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by Francis
(July 20, 2012)

Let’s talk about people who do transcription work on Mechanical Turk!

Personally I think hiring, training and employing one virtual assistant via oDesk is the best way to go if you really want regular transcription jobs. If you know how to do this, you can hire a virtual assistant and data entry expert to do transcription for about $1 per hour.

Taking this back to Mechanical Turk:

Apparently, classical transcription jobs pay 90 cents per minute. This doesn’t sound bad on first thought. However, you cannot simply calculate the hourly pay from this information:

Unfortunately, transcription jobs on Mechanical Turk are not paid by the minute or by the hour. That’s what oDesk does!

In fact, with Mechanical Turk a transcriptionist is paid by the amount of recording he has transcribed. 90 cents refer to one minute transcribed audio recording!

This changes everything.

No one is able to transcribe at a speed of someone is speaking. Even if your typing speed is high, you still need additional different transcription supplies or specific software. This all also costs something.

And if your transcription gets any more complicated, for example if it is an interview with speakers having different accents that have to be identified then the time of transcription goes up even further.

The problem with transcription work is that you are paid for amount of minutes transcribed from the audio. Not the amount of minutes you have worked. Even if you are really fast and have a really fast working and typing speed, the optimum performance one could imagine could be a 1:2 ratio of recorded audio time vs. time worked during transcription.

The down sides of transcription jobs on Mechanical Turk:

• You might not find enough different works to fill a whole work day.
• Even if you succeed to find enough work to fill a whole day, in one hour of work without any pause you would be able to transcribe roughly 15 min of tape.

Payments would actually be pretty low under these conditions.

Your work could be very dangerous for your wrists because you could get carpal tunnel or perhaps it can affect your eye sight because you are sitting in front of your computer all day long.

Is a low cost pay for hard work worth it, fair and acceptable in any country of this world? That is the question.

The last danger:

Even if you submit your eight hours of word for four hours of tape to a specific employer and he does not like what you have done, Amazon Mechanical Turk allows the employer to simply reject the finished work if it is not satisfactory.

As a worker, you always risk to work without a pay.

I think that is the biggest danger for a worker on Mechanical Turk.

Comments for Transcription Jobs on Mechanical Turk are Inhuman?

by Bobbie Joe Kinder
(United States, Salt Lake City, Utah)

I go on Mechanical Turk because of the money. If I can find the time to make a little extra it can help me purchase some things. My husband has an extremely big family with a lot of little kids so we have to buy birthday presents every month for them and the twenty here and there every month adds up fast.

So if I do these things when I get free time I eventually even out with 20 or I can use my credits to buy them a gift from amazon, which is very helpful! I haven’t really come across any funny HITs, but what is interesting about one of the HITs I did do was that it was a whole bunch of questions about relationships and then there was one or two questions on a different subject.

The survey asked me what I thought it was about and I said it was about the specific situations that were questioned about relationships when it was actually about the couple questions that they threw into the mix. I guess it was there way of getting a more accurate submission of results instead of someone trying to throw the questions and ruin the study.

Not really super interesting, but it was really cool. I have never tried to stay in touch with a requester that was good. I generally do searches and stick to the people that pay the most for the least amount of time in a survey or in paper writing or something. It is just easier to concentrate if there are shorter studies so I don’t get bored.

I really don’t know how to stay in contact with a requester either unless there was a save button or something I guess. I think that the worst one I ever had was where I had to write in a rating of what a certain vacation site offered for 500 words. I wrote and wrote and then they said it wasn’t what they were looking for and didn’t pay me.

I know I had put everything they needed in it and I spent hours on those stupid things so I was pretty irritated when I was denied. Not to mention that they denied me on seven of them so it dropped my rating on here and made me unqualified for some other good stuff. That was irritating.

The ones I do like have to have a percent finished on the bottom because I am impatient and I like to know how much longer I have to finish something, I also like the political ones or the ones that ask if you rate certain people because of their looks.

I wish there was a way at the end of the study you could give them your MTurk number or your email and they can send you your results just so you could see if you were with or against their study.

There were a couple of studies that I participated in that said that they were quick and then 45 min later I was still taking them. A few of them I returned because they just got to be ridiculous after a while. I think that when I do normal HITs I can make anywhere between $0.50-$2 per hour give or take.

Really depends on the time and how many I am able to find or do. Sometimes I go on a streak where everyone I click on seems to be broken or unavailable or I have already completed it.

I don’t look for freelance work because I didn’t know I could. I should probably do that because it would be nice to get paid a little more than what I am doing now. Not really sure where to start looking for that job though.

Comments for Talking about some of my completed HITs on MT

by David Clark
(Dry Ridge, Kentucky)

I am motivated to perform work on Amazon Mechanical Turk strictly for financial reasons. I use the money earned from completing HITs to help amortize some long standing credit card debt that my family has accrued.

I also am the primary caretaker of a one-year old child, so having a typical part-time job does not make sense, as the increased child care costs would offset any time spent working. Amazon Mechanical Turk is a way I can earn money throughout the days I am taking care of my son while not diverting too much attention away from him.

I have stayed in touch with one requestor after receiving a $25 bonus for locating an obscure video regarding an engineering company. My “regular” job involves researching and data mining in the industrial and manufacturing sectors for a private company.

The requestor’s main company also utilizes this data, so I contacted the requestor in the hopes that our mutual interests would lead to further engagement. I have not heard back from the requestor yet, but the exchange of contact information was pleasant.

I stick to using Amazon Mechanical Turk rather than seeking work with a regular outsourcing firm due to the fact that I enjoy the freedom of choosing when and how much to work without fear of being dropped from a service if I choose to decline work.

As I mentioned previously, I primarily perform HITs on days when I am also caring for my one year old son. I may perform a good number of HITs on those days, but then go a week without even logging in to Mechanical Turk due to time constraints from my primary job and other responsibilities and commitments.

Regular outsourcing firms often do not appreciate periods of inactivity, and I would run the risk of being dropped or removed from a provider’s list of available workers.

Comments for Mechanical Turk is better than any part-time job

I enjoy completing surveys through Mechanical Turk. Being retired, I have very little to do with my time each day. This endeavor, somewhere between a pastime and a work project, can be mentally stimulating and endlessly interesting.

The hook for me is trying to figure out what the researchers are so determined to figure out. Sometimes their purpose is rather self-evident and at other times, they seem to ask a hundred questions about automobiles when they are really concerned with school buses.

In any case, there’s always that blank box at the end that asks “what do you think this survey was really all about?” I always respond that I have no idea because I am not a rocket scientist. Of all the types of projects available on MTurk, I prefer academic surveys because they are much more likely to pay properly and they usually reflect an honest attempt at academic research.

That isn’t to say that the college students who prepare and undertake the surveys are always very knowledgeable about life. At fifty-eight years old, I sometimes become a little amused when asked if I try to dress to impress my friends or what flavor of blue jeans I most covet. One type of survey that makes me pretty steamed is one that tries to bait racist responses.

If I feel that a researcher is putting words in my mouth – and pretty awful words at that – I will often return the HIT without completing it. I’ve lived with all sorts of folks all my life without much racism and these sorts of thoughts are not even welcome in the kingdom of my brain.

I’ve completed 1,550 surveys over the past nine months, and I average about $45 a week in income from this endeavor. During the academic months, the search for fresh surveys to do is much easier and one can make a little more money.

In the summers, academic surveys become a little thin and one should expect to make a little less. Bonuses are common in the winter months. Bonuses are not only less common in the summer, one also must deal with more rejections of work during this time of year.

In terms of hourly wage, I would be very surprised if I made $2 per hour over the entire period. No taxes are withheld from this and the money is paid promptly when requested. I have never stayed in touch with any requester beyond one or two surveys.

To those who are concerned about rejections, all I can say is – don’t let them bother you. You may accidentally do a survey twice without meaning to – especially if you’ve done a lot of them. The requestor will simply reject your submission.

I do try to send a little note back to the requestor to let them know what happened – e.g. I really didn’t do this on purpose – I just forgot that I had done it before. Do be careful not to get too angry with a requestor and say things that you don’t really mean.

This can lead to some adverse actions that you’d rather not deal with. Enjoy Amazon Turk – it is a rewarding and fun project for young and old alike.

Everyone can do it if you can read and think.

Comments for From the Diary of a 58 Yrs Young Turker