10/24 - Tubular Tuesday!

The point of the community is to have a sense of community.

Like other people said, not go insane by being alone at a computer for hours on end with nobody around that can relate to what you're doing.

Your emotions want you to connect, but logic says to compete. It'd be much more clear-cut if we weren't each others' competitors.

I've gone into this tirade more than a handful of times when I've tried to explain to people why I sell some of my scripts rather than just giving them all away for free. You scratch my back, I scratch yours, kind of thing.

 

Generally speaking, I am against chastising others for their behavior, whatever it is.
We can't control what others choose to do, only our own actions and reactions. If I don't want others to know about a requester I've discovered, I won't share it. But if someone else decides to, that was their choice and good on them for being less selfish I guess.

I dunno, I have semi-radical views on culture and behavior, and my life philosophy does not jive well with most people, so I probably should not randomly start spouting it in internet forums. Hah.

 

Here is the evolution of a Turker, read it and realize you're going to go through some of these steps. Its ok. We all do.

• Newbie - zero forking clue what you're doing. Not even worth discussing.
• $5/day - alrighty, you've figured out how to accept HITs off the forum
• $10-20/day - You found desktop notifications and are fast fingered, or have a rudimentary ability to panda c-sats in a very inefficient setup
• $35/day - you finally quit reddit for good, and are leaving 1.12s on 24/7 on worker while accepting surveys off an improperly config'd scraper and/or the forum
• $50-$60 - you've got a requester include list that now has a few decent batch work recurring requesters like Pins, Rekogs, etc. Your work flow is still garbage, but that's OK because the basics are down pat.
• $75/day - hmm, damn, you're making decentish money on mTurk now. This feels good. But the gap between you now and $100/day you is.. massive. There's no more improvement lefts to be found in the daily discussions.. WTF DO YOU DO when you've had your hand held all this time?
• $85/day - you start to turn on your coworkers. There's just not enough work for all of them to get a piece.
• $90/day - forking newbies asking stupid ass questions. GO FIND THE 1.12 PANDA ON YOUR OWN NOOB I NEED ANOTHER HIT
• $100/day - that's it, mturk is the most zero-sum game of cutthroat internet hell ever invented. Fork every other breathing human on the planet. India? God forsaken wasteland of desperation and Breligs. That jackass I used to share gifs with who lives in a low CoL county? Hope a tornado demolishes his house. THESE ARE MY HITS GTFO THERE IS ONLY 5,000 HITS IN THIS BATCH AND MY RENT IS DUE AND IM 3,000 HITS FROM THE DAILY CAP AT 6PM. CT probably DMs you and tells you to take a chill pill, every one has the same right to a HIT until it is accepted & submitted. It'll all be OK. BUT FORK HIM THESE ARE MINEEEE I EARNED THEM BY FOLLOWING IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF EVERYONE WHO CAME BEFORE ME WHEN IT WAS ACTUALLY DIFFICULTTTTT
• $125/day - Ok ok, we can start to calm down. Wow, turns out leeching free scripts off whatever celebrity of the month is pumping them out isn't the ideal way to increase earnings. Alright, that's fine, I'm still using JQuery as a crutch and being called a scrub by the forum admin, but folks are 5/5ing my PE every day like mad now
• $150/day [consistent] - Zen
• $200/day [consistent] - I've run out of forks to give and have nothing but spoons, eat, my children.
• $250/day - time to become a forum recluse, human contact will only slow you down. You simply can't hand out spoons fast enough now, so its time to sit in IRC with a few good friends and retire gracefully. You've made it, and we all miss you dearly and remember you fondly for raising the next generation.

 

Dude. I’m not alone though, I have Bearnie. Come on.

And when I scratch his back, he just tries to groom me.

TLR: I’m already crazy, and a forum can’t help me wth that.

 

But that's not even close to the full truth. That's just one thing I do.

Today I earned ~$10 as an Amazon affiliate, I earned ~$20 PE on mTurk, I earned $20 to deliver a mastered copy of music, I'm working on commercial lessons to teach Turkers how to write code, etc.

A couple of those things are related to Amazon, but several aren't related in any way whatsoever.

 

When I refer to the "point of the community", I do not mean "the reason people join". I am referring to the original purpose the forum was created -- which of course I have no idea about. I just assumed it was made for the purpose of turkers helping turkers turk better.

 

Not telling the whole story isn't the same thing as lying. You are indeed very much a freelancer for Amazon. You just also happen to do other stuff that you don't bring up because effort.

 

• $35/day - you finally quit reddit for good, and are leaving 1.12s on 24/7 on worker while accepting surveys off an improperly config'd scraper and/or the forum

This will be me forever. I can't even begin to understand how the other stuff works and don't think I ever will.

 

Yeah that describes me pretty well.

 

My hubby says I am a "surveyor" if there is such a word. I like to say I am "freelancing" part time.

 

I give up on you kogs.

Goodnight allllll.

Share your PE (or don't)
Share your requesters (or don't)

 

Deserves to be stickied and cherished forever.

Reminds me of a guy on the Amazon Associate forums who earned literally half a million dollars a year and used to share tips, until someone figured out which sites he was running, and he yanked everything down.

 

But you MUST share the cake.

Mostly because I want some cake.

 

I don't know which of those categories I'm in, since I'm liable to be in most of them throughout the month.

 

Scarily accurate.

 

Will forever be stuck at a modest 20 a day

 

This makes me laugh. Hard. And also want to cry.

Somebody hold me.

 

You will if you stick with it long enough. Seriously, I've watch baby janes grow up before my eyes. Folks so lost I seriously questioned if they even got out of the third grade, and they can now hit $50-$100 some days.

The tools that exist, and the ones that will exist, are ever increasing the "floor" for "pro" Turkers.

Seriously, just look at the evolution & then the # of people who consistently hit certain $/day thresholds. Its like eras of mTurk.

Hitscraper/Hitmonitor were some dark days. Only people who could write their own stuff cracked $50 with any regularity.
PC/HF/MTS/OW come along, and pretty much anyone can get up and running to the $35-$50 mark by sitting on the forum for a week lobbing softball questions to RA.
The next generation will raise that another level.

Kinda rushed, I missed some points I wanted to hit but with so many folks discussing I wanted to get it out before the convo flowed elsewhere haha.