I've only been turking a short time (~1500 HITs), and as I was going through the daily hit thread, I began to wonder ... is there a script you can run that will automatically add pandas found on the forum if it matches a set criteria? For example, if I'm on a page and there's a hit posted that pays a minimum of $15/hr, add the panda job?
Anything posted to the forums is old news. If you are interested in a program that does that for you, you might as well get QBC. You set criteria such as $15/hr and it goes and finds HITs for you. QBC scrapes data from Mturk directly every 975ms (give or take) and auto creates and toggles pandas on and off with required no input. If you are not ready for QBC, you might look in to Panda Crazy if you looking for a little more automation. I have not personally used it, but it sounds like it has more functionality than HIT Catcher alone.
Thank you - I have been using Panda for a bit now as well. I'm not super fluent in it, other thank clicking the various panda links in these forums to try finding a good paying hit. I am actually at 591 approved with 920 pending after a hard day of batching today. I know a lot of HITs will require 1000 or even 2000 approvals, so I'm trying to get my numbers up to that quickly. I'll give QBC a shot!
"Queuebicle will even watch MTurk while you sleep and have work prepared and organized to begin your day." Does this mean there's HITs that will expire more than 15--60 minutes out? And are you able to actually clear more than enough work to pay for the $20/mo pricetag?
So the way it works is basically this: Monday at 3PM you decide you're done working on MTurk, before you leave you click a button and tell QBC you plan on sitting down to work at 8AM the next day (Tues) The entire time from 3PM Mon => 8AM Tues QBC stays on and keeps watching the scraper, if a HIT posts at 2AM Tuesday with a 3 hour timer, QBC won't bother trying to accept it since it'll expire before you'll be back. If a HIT posts at 2AM with a 12 hour expiration timer QBC will take a look at it, if it meets your hourly requirements to auto-accept it'll do a quick estimate to guess how long the HIT might take you to complete. Say it's a $10 HIT with a requester rated at $10/hr, it'll try and accept it since it assumes you'll be able to complete it before it expires (8AM return time + 1 hour work time estimate). It keeps track of everything it has accepted and will only grab enough work for you to be able to reasonably complete when you get back (so you don't walk in to 50 HITs about to expire lol). Lots of additional math around all that at the fringes, but that should give a basicl rundown of the high level idea.
Personally, yes. When I was using MTS and scraping the forums, I was making about $20 each weekday. Since I got QBC, I consistently make much more than that with less effort.
What you make in an hour is highly dependent on what is being posted, what QBC has caught, and what you choose to work on. QBC will definitely help you spend less time looking for work and more time working as long as there is work to be had. But if I were to tell you I consistently make $20 an hour with QBC, that would be misleading. What QBC does is free you from having to sit at your computer when it's slow, as well as frees you from having to actively look for work while its busy. For the sake of the question though, today I made $41.18 at an hourly rate of $16.68/hr. Yesterday I made $31.08 at $33.64/hr. At the end of February I made $101.76 at $22.46/hr. About 98% of that, QBC caught for me. I didn't sit at my PC all day working non-stop. Heck I was watching a movie before answering this and QBC added 4 HITs to my queue. These are just my numbers. There are plenty of people who make way more money then I do using QBC, and there are plenty of people who make way more money than I do just using MTS and other scripts. Hopefully that helps.
