Tuesday, April 5, 2011

MTurk or Microworkers, which is best?

With MTurk and Microworkers effectively competing with each other for the same pool of workers and employers, I thought it might be interesting to compare the two companies from a worker’s perspective, and ask the question: “MTurk or Microworkers, which is best?”


MTurk Advantages


1       Definitely more jobs/hits available on Mturk
2       No minimum earnings level to reach before payments begin.
3       MTurk has more jobs with multiple hits, rather than one offs than Microworkers in my opinon.
4       The Amazon store sells a large variety of products to choose from.
5       Amazon are a large company which are unlikely to fold and they also have a reputation to look after.
6       You can work on Amazon Mechanical Turk for as long as you wish and the pool of hits keeps replenishing itself.
7       There are lots of surveys to do on MTurk and they often pay reasonably well.
8       MTurk is big enough to have its own community, which can be found at the Turker Nation forum, MTurk Forum and the Turkopticon Toolbar feedback.
9       You can occasionally make a reasonable amount of money in one day on MTurk if you find good hits and put some effort in.


Microworkers Advantages


1       The lower number of jobs on Microworkers actually makes the site more manageable and easier to navigate.
2       The look and design of Microworkers is more attractive and functional, methinks.
3       They let you know what percentage of workers were successful previously on a job, which helps you to decide whether to take it or not.
4       Certain jobs like Youtube likes and voting in competitions seem to pay better on Microworkers than on Amazon Turk, that’s my experience anyway.
5       PayPal is good way to be paid with lots of options for spending your money etc.
6       Microworkers is fine for supplementing other income sources and gradually building up some extra money.


Summary


Unfortunately both the Amazon MTurk and Microworkers websites have plenty of scammy, spammy, requesters/employers on them, in my experience.  Although this doesn’t stop me working on them, it would be nice to see this sort of thing clamped down on more.
I personally tend to use both MTurk and Microworkers, but in slightly different ways.  MTurk I sometimes work on for extended periods, maybe a few hours, especially when there are hits and requesters that I particularly like.  Microworkers, on the other hand, I tend to use for maybe 15-30 minutes/day and just do a few tasks, with the intention of making a dollar/day towards the ten dollar payout minimum.

13 comments:

  1. Good comparisons. I use both sights too and agree with you on the perks of each. I'm happy to report I received my first payout from Microworkers, although waiting for the PIN to arrive via snail-mail was a bit frustrating. I'd read some negative comments about them on other sites and forums so I was a bit skeptical of how fast I would be paid once I reached the minimum. So far, I'm pleased with my experience. I haven't been on M-turk in a few weeks so I need to check them out again. Thanks for following me on Twitter!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Thanks for your comment, bestmommy, I agree with what you say and it's my pleasure to follow you on Twitter!

    ReplyDelete
  3. As a job poster or worker you need to diversify. You can use both. Another site minifreelance also offer good way to get job poster and the workers.

    ReplyDelete
  4. I would have loved to work on MTurk but it seems to be available only in the USA-correct me if I am wrong. Microworkers is ok once you have made an initial deposit to post jobs.Earning from doing tasks there is a bit slow but worth it.Thanks for the review. See you on Redgage (reloaded) or Hubpages (Alladream74)

    ReplyDelete
  5. You may be right about MTurk, VMavedzenge. I am unsure about using it outside the US. Having said that, this blog has a big following in the Indian sub-continent, so I am guessing people there use MTurk.

    ReplyDelete
  6. I am from India and i have been doing mturk tasks regularly for the last 10 months. It's really a good site that approves only quality work. Hence, one cannot just copy and paste from other sources while submitting some articles.

    ReplyDelete
  7. I have to say I like Mturk a lot better than Microworkers because the tasks there pay more. I also found another similar website that pays daily via Paypal. They are called Cloudcrowd and you need a facebook account to work there because they use a facebook app. You can learn more about them at http://www.cloudcrowd.com/i/7dmht8

    ReplyDelete
  8. I used microworkers but after reading i also try Mturk. Thanx

    ReplyDelete
  9. Good job Paul and I really agree with you points, especially that the active community on Turker Nation and MTurk Forum is one the major advantages of MTurk. It helps the workers to warn each other from bad employers and give the employers a way to ask the workers directly about their problems with the campaigns. However, I’m still working mainly on Microworkers, because they offer international payment in contrast to MTurk. But as I like this community idea a lot, we are currently trying to build an independent community page for the Microworker users at http://crowd-square.com . Perhaps in the next version of you comparison, the active community will no longer be an advantage of MTurk alone.

    ReplyDelete
  10. That sounds like a great project that you're working on, Operarius, I agree that active communties are always a great thing! :-)

    ReplyDelete
  11. Thanks Paul. Infact, it takes a lot more effort to build up a community than I had exepected at the beginning. But I'm still confident that this will benefit eveyone on Microworkers

    ReplyDelete
  12. SOUND INTERESTING NEED TO TRY !!!!!!!!!!

    ReplyDelete
  13. I just started with Microworkers and completed my first couple tasks, I'll be interested to see how much money there is to be made on that site.

    I've been with MTurk for about 2.5 months now, and it's a very nice way to supplement your income. I've made a total of about $500 in that time, with probably about $400 of it being in the last month. For something to do on the side in addition to a full time job, an extra $100/week isn't too bad.

    ReplyDelete