Seven days without a HIT

Well, I think that my experience is showing that the amount of pay at mTurk isn't enough to draw me in as long as I have my 40 hour job.

I never got to a point where I made even minimum wage. I did make $0.02 a HIT for some 15 to 30 second HITs once, but those hits aren't always available.

I'm not entirely giving up, but just giving a pretty DOWN critique for the experiences I've had so far.
I pointed out in my last blog entry that I did top the $20 mark, but it took me WAY too long to get there.

Time will tell if I'm drawn back in, and if I can find a way to make it worth my time.

I met a little personal benchmark

I finally topped $20 earned.

It took me just under a month to do it. I couldon't tell you how many hours. It's a lot more than I'd have liked, but FAR from full time.

Time will tell if I continue my mTurk experinece and continue to blog about it.

My 2cents - Human OCR

I did a few two penny hits yesterday to see what they were all about. They'd show a picture of a business card and I'd have to fill in form fields to match the person/company on the card. I did two that they used to test me, and they paid me for those. I then did two more, but they were identical. When the third one came up identical, I stopped because I thought something was broken. I got paid for the two I did, so I guess it was okay.

I might try some more, but they are kind of long for such a small payout.

Right now I'd love to see some more of Coman Petre's two penny HITs!

AARRGGHHH!!!

I tried another STUPID survey! (I guess the "stupid" is reflexive, 'cause I'm the one that wasted all my time.)

Darn thing was supposed to take about 5 minutes. I was rushing and ran out my 8 minute HIT timer.

NO MORE SURVEYS!

Just in case I forget, let me say that to myself again.

NO MORE SURVEYS!

I think I've seen other turkers say they love them, but I won't blind click, so I don't know how I could possibly make any money on these.

This was certainly a BAD mTurk experience!

I even put a "possible scam" lable on this post because it is a possibility in my mind that they did it on purpose. Since it is a multi page form, they could have collected my data as I went along, and intentionally dragged it out so long that the HIT could never be completed. That way they never have to "reject" anything, but they don't have to pay for it either. (This is all conjecture, but it's certainly something to think aobut.)

I was curious...

I did a google search for a piece of text I had submitted, and been paid for. I found it here.

I didn't see anything that said I couldn't say that, so I hope I don't cause problems.

It's good to see how my work is being used. I might have to look at the other side of that coin...

Did another writing HIT

Well, one might notice that the frequency with which I update my mTurk Experience has dropped. That is because, thankfully, my full time job has me busy again.

I still try to get into mTurk and make a nickel or two when I have a chance. I'm thinking of buying a laptop with my mTurk money. We'll see how it goes.

Today I did another little writing task for around $0.65. It wasn't too bad. I stumbled on the topic a little, so had to look up a couple of things, but I got it written and submitted. I was having difficulty with my MS Word, so I used an online spellchecker. That was okay, but somehow I got the word "spa" mistyped as "span" and obviously the spellchecker isn't going to help with that. I didn't notice until I had alread submitted it. I contacted the requester. I hope they still accept it. I had a similar issue before and they did, but I'm concerned now that they might keep good enough records and think that's going to happen every time I submit something. We shall see.

I am considering doing the CrowdSource top-tier test. I'm actually a little intimidated by it, but I read that you can expect over $0.03/word. At that rate, my $0.65 HIT would have been worth four and a half dollars! That might rival my fulltime hourly rate. (especially if I get practiced at it and can begin to type faster and think more quickly of what to say and how to word it.)

Regular Job

Well, I'm back to my regular job, so I have less time for mTurk and therefor less time for the "My mTurk Experience" blog.

I did get approval on my $2.00 writing HIT I mentioned a day or two ago. I might do more of those. I'm waiting on approval on am $0.80 writing HIT. If it gets approved, I really want to do more of those. It was a lot quicker, so I can probably make more $/hr on them.

When I have a chance to experience more mTurk, I'll blog some more about it.

Rejected

I did a HIT where I was supposed to mark the part of speech for instances of words ending in "ing". I wasn't sure I understood it, so I probably shouldn't have done the HIT, but I intentionally limited myself to doing only one of these HITs until I saw the results.

It was rejected.

I could probably go back and be more patient reading the instructions, but at $0.20 per HIT, it doesn't seem like a good time investment. My qualifications now show a 99% approval and 0% rejection.

I don't know if it matters, but I wrote a polite response to the requester apologizing for the error. It seemed like good business to me. Who knows? That could open a line of communication.

Still waiting on a couple of writing HITs to be processed.

Looks like the holiday slowed things down.

I did 13 HITs yesterday and they are all still pending. That's not really a big deal, but I'd like to see if my writing HIT is accepted. It would give me confidence to do more of them.

I also did a part-of-speech HIT that I am not sure I did right, so I'd really like to see it approve as well. It's only 20 cents, but the Accept is more important to me that the pennies at the moment.