My first week

One week ago today I began my turking experiment. It's been interesting.

Saturday, I reached my probation period daily limit on HITs in almost no time, with 93 submitted. Sunday, I could hardly find an HIT I wanted to do. I managed to get 32 in, and it took me longer to do that (mostly for searching and checking back at different times during the day for new HITs) than it did to max out the day before.

Yesterday I didn't have much time for turking. Then last night I stumbled on a new set of HITs from a requester with a great TurkOpticon score, and happily worked through about 25 of them before that well ran dry. Between that and a few extra data entry HITs, I still managed to turn in 77.

Remember that first rejection I received on my second day of turking? I heard back from the requester and they overturned it! Yes! But lest I celebrate too much... I also got two rejections from HITs I turned in last week, from a requester with a bad reputation on TO. If I had been using TO from the start of my turking experience, I would have avoided that. But knowing that they have a bad reputation makes it a little easier to take the rejections.

So... my numbers for my first week as of this writing: 412 HITs submitted, 385 accepted, 2 rejected, 25 pending. Total earnings for my first week: $24.66. That's a horrible number if you're trying to earn a living. But look at it this way: pretty much any other "work from home" promotion out there involves you spending money at the beginning. You have to buy supplies or stock or books or a program... and there's no guarantee you'll earn enough to cover those costs, let alone actually make money. Here's a site where I spent no money at all to get started, and at the end of my first week, I actually earned something. Not much. But something. It required work, and there is definitely a learning curve, but this is something I can see myself continuing to do.

Most of the tasks are kinda boring. But unlike what I do in my day job, these are tasks that you can complete and have approved quickly. And even if it's a low value task, it's nice to have that sense of completion. I'm also finding that when I'm feeling stuck on a creative project, spending a few minutes on a data entry or other repetitive task kinda helps me get un-stuck.

So where do I go from here? Right now, I want to reach that 1000 HIT approved level. It seems like that is the first truly significant milestone in terms of what requesters with "good" HITs require from workers.