Some requesters are kinda mean. They just pay 1 dollar for a 500 words article. This is really too little. I know this is the financial crisis, but we are hard too.
I just did an article of 500 words and was paid $6.25 so the higher ones are out there.If you do not like the rules do not accept a hit.
The tricky thing about Mturk is figuring out what your time is really worth. I mainly work on HITS that pay anywhere between 0.15-5.00. All those articles they want you to write for 1.00 is bull and I never pick those up. I just figure out how many of a certain one I can do in an hour and see if it's worth atleast minimum wage and if so, I'll give it a shot. Sometimes it just pays to be picky with some of these requestors. I can average anywhere from 50-150 a week depending upon the quality and quantity of HITS posted.
When I think the compensation is ridiculous, I contact the Requester and let them know. Judging by their replies, quite a few have the idea that everyone working these jobs is living in some mythical country where $0.01 goes a long way and $1.00 for an hour's work is quite reasonable, and are quite surprised to find that the vast majority of Turkers are in the US or Canada. Others just have no conscience. Although most workers won't do more than a couple HITs for someone they think is taking advantage of them, unfortunately that seldom teaches the cheapskates a lesson; there are always enough people out there willing to try one HIT that all but the very, very worst of these jobs usually get done anyway.
If everyone just stopped doing these lowball HITs, then they would have to raise the price, but unfortunately for us, there's always someone out there willing to do the work cheaper.
If you guys notice there are ALOT of Hits that just sit there, and this is the reason. Not even in my very moment of desperation have I resorted to doing the ones that require you to nearly write a book for a buck. It won't happen either. As Morrissey said, if nobody does them they will either raise their prices or take their business elsewhere. Sending some of these requestors notes telling them to raise their pay to get results usually doesn't do any good. I remember last weekend there were some on there listed at 0.00 and he had 900+ of them. Eventually he removed those and if I'm not mistaken he put them back with some sort of payment.
It's the market. If you don't do them, they'll start paying more or getting someone else to do them. If you do them, you'll be establishing that a dollar is their market value.
Usually, but sometimes it does. Out of the 50 or so I've contacted over the years, at least 10 have written back and thanked me, subsequently raising their prices as well. One of the requesters I got results from is now on your list in another thread of good people to work for, so -- you're welcome. Plus my notes annoy the jerky ones, and that in itself is worth the 30 seconds it takes to send the feedback.
I think I know what your talking about for the 0.00 hits. I did one and it wasnt that hard to do. I sent him an email asking if he paid a bonus. He replied to me saying that he figured it wasn't a whole lot of work.(Which it wasn't) so he decided to pay a very low rate. I think thats the lowest I've seen then for a little while.
Its capitalism at its finest. If you were a requester and were getting good results for 5 cents, why pay more? I skip them if I dont think they pay enough.
The guy that put the zero cent HITs out a while back was just testing them. You will see this from time to time with requesters that want to figure out the HITs themselves, instead of using HIT-Builder or something similar...don't ever accept a HIT that doesn't offer at the very least a penny, because then they are under no obligation to pay you.
Were they really HITs for $0.00, or were they less than a cent, eg. $0.001, and the MTurk system simply truncated the value? I remember when Amazon first allowed requesters to post HITs that paid fractional cents, David from Enrovia considered posting some half-cent HITs, but I don't think I ever saw one come up. The negative response he got to that idea may have scared him off from it.
A very low rate? I guess 0.00 is just about as low as you can go I did one and in the comments section I added that if he would pay they would go extremely fast because as you said they were simple to do. I would have enjoyed doing them, but I don't work for free.
I don't think they are mean either, it is a free economy. If you don't want to work for that much, skip the hit.
i completed hits following the requester`s instruction step by step.. and he rejected my work...didn`t understand why..