Even the good ones will probably reduce their pay once Amazon raises the commissions. Either that or they'll just leave altogether. http://mechanicalturk.typepad.com/blog/2015/05/bringing-future-innovation-to-mechanical-turk.html
That hike in commission is such bullshit. Especially with this crap. These changes would be intended to allow us to increase our investment in the marketplace and bring future innovation to Mechanical Turk that will benefit both Requesters and Workers. Mechanical Turk has not changed its commission structure since launch in 2005. Its a percentage fee those normally don't just go up for the hell of it and given how little Amazon has done with mturk it is for the hell of it. I mean they really haven't done anything to make anything better or help requesters at all. All they did was set up a pretty shoddy frame.
It would be nice if a group of poeple would start another place like mturk, competition is always good.
There are several others already. Clickworker, Pinecone, Microworker, etc. Of course there's also sites that left Mturk like Crowdflower. Those sites simply don't pay as well as a good requester on Mturk. That's just my opinion.
Another problem those places are just going to struggle to reach critical mass to attract requesters since no one really knows the companies behind them. Everyone knows and somewhat trust Amazon so it can flourish. Also it was really one of the pioneers so it has that advantage. Unless something from a really well known company like google comes up and produces a product significantly better then mturk to overcome the inertia we will be stuck with mturk like it is.
Pinecone is really nothing like the others and their pay is almost always much better. They pay $3 per survey, which is usually 10-15 minutes or less. They just dont have a steady stream of work.
I miss Crowdflower. I know a lot of people really hate them. Besides the annoying there are no more HITs available in the batch messages, there were a few of those batches where I would make decent hourly rates (annotation of argument stance in student essays). And I miss the annoying Hot or Not 1 to 5's where you would rate some smoking hot person a 5 and they would say you're wrong and it should be rated a 1, and vice versa. Those were a mystery.
This reminds me. If you have an android phone, you should download this app. Basically, it sends you verybrief surveys periodically (few times a week). Surveys take less than a minute. Pay is between $.10-%.50 (few $1 but those are rare). Payment is to your Google Play account. Not much money but not much time either. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.google.android.apps.paidtasks
Title: Find reviews of webhosting services Requester: Tyler Vigen [A566QGV3H3GIX] (TO) TO Ratings: No TO (Submit a new TO rating for this requester) Description: Find and evaluate reviews of web hosting providers. Time: 2 hours Hits Available: 48 Reward: $0.15 Qualifications: Total approved HITs is not less than 0, HIT approval rate (%) is not less than 95
You ain't lyin'. Just screenshot this. This is probably a little over a years worth. Haven't used any of it yet. If someone has an suggestions for something on google play, I'm all ears.
If they implement that crazy 20-35% rate they're talking about, there will definitely be a drop in available work. I can imagine the Google requesters and such wouldn't budge much, but the small guys might seek more pocket-friendly options.
You might want to get to spending because it only lasts for a year from the day you earn it. You can use it for books, music, movies , games and in game purchases. Basically anything digital.