Where are some good resources for intermediate MTurk users?

[WhereIsTheWork]

In attempting to research to figure out what the key is that I'm missing (I top out at $11-$12 per day using Hit Forker + Panda Crazy despite being on there basically all day, I look at the hourly pay rates to help make decisions, and I really only do things that come up in green, yellow, and white), I have noticed that whenever someone asks for help, they are told that they need to, "do their own research."

Where is this information that we need to find if we do "research?" As best I can tell, research will only lead us to suggestions that we do research. The actual information doesn't seem to be out there anyway.

 

[jan]

I'm sorry if it seemed that folks are curt. Mturk does require quite a bit of 'self-starting' type stuff.

It's just the way it is, I'm afraid. That's because there is no one way to turk. Some folks, like some hits - others, different hits. I know that there used to be (is there still? I don't even know) some transcription that folks did well at. I never did, so didn't try it much.

For the most part, the trick is to be watchful, persistent - and try to get qual'ed for hits. How do you do that? Some of the quals are posted on the forum. Sometimes you'll just see a requester saying this is a qual hit. Other times, a hit will appear as a batch - and if you do well, you'll get a qual out of it. In that case, it's best to try lots of things (without risking your approval rating too much).

 

[Fuzzy Dunlop]

Go faster. 
If you're reading slow, look into a speed reading app.
You can copy those 6 paragraph long instructions sets and
have it flashed off at 400 words per minute. 

If you're clicking too slow, consider hotkeys or making the buttons
easier to click (size or highlighting)

Consider writing your own userscripts. 
https://greasyfork.org/en

Dive into HTML & Javascript.
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Tools


It's a long process of developing a custom work environment.

 

[WhereIsTheWork]

The problem for me seems to be - and I chose my username because of this - I'm not seeing the work that is worth doing. There are long periods during the day where nothing new (that's worth it) appears on Hit Forker. It's not really a matter of me not clicking in time - even when I miss a Hit I want to preview, I just Panda it and most of the time, it eventually comes up in my queue.

What kills me is that after I do a hit or 3, I'm sitting there for 10+ minutes waiting for another thing worth doing to come up. That's why I'm making like $1.50-2 per hour.

It's all that dead time that is killing me.

And my settings are to allow everything in (except for the individual requesters with lousy hits that I blocked). Anything else worth 0 or more shows up.

 

[scrmcasey]

The problem for me seems to be - and I chose my username because of this - I'm not seeing the work that is worth doing. There are long periods during the day where nothing new (that's worth it) appears on Hit Forker. It's not really a matter of me not clicking in time - even when I miss a Hit I want to preview, I just Panda it and most of the time, it eventually comes up in my queue.

What kills me is that after I do a hit or 3, I'm sitting there for 10+ minutes waiting for another thing worth doing to come up. That's why I'm making like $1.50-2 per hour.

It's all that dead time that is killing me.

And my settings are to allow everything in (except for the individual requesters with lousy hits that I blocked). Anything else worth 0 or more shows up.

It's been a slow summer, which doesn't help. I know it can be discouraging to sit and wait for something decent to pop up to panda at times. Hopefully it will pick up within the next month or so as fall semesters kick off.

 

[WhereIsTheWork]

How beneficial is it to get your approved HIT count up to 5,000 and 10,000? I would focus on the reasonably quick penny hits to get it up to there if I thought it would make a difference, but from what I have read from other users, it doesn't seem like there's any real benefit to it.

I saw 1,000 being listed as a major number, yet I have seen absolutely no difference whatsoever in the amount of work available to me since I hit 1,000 as opposed to before I did.