Why am I always the last to know? Just found out about mturk about a week and a half ago. I like it so far. Any tips? Oh and its nice to be here.
Hi! I joined last August and I hope my few tips help you. The biggest mistake I made when I joined was I went gung ho on some of the tasks that are very, very fast ($0.01 to $0.03) without knowing that some people use robot programs to do their work (inaccurately at times also). So what happened is my work was judged best two out of three. Of course I did the job right but if the other people (or robots) did not my work was rejected. My percentage dropped to 90%. I learned to do just a few tasks for anyone new until I learned how they accept/reject work. I prefer to now work for requesters who do NOT auto accept/reject work. Build a good rapport with any requesters that you do work for. Some may not answer your questions or respond at all. Many will respond if you ask them legitimate questions that mean the work will be done correctly. Because I did this I was 1) offered an online job off of MTurk by one requester and 2) have been automatically selected for tasks that a worker has to be prequalified for. Be patient...it will take a bit of time for you work out which types of work you are best suited for and which requesters you like working for. Once you do your income will increase. Be prepared...some requesters will drop perfectly good workers for no apparent reason. I believe sometimes that some will drop workers once they hit the tax threshold so they can avoid additional tax paperwork at the end of the year. If this happens contact the requester and ask why you were dropped but don't get upset or take it personally if you don't hear back. As they say "it's just business". I hope this helps out some Good luck! p.s. do not even ask to try to use a robot program. It is against terms of service. For a few months I was very confused about what they were. Now that I know all I can say is that the people who use those programs are the ones who ruin perfectly good jobs for the rest of us. If the work is done by a robot, done incorrectly...well, why should the requester continue to pay good wages? Well they don't....they drop their wages to what is tantamount to slave labor. Just a hint
Thanks Huntress I didn't know about that best 2 out of 3 thing. Sounds weird... Hope I didn't do any of them already. Ive mostly been sticking to the ones who have paid me already. A bunch of 10 and 25 cent ones are still pending though. Hope they go through. Thanks for the good advice.
You are more than welcome. Usually the ones that do the best 2 out of 3 thing post it somewhere on the task so if you haven't seen that you should be okay. The auto accept/reject is a little harder to catch. But if you take it slow and learn your requesters it won't matter. Usually mine manually accept my tasks until they are comfortable with me and then they start auto-accepting without looking. Glad it is working for you!