Mturk and Life 2: Batches Vs Surveys!

Surveys and Batches

Is there a more fiery topic to bring up on an mturk forum than batches vs surveys?  On the message boards, countless turkers debate for hours on end about whether you should focus your time on batches or paid surveys.  For anyone who doesn't know, a batch is a group of small hits (jobs) that a requester can put up on mturk.  Individually, they aren't a lot of money, but because these hits can be posted in large groups, they end up being worth a lot of money if you repeatedly complete them.  For instance, there is a certain batch where one of the hits is .05.  When I first joined mturk, I would have laughed at doing anything for 5 cents!  However, this particular hit takes about 2-3 seconds to complete and there were 9,000 of them!  Even if they took you 5 seconds to do, that is 60 cents a minute, which is around 36 dollars an hour!  That is an example of one of the best batches on mturk, but there are many batches that still pay a good amount of money.

The DEBATE

So where does the debate come in?  Obviously a good batch (lots of good hits) is better than a good survey,  (one really good hit) because there is more of it.  There is no debate about that.  However good batches on mturk aren't always up!  They come at certain times a day and you have to be on your best mturk game to find them.  Surveys on the other hand, even though they can be very annoying, are pretty much constantly up.   There are so many requesters that need surveys done and finding a halfway decent survey is much easier than finding a good batch.  I personally cannot get through the day without doing at least a few surveys.  For the most part, my day is filled with surveys because as I said before, good batches are hard to find!


Surveys Suck?!?!

The batch loyalists have a common phrase that gets repeated often: SURVEYS SUCK.  If you're on the popular message boards like mturkgrind or mturkforum, you will see this phrase several times a day.      There are lots of batch loyalists who refuse to do surveys all together.  To be honest... I say they are absolutely right about surveys!  Compared to good batches, surveys do suck!  Its a chunk of money that you have to look for, complete, then once its over, you have to look for it again.  Some surveys take an extremely long time and can be repetitive!   Many surveys involve the same questions over and over again!  Many surveys involve questions that are copied and pasted from other surveys.   There are some surveys out there that are just pages and pages of countless bubbles that you have to fill out.  Its sometimes enough to make your mind explode!!!!


But... like I said before... surveys are there.  So I do them.  We as mturkers have a choice to make.  Sit there and wait for a good batch to pop up, or complete a survey and bite the bubbles.   And I've TRIED giving up surveys.  I've tried HARD!  But when you have a daily goal to make, a person can go MAD waiting around for something good to come up!  I must admit, the BEST workers on mturk are batch loyalists.  Some make 4-5 times more money in a week solely on batch hits than I make mixing surveys and batches.  One day I hope to fine tune my turking skills so that I can constantly and exclusively find good batches... but for now I bite those bubbles!






How Batches Vs Surveys Relates to Life

Relationships

The most obvious thing to talk about here would be actual employment.  However I wanted to go in a different direction.  I believe the perfect "In Real Life" subject that the batch vs survey topic relates to is relationships.  The overall principle that batch loyalists believe in definitely holds true.  Its more fulfilling to be in long term, healthy relationships (batches) than to enjoy the quick easy to find non-committal short term relationships.  Think about a married couple, or a serious couple in a long term relationship.  Its hard as hell to find the one that is right for you because the good ones seem to get snatched up right from beneath your nose!  Its frustrating to sit there and wait for months or even years for that special person who is valuable and adds happiness to your life.  However once you find them, there is just nothing better!  Two people giving each other great experiences and memories constantly, without worrying about going out and finding someone else.

It just feels so much better than those random hook-ups (Surveys) that can occur so easily between people who don't have the time or patience to wait for someone special.  Don't get me wrong, you can have a lot of fun with hook ups, however once they are over, you are back on the prowl once again to find another connection.


Friendships

I believe this is also true with friendships as well.  A good best friend is very hard to find, but once you find one, you always have someone to talk to, someone you can hang out with, someone who knows you, someone who constantly makes you feel like you have value.  This is a huge contrast to the many easy to find casual acquaintances/friends who you are cool with but just aren't able to have a close relationship with.

So I guess I need to take my own advice and suffer through waiting for those good batches rather than grabbing the easy to find, abundant surveys that are less fulfilling.

Is Mturk similar to Life?

 

               

When it comes to making money online, there are a million and one different avenues to venture through.  Just google "making money online" and you'll probably get people who want you to sign up for their referral program and make $5,000 in a day.  There are sites where you can take surveys and complete offers like Swagbucks or Clixsense.  There are places where you can be a freelancer such as Odesk.  However, nothing beats Amazon Mechanical Turk (mturk for short).

I make money from mturk almost every day.   It is the only website I've found where you can actually make a consistent amount of money every single day you work.  Now when I say money, I'm not talking Bill Gates money.  I'm not talking doctor or lawyer money.  I'm not even talking nurse or mechanic money.  In fact, the money you earn on mturk is similar to a low income minimum wage job with a few differences.  The biggest difference is that you can work for as little or as many hours as you want.  There is no "40 hour" rule because you are technically an independent contractor.  Mturk is a website where there are many mini jobs called hits (Human Intelligence Tasks).  These Hits vary from paid surveys, to categorization tasks, to audio/video transcription, to copywriting, and more.


So... as a full time mturk worker, I came to realize that the rules to being successful on mturk can be very similar to the rules of life.  There are so many different rules that many turkers live by and I thought it would be a great idea to list some of the major ones and see if they correspond to life.



The Community. 


The mturk community is vital.  I don't even know if its possible to make good money on mturk without at least being aware of the mturk community.  There are plenty of sites where lots of mturkers meet to converse about what hits are good and what hits to stay away from.


T.O.

I would say one of the most important ones is T.O. or Turkopticon.com.  It's a site where nearly every requester on mturk is graded based on how well they pay, how fair they are when reviewing hits, how long it takes to pay, and how well they communicate if there is a problem.  Every requester is graded on a 5 point scale.  Usually its best to only deal with those who have a score of 4 or better.  This is extremely valuable because working with requesters who have a score of 4 or better usually ensures that you are paid fairly for the jobs that you do and therefore you make the most money.

There are tons of requesters on mturk that have no problem paying people 1-2 dollars an hour to do a job.  I have no problem with this because thanks to T.O., these people are identified with low scores so myself and others know to stay away from them.   Every now and then, there are a few scores that are inaccurate, but for the most part, they are a pretty good indication of who is good and who is bad.


How does T.O. relate to actual life?  

Its good to know who the good and bad people are in your life, regardless of what type of relationship you are in.  Whether its work, friends, or significant others, I have always believed that the good people/organizations should be rewarded and the bad should be ignored and left alone.  I have noticed that on mturk, when a requester gets a bad rating, they sometimes raise their pay rates in order to get more people to do their hits and rate them better.

 So in actual life, I feel its best to continue relationships that are positive and healthy and cut off relationships that are damaging and degrading.   Now for organizations, there are tons of review websites like yelp which talk about what a business is like and how they treat people, both employees and customers.  Unfortunately this is harder to do with human to human relationships because no one has an actual rating history for every human on earth.  In which case you just have to think for yourself.  If you ever feel uncomfortable in a friendship/romance... think to yourself... Am I being treated fairly?  Does this person communicate effectively when I have a problem?  Do I get back a good amount from this person based on what I give?





The Message Boards

Ahh the mturk message boards.  I cannot think of anything more important when it comes to being a successful turker.  The popular ones are mturkgrind.com, mturkforum.com and turkernation.com.  I am a member of mturkgrind and mturkforum.  I worked on mturk for several months without ever using the  boards.  I was convinced that I didn't really need them since mturk had its own search engine that can find hits.  What is the point of talking about it with other people?  Oh how wrong I was.  Becoming an active member of the forums has allowed me to make triple what I made when I first started on mturk... and in half the time.  On these message boards, hundreds of mturkers get together everyday to share tips/tricks, requesters they like and don't like, really good hits, browser scripts, and much more.



Its really amazing how much I didn't know about mturk until I started TALKING to people about it.  Some requesters pay so good that you wouldn't even know they EXIST because their jobs are snatched up so quickly!  The only way you would even know is because they are talked about on the boards!  Sometimes certain hits don't work/load correctly and I start wondering if others are having the same problem.  I'd head to one of the message boards and sure enough, they are all discussing the same problem with the same hit.

 Its a beautiful place where we all help each other grow and get better at this weird "job."  We laugh together when we share hits that pay 30 bucks an hour and we cry together when we accidently fall for hits that pay 2-3 bucks an hour.  We argue about what the supposed "minimum acceptable wage" should be for turkers.  We spat about batch (a group of small jobs) hits vs survey hits.  We post funny pics of pandas and Star Trek characters.  We also share our projected earnings for the day so far to see who's slacking and who's grinding.  Often we post about browser scripts that make it easier to find good jobs such as hitscraper and Turkmaster.  Every now and then we talk about stuff that goes on in our normal lives.  Whether we get a new job, a new place to live, a new spouse, whether we are sick or feeling great.  Its just a group of people that are always there, for better or for worse.



How the Message Boards Relate to Real Life.  


This is actually one of the main reasons I wanted to write this blog.  The forum community has helped me so much as far as becoming a better mturk worker.  I realized that if you are having trouble in your career field, no matter what it is, it is important to have a community of people that are going through the same things you are.  These people could be above you and be more successful, they could be at your level, or they could be "newbs" who are going to school or just starting out and need to learn what it takes to be successful.

  Its important to have a group of people in your life that will help you grow and develop your craft- whatever it is.  Even if you are an mturker and are looking to thrive at another career, you should FIND people who you can frequently communicate with to help you learn!  I just realized I was so blind when I was simply going to mturk.com and using the search engine to find the jobs I wanted to do.  I now realize that it would be impossible to take advantage of all the opportunities mturk had to offer without talking to people about mturk.

I believe that real life is the same way.   If you want to be a lawyer... find a group of lawyers and talk with them.  If you want to be an artist, find people who already are where you want to be in the art world and communicate with them.  I realize that in real life it can be so hard to reach out to people, but just remember that there are so many opportunities you could be missing out on simply by not growing and learning from other people!  Even if you have to find these people online, it will still help!

The D.O.R. Show: Around the Web: Tyrone Magnus Video!!!

Check out this new animation dedicated to video blogger Tyrone Magnus, featuring Mitch, Tyrone, and Introducing Hector the Magician!  The guys show their appreciation for Tyrone Magnus, as well as their appreciation for Mitch's mom (watch the video to see what I mean!)

Tyrone Magnus Drawing

Greetings!  This is a drawing from the Around the Web video featuring video blogger Tyrone Magnus. Tyrone Magnus is a huge inspiration to The D.O.R. channel, so this drawing was made in appreciation for his inspiring youtube channel.  He's pretty funny and gives great advice on a wide variety of subjects.  He's a huge fan of superman, so this drawing depicts his and his girlfriend Sara as Superman and Lois Lane.


This drawing was done with pen and colored pencil.


his channel is : youtube.com/tyronemagnus

D.O.R. Show: A Poem For Sheila

Well it looks like Jeff is back again.  This time he's finished with Paula Deen and he's moved on to another.  Check out this poem Jeff has written for the new love of his life:  Sheila.


Don't forget to check out the other D.O.R. Show videos and subscribe at youtube.com/thedorchannel

Club Dance Drawing

I'm an artist that can work in many mediums.  Every so often I'll throw one of my drawings in the background of an animation.  This picture is at the beginning of the "Mitch has a Fetish" animation.  I drew it in 2007.  The medium is colored pencil.  Its basically capturing the energy and motion of a nightclub I used to go to.

The D.O.R. Show: Mitch has a Fetish

Today we take a private look into Mitch Johnson's home life.  It looks like Mitch has a secret Fetish that he wants to keep a secret, no matter what the cost!  enjoy!