New Turker, looking for some feedback

[Jatis]

Hey Everyone!

You can call me Jatis. You may have seen my first post in one of the Daily Thread's. I wanted to make an official introduction, as well as see if I can get some feedback from you.

I just passed the 500 Approved HIT mark the other day, and I am currently sitting on a 97.8% Approval Rating.

My daily routine consists of waking up anywhere between 5-7 AM, making coffee. Preparing food. And then Turking for 8-9 hours (Depending if I can squeeze in a Lunch without Hit's timing out)

Currently I am using MTurkSuite, and TurkerView.

Essentially what I do is I will load up MTS, Set the minimum to $1, and accept every hit that comes through, or Set it to Once for Hit catcher if it has already been taken. Once this is done I will block the HIT as to prevent duplicate work.

I will then work on my HIT's in the order of whatever is going to time out soon.

Once things start to slow down I will typically lower my threshold to .8, and then .5, and then .2 per hit.

The problems I am facing with my current routine is that Sometimes I'll end up with 3-4 hits where I only think I will have time for one or two. Initially I thought I could just return, and re-accept, but that does not seem to be an option.

I found that using TurkerView helped with this because when I feel i am over saturated on accepted hits, it does allow me to prioritize the requested that have a higher pay per hour rating.

Now I currently am doing this to pay the bills. my monthly expenses are somewhere between $6-800 a month. The bare minimum I can walk away with is $500.

I have set my goal to $50 a day, and I almost always and able to hit it. Sometimes I'll come close around the 8 hour mark and will call it a day a little short, and I've noticed that If I sleep in too late, it seems to be far less likely (on those days I will force myself to work until I at least get $25 which will put me on track for my $500 a month mark.)

I have a couple questions for you all, and would appreciate any feedback to my routine.

1.) Can you recommend any improvements to my routine? do you feel any software/addon's could improve my efficiency compared to what I am doing now?

2.) How sustainable is this year round? I understand a lot of the work I am doing is coming from universities. Is it safe to assume this will slow down substantially throughout the summer? Do you think it is possible to still maintain at least $5 an hour, and have enough work during those times?

3.) I've been doing a lot of work through the requested Transcribe This, and I haven't had any problems. However having to mouse to the play and pause and then mouse back to where I am typing seems to slow me down substantially, but I am still averaging between 4-6 minutes per minute of audio. Any tip's to improve upon this, as well as getting better at transcribing in general? (I know a lot of requesters could be a lot stricter, and have more difficult audio.

4.) Do you guys do work that requires software? I usually like the one's that use the software Inquisit, but lately it has been stressing me out, because it seem's impossible to tab out, or force close the software if I need to, and I am missing out HIT's I could be accepting and adding to my queue.

5.) Using MTS when I go to a hit that is not available, it gives me the option to use Hit Catcher with two choices, Once, or Panda. Can anyone explain the difference between the two?

Either way I really do appreciate everyone's time reading this, and the community this forum offers. Thanks and have a great day!

Happy Turking!

 

[DareAngel3]

Hey Everyone!

You can call me Jatis. You may have seen my first post in one of the Daily Thread's. I wanted to make an official introduction, as well as see if I can get some feedback from you.

I just passed the 500 Approved HIT mark the other day, and I am currently sitting on a 97.8% Approval Rating.

My daily routine consists of waking up anywhere between 5-7 AM, making coffee. Preparing food. And then Turking for 8-9 hours (Depending if I can squeeze in a Lunch without Hit's timing out)

Currently I am using MTurkSuite, and TurkerView.

Essentially what I do is I will load up MTS, Set the minimum to $1, and accept every hit that comes through, or Set it to Once for Hit catcher if it has already been taken. Once this is done I will block the HIT as to prevent duplicate work.

I will then work on my HIT's in the order of whatever is going to time out soon.

Once things start to slow down I will typically lower my threshold to .8, and then .5, and then .2 per hit.

The problems I am facing with my current routine is that Sometimes I'll end up with 3-4 hits where I only think I will have time for one or two. Initially I thought I could just return, and re-accept, but that does not seem to be an option.

I found that using TurkerView helped with this because when I feel i am over saturated on accepted hits, it does allow me to prioritize the requested that have a higher pay per hour rating.

Now I currently am doing this to pay the bills. my monthly expenses are somewhere between $6-800 a month. The bare minimum I can walk away with is $500.

I have set my goal to $50 a day, and I almost always and able to hit it. Sometimes I'll come close around the 8 hour mark and will call it a day a little short, and I've noticed that If I sleep in too late, it seems to be far less likely (on those days I will force myself to work until I at least get $25 which will put me on track for my $500 a month mark.)

I have a couple questions for you all, and would appreciate any feedback to my routine.

1.) Can you recommend any improvements to my routine? do you feel any software/addon's could improve my efficiency compared to what I am doing now?

2.) How sustainable is this year round? I understand a lot of the work I am doing is coming from universities. Is it safe to assume this will slow down substantially throughout the summer? Do you think it is possible to still maintain at least $5 an hour, and have enough work during those times?

3.) I've been doing a lot of work through the requested Transcribe This, and I haven't had any problems. However having to mouse to the play and pause and then mouse back to where I am typing seems to slow me down substantially, but I am still averaging between 4-6 minutes per minute of audio. Any tip's to improve upon this, as well as getting better at transcribing in general? (I know a lot of requesters could be a lot stricter, and have more difficult audio.

4.) Do you guys do work that requires software? I usually like the one's that use the software Inquisit, but lately it has been stressing me out, because it seem's impossible to tab out, or force close the software if I need to, and I am missing out HIT's I could be accepting and adding to my queue.

5.) Using MTS when I go to a hit that is not available, it gives me the option to use Hit Catcher with two choices, Once, or Panda. Can anyone explain the difference between the two?

Either way I really do appreciate everyone's time reading this, and the community this forum offers. Thanks and have a great day!

Happy Turking!

Welcome!
I wanted to add that you will qualified for many more HITs at 1k, 5k, and 10k completed. So you might seek out easy, quick, "numbers" HITs to increase your total completed and give you some cushion in case you receive a rejection. Always try to avoid rejections and keep that percentage as high as possible!
1) Overwatch is a useful tool that can alert you when your favorite Requesters post.
2) I Turk year-round and yes, it will dip occasionally (especially around holidays) or shift from mainly academic surveys to other types of batches in the summer, but I still find it sustainable. YMMV.
You could consider diversifying your time and also joining other platforms such as Prolific, Testable Minds, Swagbucks, Earn Honey, etc... I believe we have an "other ways to make money" thread. But, for example, I make $20-$30/month on Prolific... so it won't completely sustain you, but it does help make up for a slow day here or there. (You can have my referral links if you're interested. Or there's normally a referral chain in the threads.)
4) Lots of people avoid Inquisit. I generally don't mind. It just depends on what's in my queue and how long it's expected to take, the pay rate, etc. You wouldn't be alone if you returned everything that mentioned Inquisit.
5) "Once" will only accept ONE HIT and then turn itself off and is used mostly for surveys. "Panda" will continue accepting HITs until they run out or your queue is full, which is used primarily for batches.
Hope that helps! Good luck to you!

 

[Achilles2357]

Another thing that will help you is to get to 99% and stay there. You're probably still suffering from a bunch of early rejections, since you are mainly doing higher paid hits. Look for "safe" batches of 1 or 2 cent hits, and do a ton of them, making sure you do them right. Other people do more batches than I do, but I know the Amazon Consumer Interest batches are good. The Zoltar batches are safe, I think. Get to 99% and if you fall below it make sure to back right back up there by doing more batches. Once you are there, most people regard it as good practice to avoid doing any number of hits from an unknown requester that could drop you below 99% if they all got rejected.

 

[Achilles2357]

Another thought: one thing you might be missing is low paid hits that are actually qualifications for higher paid hits. Today, for instance, a lot of people got nice anticipated earnings from requester Sarah Cogswell - I hope to be getting $45 myself. But these were all people who had done her lower paying qual hit recently. Some of these are posted in the forum, but you should look for them yourself too, and by all means post them as well.