Hey, So I've been doing MTurk on and off since last year, I took an extended break after Christmas. I'm back again now more out of necessity and something to do while being stuck at home, however I have a basic question that keeps coming back to bug me. I'm supposing that requestors are submitting real jobs or tasks that they need workers to do (right?) and these lists of HITs are on MTurk website under the requester name and title. After a while I was advised to use the finder & catcher, to help bring in more work to my work queue. So I did just that and I started to see more availability. However, if the requesters are putting work out there and it is available why do some HITs and requesters have availability and catchability at all? What is the main use or purpose of this? This afternoon I had both my finder and catcher loaded with work to do, some of it wasn't even high cost work $0.25c and in some cases $0.75 but the catcher hardly brought anything in. My catcher is set to 1200 and I never pick up any PRE, I'm sourcing work but it's hard to bring any tasks in, so I can see the work is there but can't catch it? I'm basically asking WHY is Amazon MTurk set up this way so that you have to fish for jobs that seemingly still need to be completed, I also used the filter to only show work that I'm qualified for so I don't understand what the problem is. My logic is telling me this work is being held back from me but I can't for the life of me figure out why?
Dozens of reasons. The HITs suck and no one wants to work them at that pay point. Limited by certain quals so not a lot of people can work them. Bigger budget. Etcetera. Because it is a first come, first served model. Amazon doesn't withhold work. They want people to work so they can take their cut. You're fishing in a small pond with thousands of other people at any given time when there is barely any fish to begin with. Tools like MTS, PC, TurkGuru, etc..., only makes it that much harder to fish, but if you don't use them then you will miss out because you need to compete with others who do. There are many reasons why you are getting or not getting HITs. Quals. # of HITs released. Time of day. Quality of the HITs. Queues. Moon phase. And-on-and-on...
Thanks Josh, I did sign up for Prolific but never heard back from them even though I confirmed my email address they just said I was on a waiting list. I'm also registered on Connect and get daily work there so I do have two avenues. I'm only about 30 or so hits away from 1000 so I guess that is a nice personal milestone for me LOL. I appreciate the explanation above.
A couple of years ago a young woman made a TikTok about how she earned extra cash on Prolific. It went viral. The site was flooded with thousands of young women which apparently skewed some of the results. That did seem to put a kibosh on new applicants in that demographic, but unsure if this is still an impact. If it has been awhile, you may want to touch base with them. The squeaky wheel gets the grease!
So I decided this week to grease the wheels, I reached out to them and they opened a support ticket on this matter. I was informed by an agent lets call them Agent R that some accounts are approved in less than 24hrs and some take 6 months or longer, my original sign up was Nov 10 2023 and I'm still yet to be approved. I was also told by the same agent that their acceptance to work on the platform isn't chronological and she doesn't know when I'll be accepted. Also a day later they asked me to complete a feedback form to let them know if their support ticket had been helpful, I have decided not to fill this out. For one the agent is only doing what they can from their position and as frustrating as it is, it's not really their fault.
I would actually reply with that exact feedback. your wheel is too lubricated she's not the one reading that feedback first, maybe the person who does can do something to help you. it needs to squeak just a little, in a super nice, polite way.
"I responded directly to Agent R, nothing but crickets. I was in a v.similar situation 5yrs ago while applying to Target, the HR dep was non-existent and I got the feeling I had to beg to get an interview it's great that people are on Prolific and they probably do a great job of making sure the platform doesn't get swamped at least those on it can get paid. But it's lousy that they have a signup then basically ignore you for 6months, I've contacted them twice there won't be a 3rd time.
That's what is really odd, because some people can sign up tomorrow and get approved in 24hrs where as in my case it's been 6months, I'm over it at this point. Writing to Customer Support just seems like more time wasted especially when they can easily pass the book and say they can't help me, funny enough I passed by a staffing place yesterday on the way to an MLB game so I'll send them my resume this week.
When I checked Prolific this morning there was a message stating there is a known issue with the starting assessment or something like that. I didn't think to take a screenshot. Perhaps this is your issue.
Prolific and Cloud Research Connect are the two main ones you wanna look into. There's also this website that's gaining popularity recently (apparently pays really well) - https://www.opdatapoints.com/
