Making cents.
October 30th, 2006
Forget about the $10 that article writers are willing to compromise for. Would you be willing to work for one cent?
That’s right. One solitary cent, for work that could take between 10 minutes to a day.
Apparently, there are. How else could you explain these jobs on Amazon’s Mechanical Turk?
Just think about it. Even at a cent for 10 minutes, that’s 6 cents an hour. Or a little less than half a dollar for a day’s work, considering an 8 hour day. If you make it 17 hours, then you make a whole buck. (7 hours for you to sleep, eat, and all other things you do!) Working for a year, you could make the princely sum of $365?
Yes, there are people poorer than that. According to the Globalrichlist, 9% of the world’s population earns less than that.
But we’ve left out one set of expenses. The computer, and internet access. Considering that more than 70% of the world doesn’t use the internet, there’s no way this is attracting the world’s poor and desperate.
But MTurk’s listings show there are people who’ll work for that rate anyway.
Even though making cents doesn’t make sense.
Entry Filed under: i hate...
2 Comments Add your own
1. Ellen | October 30th, 2006 at 11:04 am
It’s because money isn’t what motivates people on sites like Mechanical Turk. Look how much work people will do on the internet for $0: edit Wikipedia entries, write blogs, answer peoples’ questions on newsgroups, publish their photos, and many other things. If the stuff on mechanical turk was a little more interestig and it was more fun to use, people would do it all for free.
2. admin | October 30th, 2006 at 3:11 pm
Ellen
That’s an interesting viewpoint, but I think you yourself called it out.
There are plenty of things people do for free BECAUSE they find it interesting, or because it’s a hobby. On the other hand, if it isn’t interesting or fun to use and they HAVE to be paid to do it - what difference does the 1 cent make?
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