I feel like i'm missing some key part the process.

Hey guys,

So I've been at this for some time off and on. I use the scraper and the catcher, I qualify when I can and I spend maybe a few hours a day on the effort... Yet I find myself looking at my numbers and noticing a significant lacking compared to some of the folks I see on here. Sure some days I can top a few dollars but most days I'm lucky to make 1 or 2 if anything at all. Meanwhile I see people all over the internet talking about how $5 - $10 a day is totally viable.

I should note that I mostly do surveys as they are what tends to pop up on the scraper and I'm like... Just under my 1000 completed mark and I've only had 1 rejection. Is it just a matter of keeping on until I have more under my belt or am I missing some key element here? Is a buck or two every few days fairly common for the level i'm at?

I would love to hear from some of you more seasoned folks. Thanks in advance for the advice.

 

Your workflow prob just sucks. Sure under 1k does hurt a bit but if you are doing that poorly you are doing basically everything wrong most likely.

You aren't doing something stupid like using hit scraper are you? Hit finder and hit catcher in MTS are 'okay' at least.

 

Nah, I'm using the Hit finder (mistyped that in my first post) from the suite as in your link there. I can definitely agree that the work flow is god awful but I literally run out of work most days. Perhaps I'm being to judgy? I have it set not to pick up requester rated under 3. I do basically every job that pops up as qualified and not full 'rejections reported' on the requester. I usually filter it to about the .15 cent marker as well.

 

You are using TO to filter?

Don't. It is basically useless outside of newbies looking for rejections but you can see that on mturk now more or less anyways.

Are you doing something stupid like running 1000 pandas at once?

Edit: Rather how many pandas are you running?

 

I am use the TO filter... I've used it since I started and I guess I never thought to turn it off. That will probably help a bit right there since, you're right, now you can see the important stuff on Mturk itself for the most part.

As for PANDAS, none. I run the single catcher for the surveys but since you can only do those once... I don't let it build up more than a dozen or so at once since it slows to a CRAWL if you do that.

I never seem to see batches pop up on my finder, but again, that could be cause of the filter situation I suppose. Ill try turning those off the next few days for sure and seeing if that helps.

 

But you are using hit catcher right? I find panda crazy + hit forker better but as long as you use something you shouldn't be doing as poorly as you are right now.

 

I do use the catcher whenever I hit something that does the whole 'No more at this time' schtick, yes. It really sounds like I may have just been stepping on my own toes via the TO filters.

Let me ask you, how long do you generally leave things on your catchers? I tend to delete them all every day and start anew. Should I be leaving ones I didn't get up for a few days instead?

 

No

Do it right away or it will never catch anything.

Like 20 or so attempts and then turn it back on for expires later. You can leave it on longer if it is a high value hit I guess.

For most hits you have about 5 seconds from the time the hit is posted to catch it so manually attempting to catch it once will be a bad time for you.

 

Oh snap!

I think you just found the source of the issue. I've been opening each hit link in a tab and then popping the catcher on missed ones as I work through the tabs. I need to hit them right away from the catcher! In hindsight this seems like it should have been obvious to me but I guess sometimes you just get in the habit of doing it one way and you don't think about it.

You sir or madam, may have just seriously increased the amount of work that I actually manage to get and I thank you.

 

There are waaaaay more optimizations that you can do but you at least won't be pants on the head retarded if you panda right away.

 

So the key step to improving in any thing is realizing that you can and will make mistakes. I am willing to admit I feel pretty dumb about that one. If you have a link/list of the key points to making it efficient I will gladly take that. Ideally I would like to work as efficiently as possible.

I kinda started this before I knew that all these resources were out there and the first like 600 hits were without a community to turn to so Im pleased as punch to be corrected.

 

The easiest thing to do is ask in the daily. Most of us are too tired of all the third worlders flooding the forum so people honestly don't help others as much but asking in the daily during peak hours will at least give you more exposure. Basically nobody checks anything out of the daily thread.

 

Will do! Thank you again for the pointers here and also the direction of where to obtain more 'efficiency updates'.