I started Turking several years ago but have never made great money with it. Since recently becoming active on this forum my income has increased and my experience has become more enjoyable overall. So far, almost all of my income here is from surveys and low-end batch hits. Despite being a really fast typist and knowing how to spell well, I have yet to try my hand at writing or transcription hits. I would like to change that but I'm not sure where to start. Anyone have recommendations? Where should I start? What are some easy tasks to "cut my teeth" on? Thanks in advance for any advice.
Keep an eye out for David Matchett, he posts a ton of decent paying HITs on a pretty wide array of topics.
For transcription, I highly recommend naturegirl's ebook, which is mentioned in this thread: http://mturkforum.com/showthread.php?4537-Turker-transcription-book-is-done!-Anyone-for-a-shorter-version&highlight=naturegirl It's very much worth the $3, or I think you can borrow it for free if you've got Prime.
Claritrans are good for transcription, the audio snippets are under a minute and you can get through them pretty quickly once you get the hang of it. David Evans is a good writing requester. Also you might want to try your hand at tagging - those are usually pretty easy and can be done quickly.
Hi,everyone! I'm new ... been at this for about two weeks now ... and just found this forum. It's awesome! OP, if you want to take the plunge into transcription, give Claritrans a go. These HITs allow you to listen to the job before you accept. They're also decent about approving and paying quickly, and will even give accolades for a job well done. Ignite Media Solutions will post batch HITs (I like batches; I'm working on the 1000 approved HITs goal!) that are pretty quick and easy. And, again, you can listen to the audio then choose if you will accept the job. There are also the Oscar Smith business cards. I've done hundreds of these, never had a rejection, payment is super fast, and they're great for boosting approved hit count/percentage. My next plunge will be writing summaries. Dunno why, but I'm a little nervous. Does anyone have any suggestions? Should I start a new thread? Again, thanks to all of you.
My experience with short summaries is mixed. I know I did a perfect job on the ten I already did, but there was one guy Ed Sazel or someone who I did four for and he only accepted one of them and said excellent job. Nowhere in the hit did it say one per person either. David is a good one I think and Richard or someone is good too. Just stay away from anyone Ed and you will be good. If he only wanted to pay five cents per article I would have done that instead of ruining my rejection rate right off the bat. I have like 156 done so far and 4 rejections. Off to a rocky start. But the writing summaries are my favorites. Easy and fun to do if your a creative writer.
Thanks for the kind words about the transcription book, folks. Isn't it a great forum? Agreed re: Matchett and Evans. Neither of them pays well, but they also are more than fair with their standards. They just want you to be mostly coherent. So those are good starters. As far as the summaries, I found the TO patterns for those individual requesters to be really, really worth paying attention to. If they had good TO, they were a pretty good bet not to reject. In fact, summary requesters with good TO never rejected me, whereas ones with no TO sometimes gave me a surprise rejection. But there used to be so many of the summary requesters around that there were always plenty to choose from. So, I would spread your HITs around with those guys, doing just a couple at a time until you get to know them. However, don't be fooled by a few good days with them; the ones who are going to reject you will rarely do so right away. They'll wait until you've done a few for them that they've accepted and even praised. Sad but true.