: Do you think US workers make more money than workers from other countries?]] [[Information? What kind of information?]]

All day are good in my life. [[*All* days?]]

It's useful to Work From Home. So people's are work and watching children's. [[Right.. so what kind of HITs do you think are most suitable for combining with watching children?]]

Batch hits are very combining. [[You're watching kids right now aren't you? You're not paying attention to the questions i'm asking!]]

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Yes. I don't know the exact explanation, but US hits are higher than elsewhere. Maybe because Mturk studied there.

It must be the responses to the surveys.

3WLEIWSYHPSUZ9JV67LITLXBSRI2H4 q0 I don't have any other source of income. I am a student. I get paid in US dollars , so if I earn almost 5-10 dollars daily then I do good, since I live with my parents, all the money goes into my personal expenditure like gym and nutrition. Plus having some money in my pocket makes me feel little less worried. So yeah I do get underpaid but I am fine for now, as I am not dependent on Mturk for my bread and butter. [[Yeah... 5-10USD isn't really great for a day's work.]] [[How many hours do you work on an avarage day though?]]

3WLEIWSYHPSUZ9JV67LITLXBSRI2H4 q1 Nothing to do with my personality. And I don't think it needs any personality. Mturk has various types of work so it is just a source of making quick bucks for me. I don't believe it can be a source for full time earning until and unless the person has absolutely no skill, if that's the case then Mturk too becomes not that good place for them, because certain tasks require certain level of education and expertise. [[Do you mean that people who work on MTurk full time only do it because they cannot get a better job?]] [[Do you mean that there's no sense in doing full time MTurk work because some HITs require specific skills?]]

3N4BPTXIO93ULBT5VCYLCW8V3RPUKM q4 I disagree. Not every day there are good hits to make. [[How many HITs do you need to call a day a "good day"?]]

~~3N4BPTXIO93ULBT5VCYLCW8V3RPUKM q0 I believe that Amazon is interested in calling several workers, to expand ~~their research.~~ --------------------------------------------------------------------- 3WLEIWSYHPSUZ9JV67LITLXBSRI2H4 q3 Yep, seems true. Not many people know about this stuff and the ones who apply for it are usually rejected. So yeah. Although I do believe Amazon may have their own reasons. Don't know their inside business models so can't say. May be they also want to provide high quality work to their customers. [[Perhaps it has something to do with only wanting to attract workers that are curious or persistent, what do you think?]]

3N4BPTXIO93ULBT5VCYLCW8V3RPUKM q1 I believe Mtyrk must have been around for about 5 years. I believe that not everyone likes to work earning rewards. [[Did you know that MTurk has been around for two decades?]]

3WLEIWSYHPSUZ9JV67LITLXBSRI2H4 q2 As per my research Mturk has been around 2005. SO that's about 16 years. I know about it. So the claim that it's around for 20 years is false. [[Hah! Okay you got me, MTurk was launched publicly in 2005, you're right. The patent for it was filed in 2001 though. But nitpicks aside, sixteen years is still a long time that it's been around without a lot of people noticing right?]] [[So part of your job is doing outsourced wikipedia searches? =] ]]

3WLEIWSYHPSUZ9JV67LITLXBSRI2H4 q4 Well the glitch is more from the requester side, usually the new requesters often miss to provide survey codes or fail to embed their software correctly, so yeah they are resolved easily by the workers simply by mailing the requesters. [[So I guess Amazon is never to blame since they just facilitate between worker and requester?]] [[Do you ever get a requester that doesn't fix their mistake and just leaves you without a reward?]]

3XCC1ODXDMMOGMZJ4NND37XKV6XRQ7 q1 It is a long time but not everything needs to explode in popularity. It is a field that requires specific high-level skills both as a requester and worker. [[What kind of skills do the workers need?]] [[What kind of skills do the requesters need?]]

3XCC1ODXDMMOGMZJ4NND37XKV6XRQ7 q2 Wikipedia is a terrible source of information. I would prefer to avoid it. [[What kind of sources do you use then?]]

3XCC1ODXDMMOGMZJ4NND37XKV6XRQ7 q0 It is higher quality because regular workers treat it as if it is their job and do it properly. New people would make a lot of mistakes or would just try to scam and exit quickly.

3XCC1ODXDMMOGMZJ4NND37XKV6XRQ7 q3 Yes, often the requester is new to mTurk and doesn't understand how to use it properly or what the culture is like.

3XCC1ODXDMMOGMZJ4NND37XKV6XRQ7 q4 Yes, many times a HIT will not submit or there will be no code. Both are the requester's fault.

3WMINLGALCESN43JXU0WOCJTRN8ACD q0 My wife and I already had full time jobs so I was mostly looking for something to supplement our income, preferably from home. The last thing I wanted to do when starting a family was to pick up a part time job and never be home. So I started looking to see if I could find a way to make money online.\rAt some point, you\u2019ve probably seen ads or spam emails claiming that you can make money taking surveys online\u2026Easy! Quick! Earn cash for your opinions! [[I see, so you never intend to do MTurk fulltime right?]]

3WMINLGALCESN43JXU0WOCJTRN8ACD q1 While computing technology continues to improve, there are still many things that people can do much more effectively than computers. These include tasks such as identifying objects in a photo or video, performing data de-duplication, transcribing audio recordings or researching data details. [[Data de-dupliwhatnow?]]

3WMINLGALCESN43JXU0WOCJTRN8ACD q2 As little as turking appears to pay on paper, in practice it often pays less because MTurk, as it is known, is a sloppy, shoddy free-for-all.\rTurkers spend their time fighting requesters over an unfair 10-cent rejection or a missing 60-cent payment. They waste minutes filling out bubbles on defective questionnaires that cannot be submitted. They abandon \u201c10-minute\u201d surveys after half an hour.\r\rThey swap horror stories and warnings on turker message boards (\u201crejection on a $0.50 hit,\u201d read one recent bulletin, \u201creason is \u2018funds were not allocated\u2019\u201d). They leave scathing reviews on the turker-run site Turkopticon (\u201cunfair and wild use of the rejection button\u201d).\r\rJust how much turkers make is the subject of considerable scholarly debate, but one paper published last year analyzed millions of tasks done by thousands of turkers. Though they probably overrepresented novice turkers like me who do the lowest-paying tasks, the paper\u2019s authors concluded that if you count time spent looking for tasks and working on tasks that came to nothing, the median turker\u2019s hourly wage was $1.77. [[$1.77 per hour?!]] [[That is baffling! Especially when you take into consideration that a lot of MTurk workers are from countries where $1.77 is waaaaay below minimum wage.]]

3WMINLGALCESN43JXU0WOCJTRN8ACD q3 8 HOURS. BECAUSE I LIKE TO WORK ON MTURK [[Hell Yeah!!! 8 HOURS EVERY DAY!]]

3WMINLGALCESN43JXU0WOCJTRN8ACD q4 I am completing roughly 50-60 HIT's per day that consist of 95% surveys. Getting about $20 a day with my highest day being $39 with 93 HITs submitted. To put everything in perspective since starting January 8th on a regular basis I just hit $300 today. This is with 1,100 HIT's completed and a 98% accuracy rating. I am just trying to compare to others to see if my numbers are average or if I am wasting my time. I can't say for sure how much time I dedicate to this but it probably averages out at 4 hours a day. (text-colour:yellow)[Any tips/advice for how to get more HIT's? One thing I notice is I constantly can get $.50 and even $1 surveys but very very rarely can I get accepted into anything $2 or higher. Thanks in advance for any comments/replies] [[Did you ask anyone else about this? What do they say?]] [[I wish I could help you figure out how to get better HITs, I tried doing MTurk work myself but I also only got low paid HITs. I think that maybe I don't get good HITs because i'm in Europe, do you think it matters in what part of the world you are?]]

34J10VATJG9BNNW0E0T4PFWT8AIIQY q1 In the US, there are better HITs since Amazon is located here and the US is more central.

34J10VATJG9BNNW0E0T4PFWT8AIIQY q0 You need to get your numbers up. 1100 HITs is nothing. I have over 250000 and many others have close to or over 1000000. Find batch HITs. Get your numbers up. This opens up more HITs. Also, look for batches/quals.

34J10VATJG9BNNW0E0T4PFWT8AIIQY q2 This all depends. If you have a lot of quals with high-paying batch work, you can easily make $25-50 (sometimes even $70) an hour. Batches are everything. If you don't have good closed-quals and are just taking surveys, then $8-15 is the norm. Work is never consistent on this platform, either.

34J10VATJG9BNNW0E0T4PFWT8AIIQY q3 People are bored. People cannot survive on this income (at least in my area, the bay area), so I'm assuming they are doing this as a side-hustle. Some people will work for pennies out of boredom or desperation. Others (like myself) will not since I have too much self-respect to do that.

34J10VATJG9BNNW0E0T4PFWT8AIIQY q4 I work throughout the day (10+ hours or more). You have to constantly be available for work to post. Nothing is consistent on this platform. Batches and surveys post at odd hours. I work every day of the week, but less on weekends. My catcher is always on to catch HITs and alert me about my closed-qual batches.

32M8BPYGAUXKAY2MB4OSV1SR2U3IGB q0 Not that many surveys or hits required doing research but if I do need to research a topic, my first source is Google and secondly Wikipedia. Many surveys do not allow enough time to actually research anything, like this one which has a 10 minute timer.

32M8BPYGAUXKAY2MB4OSV1SR2U3IGB q1 Very few hits I come across require "high-level skills", unless you are listed as having a background in programming, writing or something like that. Many hits do require a high level of proficiency in English, however.

32M8BPYGAUXKAY2MB4OSV1SR2U3IGB q2 Posting a hit requires a learning curve that is a bit steeper than just answering surveys on mechanical turk. Requesters don't need to be programmers but they do need to understand how to construct and post a hit.

32M8BPYGAUXKAY2MB4OSV1SR2U3IGB q3 I have been doing mechanical turk for almost 8 years and I have no idea what data de-duplication means. If I was a requester, then it would mean reducing the number of redundant questions. As a survey taker, I just don't know.

32M8BPYGAUXKAY2MB4OSV1SR2U3IGB q4 I spend more than 40 hours a week on mechanical turk but I do not have a normal full-time job. I am on disability and have the time to spend doing surveys and other hits. It supplements disability because my Social Security disability checks are not that much.