Hi gang, We've all been complaining for a while about low paying writing hits or about spending time on hits and then getting them rejected. I recently had some experience as a requester with this and wanted to share my insights with you. First of all, a disclaimer: I know the pay I offered wasn't what I normally would. The project was huge. I had taken it on myself and spent over $100 out of pocket farming a big chunk of it on mturk because the deadline was looming and I wasn't where I had hoped to be by then. However, though I didn't state that I would, I did reward some workers with a tasty bonus because they deserved it. Secondly, there are gifted writers on this forum (sonica in particular) from other countries who I would have loved to have had work on the project, but I had to exclude workers from outside the US because I didn't have time to waste rejecting work from people who THINK they have a grasp of the english language; but really do not. In truth, there are a lot of Americans who can't speak, spell or use it properly either. Anyway, Let me tell you what happened. There were over a hundred hits total. All I needed was for someone to read the paragraphs and then re-write in their own words, three shortened and condensed paragraphs, leaving out any repetitive or inconsequentail material that didn't matter, as long as the basic meaning fo the text wasn't lost. Most of the hits were completed in about 7 minutes for an hourly rate of around $6. I know it's not great, but it's better than most. And, as I said, I had no way of knowing if this guy would even pay me the bonus he promised so I was taking chances with my own money. There were 4 workers who did exceptional work and followed directions out of about 13 or so who worked on the assignments. And one of those didn't write the title as I had requested, which caused me a lot of aggravation and wasted time looking it up. One person turned in 4 or 5 of the hits written exactly word for word of the text, instead of the paraphrase I asked for, which meant I had to do them over. Another person wrote two sentences per paragraph which meant I had to add more information to round it out. Spelling and grammar were deplorable on many of the hits but I wan't really worried about that. Some requesters are though. I approved every single hit. Even the crappy ones, because people took time out of their lives to help me. But I can understand now, why many requesters reject our work. All of us have been a victim of a requester who accidentally blocked us, or rejected work from us that we knew was dead on right. It happens. We're dealing with imperfect people and we're imperfect too. But still, there are some workers out there who just don't give a damn and it is reflected in the work they submit. If you don't like the pay, don't take the job. Write the requester and ask for more pay or explain why you think the hit deserves better pay. But don't ACCEPT the hit and then turn in sub-par work! When you take that hit you make a promise to that requester that you will turn in work that is the best you can do. Even if he ultimately rejects it because it wasn't exactly what he wanted; you still have an obligation to give it your best try. If the work I received is any indication of what they are dealing with every day, then I completely understand why their rates are dropping or they are rejecting work. It makes me kind of angry that I've spent months chastising requestors by email for their crappy pay rates, when actually what some of them have been paying is exactly equal to what some of the work deserves. Now for some friendly advice 1. You may think you have a grasp of the english language, but textbook english isn't how we speak it; just like textbook Spanish isn't how it's actually spoken in spanish speaking countries. I've seen some posts in here from workers who can't understand why their writing assignments are rejected. I can tell by your posts that you cannot speak proper english. If you doubt your ability, then ask someone here who does speak english as a first language, whether your english is good enough. You will get an honest answer--especially from me, ergo, sonica, or Andy. 2. FOLLOW THE DIRECTIONS! If you don't understand them, contact the requester and ask him/her to clarify them for you. Most are happy to help you succeed. And if they don't get back to you then move on to something else or just do one and wait to see if it gets approved before doing any more. 3. A paragraph is not one or two sentences. It can be, of course, but that isn't what he's looking for and you should know that. A paragraph is at least 5or 6 sentences long minimum, in general. So give him that. 4. When it says to "Re-write in your own words, or to paraphrase;" this means that you read through the material and then state the facts or information in the way you would if you were telling someone about it later. It doesn't mean that you basically write the same sentence over and change the same words around. The next time I post hits, if your work isn't quality and I'm offering quality pay (I couldn't this time) I'm going to send it back to you. If you don't agree to revise it, I'm rejecting it. I'm not going to spend ten hours editing and revising work I accepted just because I "felt bad" that you spent time on it. Those of you who race through the work and cross your fingers, hoping it will be accepted are ruining it for everyone else. YOU are the reason why good writers can't make money on turk. You are the reason requesters have no choice but to pay crappy wages because they have to spend days editing your work. Maybe they are like me and feel bad if they reject work. If you know your work isn't good then don't submit it! We may not reject you, but some of us will lower our rates next time and that isn't fair to those who do work hard. I won't pay less, I'll just reject more!! The next time somebody in here whines because their written work is rejected and their post is full of bad english, bad spelling and bad grammar, I'm gonna cut loose on you! The rest of you who care about your work and do a good job--Thank you very, very much!! Stephanie Costello
I completely agree with you here. There are lots around here who feel that they're fluent in English, but it's actually not the case. I never take up the HITs requiring to write Articles because of my laziness to do research, but even if I wasn't so lazy, I won't have worked on such HITs as I know how good my English is; or to be more specific, how bad it is (I ain't ashamed to confess that my knowledge of English is very much limited and poor, my posts on this forum are a living proof of it!!!). I've done Rewrites though in the past which paid $4 per HIT and fortunately never got one rejected from them, but rewriting doesn't need you to completely make up your own content as you've to do in writing Articles where they mostly ask for original content. In Rewrites, you just need to substitute words (or sentences) with the others having same meaning. However, I do them no more now because it doesn't interest me anymore as it did me before (especially $4 reward). Yes, I can understand why won't you worry about that
Hehe...I meant, "I wasn't worried about that"...see I do it too! Your english is great. You shouldn't worry at all about doing hits for writing etc. In fact, next time I should just post the hits for you and sonica and one or two others from the US and then I would KNOW that the work would be done properly!
Thanks Shego, for having such confidence in me. BTW, I am not so confident about my writing skills and you were right in assigning a qualification to your hit. I wish you hadn't mentioned me here in this post. I agree with you that JF writes excellent English and if you can motivate him to write for you, you would get wonderful work. My English isn't so great, and people who interact with me regularly know this better. All the best for your new project.
Not just you, we all do it. We are humans and not machines; well, at least I can say that about myself so far I know my English isn't good. I ain't skeptical about it, but I know it. It's a fact. OVER-N-OUT.
Shego, I think you were more than generous in accepting crappy work, especially if you could tell they rushed through the assignment with their fingers crossed, hoping it would slip through. If it needed more than minor tweaking, I would have thrown it out the window! I think your approvals might be encouraging them to continue submitting sub par work, though. I mostly do the writing hits, too. I haven't had one rejected yet, so I think I hit their targets, most of the time.
I'm sorry sonica; but you underestimate yourself, my friend I didn't even realize you were from another country until you told me so. Your english is good enough for me!
Thanks again for your confidence in me, Shego. You don't have to apologize. I guess, I should opt for "No comments", else you will post some answer and this will continue further.
I've seen some HITs lately that I did quality work for and answered one low paying 100 word one for an advert (to entice males to click on a pay webcam servicewoman's thumbnail link no less) and it was refused. Considering I've had many writing jobs that were accepted and the few that I've had declined other than that out of near one hundred writing hits were because I sent in the wrong articles I just work on hits that pay me at least .005 cents per word. As I usually get paid .09 - 1.5 cents per word writing copy, anything less is trash. If you see these low paying hits, refuse them unless you're desperate for cash as they drive down overall payments for HITs. Good luck in your work, fellow workers. s0ph
I've personally never seen a hit on turk that paid more than .01 per word. I work 40 or more hours a week there. Good for you for finding anything that pays above that minimum! And you're right that when we accept low paying writing hits, it drives the fees down. Submitting sub-par work also drives fees down.
Nice Post This is a helpful post. Last couple of articles I requested put me in a bad spot as they weren't written bad enough to reject them but left me with having to re-write them as they weren't up to a quality level I expect. The truth is that the 400 word articles I have had written -- the author is not going to magically get better writing skills no matter how many times I ask them to re-write it. So what's the solution? I am thinking about adding a low rate with a high bonus that way I am not out the money if I don't like the quality....not sure if this is the solution but raising the pay rate just means the low quality authors will grab the articles faster... BTW, I don't think I am that picky but when an article is boring and sounds like it has been written out of a text book....that's the exact feeling the reader at my site will get and leave faster than they came...
Do you post hits under the requester name Tyler? If yes, your rates are like 100 word article 0.40, 2 - 100 word articles - you pay $1. 3 - 100 word articles $ 1.65. Maybe the problem lies there. BTW, I had attempted your $0.41 - 100 word hit initially. It had been approved almost immediately, so you are fast on approval.
Actually yes it is me and for those, ironically, i get great results. It's the 400-500 word articles at $4 (plus bonus for excellent jobs) that seems to lead to less than desired results.' Yes, I typically try to review and approve in an hour.
I'm not familiar with your hits, per se, but one way to avoid getting poor work is to make sure your instructions are very clear as to what you are looking for. If the general directions for the hit are vague and not very specific, then in all probability the final product will be that way as well. I can't tell you how many hits are posted where the little headline doesn't match what's written inside the hit for instructions. For example, the headline might say "Write a 300 word article on birdbaths" and when you open the hit, they're asking for a 400-500 word article on something else. I've contacted a few requesters on the discrepancies and never received any replies.
Yes, Sonica that is me and ironically I have had superb results with the 100 word articles but my requirements are lower too. In regards to 400 word articles, the problem is the same whether I pay $4 or $10. Any writer can select it assuming qualified, and yet my experience so far is the people grabbing it first tend not to have the best writing skills but not horrible enough to reject. I am sitting on 2 400 word articles that I paid $4 each that I need to re-write or pay someone to as the quality is not strong enough to put on my sites. It would be nice to have a favorites worker area or something. I would gladly pay a little bit more if I could trust the end result would be very good.
Tyler, if you're using the API or command line tools, you can issue a custom Qualification to workers you like, and then they'll be the only ones able to work on your assignments. Would be nice if Amazon would add that feature to the web-based requester interface!
Hi Ergo - Thank you for the suggestion -- I need to look into this API/command line tools and see if I can figure it out. Thanks again, Tyler
I have not seen any of your 400 word hits, so have no clue about them. Yes, I have seen many hits which have different instructions in the title and the hit. The title asks you to write a 300 word article and the instructions in the hit require you to submit a 400-550 word article. At times even the subject is completely different from that given in the title.