Microworkers is one of the top micro-jobs sites online. Since it’s creation in 2009, Microworkers has hosted more than 10 million micro jobs to more than 500,000 workers worldwide.
The company is based in Dallas, Texas, but manages a truly global marketplace of micro-employers and employees.
Nearly two-thirds of the workers live in Asia, and they log on to the site to perform the requested tasks each day.
If you own an online business, a blog, or simply need referrals or votes for your favorite contests or programs, Microworkers is definitely the place to come and have your small tasks assigned to the thousands of active workers who are ready to complete your job.
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So what kind of work can you get done on Microworkers.com?
I personally found the Microworkers site horribly lacking in explanation and detail. From what I can tell, it’s like an Amazon Mechanical Turk type of set-up, where you can upload bulk tasks to your “campaign,” and either have one Microworker or multiple workers complete it.
In that sense, there’s a crowdsourcing element. For instance, you might ask 5 microworkers to look at a picture and tell you what color the shoes are. If 4 people say they’re brown, odds are they’re brown and you can safely tag that picture or use it sometime you have a need for it.
I’ve heard stories of Zappos using Mechanical Turk to proofread user reviews and standardize the formatting and capitalization, and I imagine you could use Micrworkers in a similar way.
Some work examples they give:
- Commenting on your blog or YouTube video.
- Reviewing your new product.
- Upvoting your content on social bookmarking sites.
- Write an Article
- Discuss, Review or Comment on your product or service in a forum or in other blogs
- Follow you on Twitter
- Sell forum signatures to you
- Blog about your product
- Put your banner or link on their website
- Upload or Download videos, applications, etc
- Bookmark your website (Digg, Buzz, etc)
- Join a Facebook group, Like your Facebook page
- Add someone to Facebook, Myspace, etc. friends list
- Vote for you, for a contest entry, an article, image or video
- Sign up with your referral link
- Subscribe to Newsletters, RSS feeds
Now that’s some interesting stuff, if not a little spammy.
For instance, if you’re competing in a marketplace where the ranking algorithm is at least partially driven by downloads and reviews (Amazon and iTunes come to mind), employing Microworkers to help you gain some initial traction could be a viable strategy.
Plans and Pricing
Micro jobs on the platform range about $0.10 up to a few dollars, depending on their complexity and how long they might take to complete.
Microworkers is free to join for both employers and workers, and they take a 7.5% fee on each completed task from the employer, and a $0.75 fee to approve your campaign in their marketplace.
Now I’m trying to rack my brain on what kind of $0.10 jobs like the ones listed above I could get done! I’ll be sure to report back once I’m able to out the service personally.
Microworkers Alternatives
Like I mentioned above, Mechanical Turk may be the closest alternative, though they have some rules and safeguards in place that specifically forbid asking workers to download any files, for example.
Unlike MTurk, Microworkers has pre-defined job categories with different minimum payments depending on the complexity and the time efforts. Jobs which do not fit in any of the categories can be submitted as other.
Your Turn
Have you done any outsourcing or crowdsourcing with Microworkers? What did you have done? Please be sure to share a quick review of your experience below to help others with their decision.
I am sincerely sorry for the lack of time to fail the exam
I have had personally worked inerected with microwork at amazon mechanical Turk it is an interesting perform certain tasks which they call it hits human intelligence task, this enables to earn differently 0.1 to 0.30 depending on the number of his every worker can accomplish.
sadly…they’re a total waste of time