So hit my one year mark today and I'm pretty burned out. When I started this last year I wasn't expecting to make anywhere near the amount of money I've made but slaving away in front of your computer is no way to live. I've been turking part time while attending college full time just to supplement my monthly BAH but I don't see how anybody can take mturk seriously anymore. Almost every academic survey is the same repetitive bullshit, with the same questions, same formats, same everything. Do these requesters actually think they're getting legit data from us? Let's be honest, anybody who turks on a daily basis is basically a professional survey taker. After you see the same questions thousands of times, how can you not be? I'm at the point where I could juggle three loaded handguns while walking my dog and complete a survey at the same time. Mturk is easy as fuck to manipulate and I honestly feel bad for the good requesters who waste their time and money putting work up.Here's some good advice for any new people just starting out:Once you get past the learning curve, money is very easy to make. Batches are legit but the good ones are eaten up as soon as they are posted. Don't worry about rejections. Yeah they still suck but I'm at the point where I just stopped caring. Once your numbers are high, you won't care either. It gets very easy to spot bad requesters and bad hits once you do this for awhile. Check turkoption if you're on the fence about directions or any hit. Sometimes you have to take a risk with certain requesters.Learn how to multi task. I run Firefox and chrome at the same time. I run hitscrapper and panda crazy on chrome and then use firefox to complete whatever I'm accepting. Here's a screenshot to give you an idea.Learn how to utilize your browser tabs. I've found that especially with batches that get eaten up quickly, I waste more time panding the hits and letting my que fill up when I could have used that time working on and accepting new hits. Here's an example of what I like to do. http://ift.tt/2z0XC3c. Each tab is an already accepted hit from the Find the School Administration Officials batch. Once I finish one hit, I submit it and jump to the next tab. Since each hit is on auto accept, I'm constantly getting fresh hits in while submitting the ones I just finished. Sometimes if the timer is long enough I'll work on each tab simultaneously and submit them all at the same time. This is only good if you're not worried about auto accepting as many new hits in the batch as possible.Use the same browser tab technique to complete surveys too. People on here will give you shit about multi tasking surveys but they're full of shit and if you aren't multi tasking everything you do, you're missing out on money. If I have 5 or 6 surveys open at once I always make sure to get to the actual survey part on each one before starting any. Have your mturk id copied, get past the initial screeners and consent forms on each one, then check the timers. Decide which survey can be completed the quickest and work your way from there. Use your smartphone to take pictures of long readings in surveys and come back to those last after you've gotten your que thinned out a little bit. This will burn you out quick though, I usually have to chill for like 10 min after multi tasking a bunch of surveys.Mturk throttling is bullshit, so learn how to use panda crazy and hitscrapper together. Don't panda too many hits at once while you run hitscrapper at 1 sec delay. You'll more then likely get hit with a page refresh error when you try and accept something good and miss out. If I don't catch a hit after like 20 minutes and something more lucrative has come up, just call it a lose and move on.Best requesters for me:Userbob (get qualified on his training hits asap if you're not)Emily WilsonPinterestFraser AndersonMindspankMark YatskarAdsForcePicsfromaboveAARCThis sub reddit helped me tremendously when I was first starting out and I'm grateful for that but over time I moved to the forums, something that brought my turking game to a whole another level. I finally got accepted into Amazon Merch a few months ago and most my time has shifted to selling t-shirts. I recommended that everyone here apply for Merch. It took me 6 months to be accepted and the learning curve is way higher but you have the potential to actually make a decent amount money.
So hit my one year mark today and I'm pretty burned out. When I started this last year I wasn't expecting to make anywhere near the amount of money I've made but slaving away in front of your computer is no way to live. I've been turking part time while attending college full time just to supplement my monthly BAH but I don't see how anybody can take mturk seriously anymore. Almost every academic survey is the same repetitive bullshit, with the same questions, same formats, same everything. Do these requesters actually think they're getting legit data from us? Let's be honest, anybody who turks on a daily basis is basically a professional survey taker. After you see the same questions thousands of times, how can you not be? I'm at the point where I could juggle three loaded handguns while walking my dog and complete a survey at the same time. Mturk is easy as fuck to manipulate and I honestly feel bad for the good requesters who waste their time and money putting work up.
Here's some good advice for any new people just starting out:
Once you get past the learning curve, money is very easy to make. Batches are legit but the good ones are eaten up as soon as they are posted. Don't worry about rejections. Yeah they still suck but I'm at the point where I just stopped caring. Once your numbers are high, you won't care either. It gets very easy to spot bad requesters and bad hits once you do this for awhile. Check turkoption if you're on the fence about directions or any hit. Sometimes you have to take a risk with certain requesters.
Learn how to multi task. I run Firefox and chrome at the same time. I run hitscrapper and panda crazy on chrome and then use firefox to complete whatever I'm accepting. Here's a screenshot to give you an idea.
Learn how to utilize your browser tabs. I've found that especially with batches that get eaten up quickly, I waste more time panding the hits and letting my que fill up when I could have used that time working on and accepting new hits. Here's an example of what I like to do. http://ift.tt/2z0XC3c. Each tab is an already accepted hit from the Find the School Administration Officials batch. Once I finish one hit, I submit it and jump to the next tab. Since each hit is on auto accept, I'm constantly getting fresh hits in while submitting the ones I just finished. Sometimes if the timer is long enough I'll work on each tab simultaneously and submit them all at the same time. This is only good if you're not worried about auto accepting as many new hits in the batch as possible.
Use the same browser tab technique to complete surveys too. People on here will give you shit about multi tasking surveys but they're full of shit and if you aren't multi tasking everything you do, you're missing out on money. If I have 5 or 6 surveys open at once I always make sure to get to the actual survey part on each one before starting any. Have your mturk id copied, get past the initial screeners and consent forms on each one, then check the timers. Decide which survey can be completed the quickest and work your way from there. Use your smartphone to take pictures of long readings in surveys and come back to those last after you've gotten your que thinned out a little bit. This will burn you out quick though, I usually have to chill for like 10 min after multi tasking a bunch of surveys.
Mturk throttling is bullshit, so learn how to use panda crazy and hitscrapper together. Don't panda too many hits at once while you run hitscrapper at 1 sec delay. You'll more then likely get hit with a page refresh error when you try and accept something good and miss out. If I don't catch a hit after like 20 minutes and something more lucrative has come up, just call it a lose and move on.
Best requesters for me:
Userbob (get qualified on his training hits asap if you're not)
Emily Wilson
Pinterest
Fraser Anderson
Mindspank
Mark Yatskar
AdsForce
Picsfromabove
AARC
This sub reddit helped me tremendously when I was first starting out and I'm grateful for that but over time I moved to the forums, something that brought my turking game to a whole another level. I finally got accepted into Amazon Merch a few months ago and most my time has shifted to selling t-shirts. I recommended that everyone here apply for Merch. It took me 6 months to be accepted and the learning curve is way higher but you have the potential to actually make a decent amount money.
http://ift.tt/eA8V8J