Source It Baby! Pt. 2 – To the Brink of Failure and Back (Maybe)

Greetings dear readers!

First, I apologize for the delayed timing of this continued review. I’ve had some kind of lingering illness and malaise for the past week or so. I will generously and unfairly blame my writing partner here at this blog, since I started getting sick after a night of booze and heated intellectual discussion with him. I am back to feeling mostly normal again and I’ve finally worked up a video to further discuss my experience at Crowdsource and share some of the do’s and don’ts I’ve learned the hard way so far.

*WARNING* The video above is a bit long and a bit rambling, but there are several different aspects of the Crowdsource experience I thought you all would like to hear about and I did a bit of improvising as far as the structure. I’ll go over the main points here in a somewhat more logical way, if you prefer some silly logic over off-the-cuff rambling.

Check Out the Forum

You’ll find the forums for current and prospective workers at http://forum.crowdsource.com . You can find a lot of helpful information on the forums pertaining to specific tasks or specific issues that people are commonly encountering. You can also find a bit of off-putting discussion about the many issues workers have with the current tiered system. I have to admit that if I had viewed the forums before joining the site, I might not have bothered with it. What you need to keep in mind, however, is that the forum is mostly composed of the most serious workers who take their writer level and their tasks very seriously. These writers are not only venting, but also trying to offer constructive criticisms for what is, apparently, quite a new system of leveling and tiered work. But, as I said, in addition to all of this meta discussion there is a lot of helpful info and advice about the specific tasks and AP style preferences and the like. Speaking of AP style and the tiered system takes us to the next section of discussion.

Pass/Fail Trials and Tribulations

So, if you remember in my first video I breezed right on through a large chunk of questions in a greedy grab for bonuses and payouts. Well, dear readers, don’t make this mistake. The site is pretty stringent when it comes to properly following AP style and the specific task Style Guides. Go ahead and do a few tasks at first, then wait for your feedback to see if there are any mistakes you are making throughout. You need to get used to the preferred style and tone of the answers before you go diving off the deep end, like I did. My numbers very nearly dropped to below the required 60% pass rate required to continue writing because of mostly small mistakes that I could have avoided by doing a few test runs first. The good news is that you still get paid for questions you fail!

You might be thinking, as I did, “What? They pay me for sucking?!” Well, yes. I think this is one of the more confusing aspects of the tiered system as it stands. Currently, if your work requires few edits then you pass and your passes count towards advancing through the levels. If you fail, you get paid but you fall down the ladder towards potentially not being able to write any further answers. Of course, this system is set up to weed out those who are doing shoddy work consistently and have no business writing for the site. In my opinion, however, I think there should be three levels instead. If you do horribly, plagiarize, write a bunch of nonsense, and the work is unusable without substantial edits then you should fail without pay. If your work can still be used but requires a fair number of edits and corrections, you should pass but should not advance towards higher level jobs. If you do very well, your answer requires little edits and follows the rules with precision and style then you should be advanced towards the higher levels. Now, as I mentioned above, this system is fairly new and they are still trying to work out the kinks and get it to a level that the good writers are satisfied with so we’ll just have to stay tuned on this issue. For now, keep in mind that to advance AND to keep writing at all, you need to be very cautious with your writing.

Where the Money At?

I was actually pleasantly surprised with the payout structure of the site. The waiting game starts after you submit your answers and must wait for an editor to come along and review your work. The 100-word answers seem to take quite a long time to get reviewed most of the time. I still have several from the first few days that have not been reviewed yet. From what I understand, this stems from the fact that many of the new or inexperienced users are answering these questions and the editors hate having to go through and heavily edit these. Despite this fact, the large majority of my tasks have been approved in a pretty timely manner. Once your work is reviewed, you will see the amount earned in the “Owed” column. The day after your work is reviewed, Crowdsource will transfer the money right into your Paypal account. *(I assume this is the same if you are working through MTurk or another platform, but I can’t be positive since I’m hooked up only through my Paypal account.) This means that fairly regularly your work will be reviewed and your pay will be in your Paypal account within a few days, not bad! So far I’ve made over $100 which is about 1/3 of my total MTurk earnings over a much larger period of time.

Support Me

Another important aspect of the platform that I did not discuss in the first video if the Support system. If you have any questions or concerns you can go to http://support.crowdsource.com/support/home and file a new support ticket. Now, for both the support site and the forum site, you will have to create an account. Just use the same info you used to create your main account. I’m guessing it is set up this way because of the various platforms that can be used to access the actual work, necessitating separate accounts for CrowdSource specific services. Anyway, once you get set up filing a new ticket and checking on it is pretty intuitive. You’ll get an email whenever a CSR has responded so you don’t have to keep watching the site. You will get to see a friendly face and name with your response, so it feels quite personable and not like some kind of auto-generated response. If you encounter some fails you feel are unjustified for one reason or another, make sure to file a ticket to not only try to get it overturned, but also to make the employees aware of potentially unfair editors/the potential unfairness of the system as it currently stands.

I think that’s pretty much about it for now. If you have any other questions you want answered before diving in, make sure to leave a comment and let me know! Also, if you know of similar sites I would LOVE to know about them! I’m having a hard time going back to the MTurk grind after the higher pay and entertainment value of CrowdSource, so I would love to know about some other simple freelance writing sites that do not involve bidding on projects and the like. If you know of any other sites for earning a little extra cash, writing based or not, let me know and I’ll have a look and try to do a review of them!

Cheers,

KHM

Source It Baby! – Pt. 1- Starting Out With CrowdSource

So, I started my CrowdSource journey today and so far I am pretty pleased! I worked up a quick video discussing the site, their bonus system, and my initial impressions. Check it out below:

The reason I am a history major and why I toyed around with the idea of becoming a librarian is that I really enjoying researching things, being able to answer people’s questions, and to drop knowledge on y’all. In this way, CrowdSource is perfect for me! I first did a few questions that took me a while to research and try to find the perfect answer and then….I noticed all the Pokémon questions. Aw yis, here we go, something I already knew answers to and knew just where to go to find the sources to back up my knowledge.

I will now be making my livelihood telling people what Shiny Pokémon are.

 I did a total of 15 jobs today, for a pending total of over $40 with the first bonus, and I’m going to wait and see what kind of feedback I get before I do some more. I’ll be keeping you all updated and let you know how the approval process goes, how stable the question pool is, and any other quirks of the site that I encounter along the way. As always, feel free to leave any comments or suggestions here or on the YouTube video! I’m always eager to try out some new sites too, so if you know of any places that I could check out and review then do leave those below!

Cheers,

KHM

 

Turking Like You Mean It – Vacation Intermission

So,  my partner has been on vacation and it is much more difficult to get any turking done with an added source of distraction in the house. Plus, we’ve been out of the house a lot, running around town, visiting with friends, and general summer time revelry. I did, however, want to do a quick little update while I have a moment of quiet.

Amen. Especially not during all these World Cup matches…

First of all, I reached the 500 mark and am inching closer to 1000. I have to say, I haven’t noticed much of a change in available HITs at the 500 mark but there have been a few extra surveys or tasks that I have qualified since reaching this milestone. I’m hoping that at 1k I’ll open up quite a few different tasks from requesters I’m already working for and all those random surveys looking for serious turkers. I’m sure though, as it always seems to go, once I reach one milestone then I’ll only seem to notice all the other available tasks that require 2k, 5k, etc.

Secondly, I’ve been using HITscraper recently with somewhat mixed results. I like some of the features and it does make searching easier, but I haven’t really noticed a huge improvement in finding good HITs. The downsides, however, may just be a result of not having been turking an awful lot lately. I will, once I get back up and turking everyday again, try to get up a post and a short video about setting up HITscraper and discuss the features for you all.

I also finally completed my CrowdSource writing application so, if I am approved, I’ll be writing up a piece on my experience doing some of their writing HITs and let you know how those size up in comparison with the more generic HITs available.

For now, I’m off to go identify some more butts, penises, and vaginas at $.04 a HIT!

Cheers,

KHM

Turking Like You Meant It – Ep. 2 – Scripted Turking

Greetings Dear Readers! Today I want to discuss some of the awesome scripts that users have crafted to give you a much smoother user experience with Amazon Mechanical Turk.

As with most scripts and mods that are out there, most of these will make you wonder why the hell something similar they wasn’t included as a part of the original user interface. Some are very simple and easy to use, while others are a little more complex but will make certain aspects of your turking experience much easier. All of them are easily installed using either Scriptish or Greasemonkey (for Firefox users) or TamperMonkey (for Chrome users). As I said in the last post, a lot of credit for my knowledge on this topic goes to r/MTurk, r/HWTF, and the wider well-established community of turkers out there working away to make their and other’s experience as smooth and rewarding as possible.

I tried out something completely new for this topic! You can either go through the blog post and read about each script at your own pace and/or you can check out the little video I made that will give you the quick skinny on the scripts that I have installed. Now, this is my first time using desktop capture software or recording a video of any sort for the public so, if you have any advice or hacks you want to share with me, please do!

OK, so let’s dig in here with the first screenshot.

Three groovy scripts all in one shot!

#1 Pending HITs

This is one of the simplest scripts and is probably my favorite. I’m a history major y’all, not a mathmetician so I really don’t want to spend my time adding up all the HITs that are still pending from days or even weeks ago. In comes this handy little script that, as you can see in the screenshot below, adds a “Pending HITs” total right beneath your “Total Earnings.” When you first install the script you will likely have to click on “Pending HITs” for it to go ahead and tally up all the payments you’re still waiting on. From there on, it usually updates on its own but if you think it’s off you can just click the “Pending HITs” again and it should refresh the total.

#2 Projected Earnings For Today

Again, why the frack didn’t Amazon think to add this feature to their UI?! Sure, by each date you can see your “Earnings” listed, but that is only for the earnings that have already been approved and paid. I want to be able to see how much I’ve earned from all the HITs that I’ve completed so that I know when I need to keep pressing on or when I’ve earned enough that I can call it a day. With this script, you can see exactly that, conveniently located right beneath your handy-dandy new “Pending HITs” total.

*NOTE: #1 & #2*

Just like computers aren’t capable of performing the tasks we are being paid to do on MTurk, these scripts can’t tell what the quality of your work is. They will total up everything you have done and they will not take any rejections or bonuses in to consideration. If you are going through and carefully following the instructions and performing your work at top quality, you shouldn’t have much to worry about. A fuller consideration of rejections will be the subject of another, separate, post. (See my one little rejection there? It nearly gave me an anurysm, but I’ll let you know what’s happened since in the future rejections post.)

#3 HIT DataBase

This is one of the more complex additions for your turking experience. I’ll readily admit that I still haven’t even used all of the features very much, but the most obvious factors are the ones I am pretty familiar with so far and that’s what I’ll be focusing on. After I get a little more experience with this script, it may require a fuller update to the description here but that will be a task for another day.

The HIT DataBase keeps track of which requesters you have worked for and which tasks you have completed. By showing a series of small boxes when you are searching HITs you can see whether you’ve done a HIT with the same title or whether you’ve worked with a particular requester before.

The “R” box is the Requester box and the “T” box is the Title box.

Obviously, this is a really handy script when you’re trying frantically to accept good HITs without repeating any you’ve done before. You can see that my requester box was not lighting up properly in the above image. After toying with the load order of my scripts, however, I fixed the issue I was having where the Requester box wasn’t lighting up properly. You just need to make sure that the database script is loading first, namely before the next script we’re going to discuss. This script also has some other uses but I will save those for another post.

#4 TurkOpticon

Amazon is known for being, shall we say, “hands-off” in regards to settling disputes that arise between requesters and turkers. With that in mind, you’ve gotta keep in mind who exactly you’re working for when you accept a HIT. This is where the TurkOpticon site comes into play; using the site, turkers can report their experiences with different requesters. They can rate each requester based on their communication, their generosity (pay), the fairness of their approval process, and the swiftness with which they paid out approved hits. Going over to the site to look for requesters every time you want to do a HIT is a bit prohibitive though; enter the TO script!

This script makes TO usefulness feasible. You can also see here how my “R” boxes are lighting up properly now.

With the TO script active you can see the reviews right in your search results. Now, this script requires the Toggle Active Media Content plug-in for your browser, but you’ll find that some HITs themselves require it as well so it’s a good idea to go ahead and install whether you get the TO script or not. You can get this script at the TMAC script from the homepage of the TurkOpticon site. Another handy feature of this script is the ability to add your own reviews right from the MTurk screen as well. If you click on the “Report Your Experience…” link, you’ll be taken to the TO site to add a review.

Well guys and gals, that’s about it for this post! You can get access to all of these handy scripts from the HitsWorthTurkingFor wiki page. Several of the scripts are part of the zip file which you can download and get all the scripts to manually install them in your browser. This is the best option, at the moment, because the site which previously hosted straight to GreaseMonkey or TamperMonkey is no longer up. I will try to do a quick overview of how to do the manual installation in a separate post and I’ll come back and link it here.

For now, it’s time for me to go spend some of my hard-earned turking monies! In the next few days keep your eyes open for a post on how long it took for me to be able to transfer my funds to my bank and a little more about that process. Don’t forget to leave us some thoughts, tips, suggestions, etc. in the comments.

Cheers!

KHM

Internet Freelancing — Slumming for Work in the Digital Age

Greetings all, the name’s Croyd.  I’m the other half of this adventure, and I’ll be exploring some of the writing opportunities the Internet has to offer.  As most aspiring writers have already discovered, finding legitimate online employment isn’t a task for the faint of heart.  Do a search for ‘freelance writing jobs’, and the first ten hits either send you to some sort of writing workshop or the usual job sites with real jobs that require real experience, e.g. indeed.com, Simply Hired, etc.  If you’re really daring, or desperate enough, you actually have a look at what else Google found.  It’s a scary plunge, but you’ve nothing left to lose right?  You click over to the second page, hoping that Google missed that perfect site just this once, and there it is.  Despair.  Staring you right in the face.

*source*

No one is suggesting that entry-level writing employment doesn’t exist, it does.  Finding reputable employers interested in developing a freelance writer’s skills, however, is akin to discovering a starving author’s integrity.  That’s not even considering the question of payment for the amount of time required to research, write, and edit that Shakespearean-like article you wrote.

Thus, the questions before us are:

A)  What’s out there?

B)  How do I get a shot at it?

C)  Does it pay?  Followed closely by, is the payment in a U.S. recognized currency?

Throughout this journey, I will document my attempts at freelancing the internet.  I’ll pick a site, job posting, or agency, and lay out my experiences from start to finish.  Expect to find a range of possibilities here, because I’m going to run the gamut.  I’ll hit up the employers with good reputations, as well as the ‘sweat shops,’ and an obvious scam or two just for the hell of it.  For those of you who are blissfully unaware of the ‘work from home’ industry that smears itself all over our digital home, I can only assume that you’re new ‘round these parts, so let me be the first to say, “Hi!  Welcome to the internet!“  The other possibility is that you’re a six-year-old child, in which case, fuck you, kid.