There's a lot of hit-or-miss involved when you're a new mturker. It seems like some really good (both in terms of being interesting and high paying) stuff is reserved for those who have difficult to find quals (because the qualification tests are not being offered) or who have Master status on mturk, and the secret to achieving this Master status seems to be something of an enigma even to those who possess it. Then there are times when you just happen to log in at the right time and find a great batch that fits your qualifications.
I'm still doing well. Tuesday of this week was actually my best yet in terms of total number of HITs -- I happened to be online when some easy numbers HITs became available, and along with some of the regular work I had already done that day, I finished the evening with 170 HITs submitted (and all approved quickly)! It was also my best day yet in terms of daily earnings: $16.41! But that wasn't all from the HITs I worked that day. That was also the day I had a couple of delayed bonuses credited to me.
A few updates: For over a week now, I've made over $5 each day. I now have over $90 in my account. I passed the 1000 approved HITs mark, and currently have a total of 1273 approved.
I'm still a newbie for sure, but with that kind of a buffer, I'm feeling more confident to try out different kids of HITs that I might have been avoiding before (for fear of rejections) or even from new requestors who don't have reviews on Turkopticon yet. At this point, if I come across an interesting batch, I feel comfortable testing the water because a couple of rejections aren't going to really change my percentage of approved HITs.
I've started to focus on building my numbers with one particular transcription requester, Crowdsurf, in the hopes of working my way up to better paying work with them. They're a company I feel good about doing work for -- they provide captions for the hearing impaired. But they're also a very frustrating company.
Here's how it works: they post a transcription HIT. They pay based on the length of the clip you transcribe. In order to continue working for them and to move up, you have to maintain a certain Quality Control score. Unfortunately, the quality of the audio we're transcribing isn't always great. There's a lot of video of college classes with professors who do not speak English well, or speak it with such a heavy accent it is sometimes impossible to know what they're saying (especially in the context of a clip that is less than 25 seconds).
After you submit a transcription, it is "graded" by their Quality Control folks. If you take on a difficult HIT, you're more likely to get docked in QC for saying that something is inaudible or unknown, or for mis-hearing something because you don't have enough context. So if you're trying to keep your score up, you avoid submitting any of these. However, if you're a worker who is trying to keep your score up, you're probably a great worker and would do the best possible job on the HIT you're avoiding. So there's a pretty deep flaw there in their business model :) Sometimes I see HITs with a popup saying to just do the best possible job, you won't be rejected and your score won't go down. But I've done them and still had my score affected. So worker beware!
Unfortunately, even on relatively clear clips, there seems to be disagreement among the QC folks about certain guidelines... so you can submit one HIT and get docked for doing it one way and have the QCer tell you to do it another way... then submit another one done the other way and have another QCer tell you to do it the first way!
And yet, despite the frustration, I have managed to keep my score up in the range that I want it to be, and even though it still takes me a lot longer to do some HITs than what they're really worth, I do enjoy knowing that what I'm doing might actually benefit someone. In my free time. And make a little spending money. I mean, come on, that beats Candy Crush any day!
No comments:
Post a Comment