Microworkers: Part 2

Alright so it's been a week since I first talked about Microworkers. And, to be honest, it MIGHT be legit. And we (I) may never know. Why? Look at this.

The story of this picture: not long after I did my initial review of Microworkers, I realized that in order to get paid you had to make at least $9. So I was like, well, I'm bored, let's do a few more. I did 12 tasks total, 10 got accepted (more on that in a bit) and I made over $9. All is well, right? Well no. Because you have to have made $9 PLUS a fee. Which, IMO, is ridiculous and I'm prettymadbro. But [I guess] that's really my mistake for not realizing it.

Additionally, if I got paid for all the tasks I completed, I would have made enough. But 2 of my tasks got denied. They were Craigslist Ads: you copy some text, paste it onto Craigs and create an ad. The text for the ads were obviously really spammy -- broken english and stuff leading to clicking on a link for some pyramid scheme scam. But I figured, whatever, I don't really care, I'm getting paid a dollar to click a couple times. But 2 of my tasks got denied for payment. Why?

 

 I love the question mark at the end. Like the employer doesn't know why the post was flagged & removed, or what that even means

Not sure what I was supposed to do if it got flagged. Because it was guaranteed to get flagged. I guess I could have reposted it over and over again but that's a lot more than the simple task I signed up for. *sigh*

So, is Microworkers legit/worth it? Probably, if you're picky about what tasks you do and don't mind 6% of your earnings going poof for fees.

I guess I'll go try and make that last 10 cents so I can get my money >.>

WINNERS

Okay so I just got home from vaca and before I do anything else, here are the winners of the Gift Card Giveaway

100th Follower:


Kyle Griffin

(I can't find a link to your blog in your profile so if you want comment here and I'll add it in)

Random Commenter: 

Lucky Commenter #14 is


JayPower

go check out his blog here!

How to Claim your Gift Card?

The easiest way to do this is to either comment with your email address or if you don't want your email on the internets then you can email it to me at tripperella@hotmail.com

Congrats to the winners! I have a lot of work to do first, but I'll catch up on all your blogs later tonight and hopefully have the follow-up review to Microworkers up late tonight or early tomorrow morning. 

<3 you guys :3 

(Nearly) Free Stuff!: Paperbackswap

So Paperbackswap ISN'T completely free but it is pretty neat and it's almost free. The basic idea is you list up all the books you own and and want to get rid of (any book, unlike the title suggests it doesn't have to be paperback), and then users can request books from you. You send the book (note: you DO pay shipping, but it's media mail so fairly cheap) and when they get the book, you get a "Credit" that you can use to get a book "FOR FREE" (minus what you paid in shipping of course).

It seems pretty neat, and they also have a feature where if you buy & print shipping off their site you get Instant Credit towards a book. The majority of people who use the site seem to be those into the cheap Harelquin romance novels, but there's all kinds of books.

They use a FIFO (first in first out) system to determine who gets a book once it's listed. Basically you put books on your wishlist, and you enter a queue for that book. When you're at the head of the line and someone posts the book, you get it! You can bypass this system by requesting a book directly from another user, and there's forums for book exchanges and stuff like that.

Check it out, let me know what you think!

EDIT: 50 followers! Wow, thanks you guys XD

Microworkers: First Impressions

Okay so thanks to one of you I've found a new website like mTurk and oDesk that allows you to complete assigned tasks and (hopefully) make money online. The website is called Microworkers.

 My first impression, as usual, was that the site looks a little dodgy. One thing that you really MUST be on the lookout for is potential scams. There are a lot of websites out there that promise payment for completing surveys or tasks and they actually require YOU to pay to complete offers. So not worth it. Remember, time is money. My golden rule when deciding on whether or not to use a site like this:

Rules of the Road #1 -- Never spend a lot of time and/or effort on a website if you aren't sure it will pay!

Likewise, be wary of offers that promise a lot of money for minimal effort! But more on that later.


So I signed up on Microworkers and picked a task called "Vitamin Product: Review." The task was to write a 50-word (positive) review of a given product. Easy enough, right? Here is a screenshot of the task page:

So, as you can see, pretty straightforward. The task pages lists the "employer"'s requirements, how much it pays, and exactly what you have to do. Typing up the review took me about 30 seconds, copy&pasting it with the required information took another 30. Pretty easy. After you submit the task, you get this screen:

And then if you follow the link to "See tasks you finished" you get this:

Of note here: the employer has to review the work before you get paid. Cool. Secondly, tasks are reviewed in 7 days. Which I suppose isn't that long of a time, but it means I personally won't be doing anymore tasks on this website for a week, until I "get paid."

And that's the other thing. They have a wonky pay system:

(The $1.00 on my account is a "sign-up" bonus. I guess it's supposed to give you incentive to keep working there.) The minimum withdrawal request is $9 + fee. They pay out to PayPal, Moneybook, and AlertPay. Which is okay, and I can sort of dig the withdrawal minimum. I'm just not sure why they would need to confirm mailing address with a PIN. Oh well.

So that's a quick run down of my first impressions of Microworkers. I won't do anything else with the site until a week has passed and the money from the first task gets put in my account. If you are going to sign up for Microworkers and you don't already have an account, please use my referral code: http://microworkers.com/?Id=60147c7f

That's that. Anybody have any experiences with Microworkers you wanna share? I'm very interested.