Secret Scams Of SEO/Content and Article Writing, and the Unfair Wages of Amazon Mechanical Turk

A look at what is going on at Amazon Mechanical Turk, as well as a few real life examples

In life, there is right, and there is wrong. And what Amazon Mechanical Turk is doing is by all means and definitions, very wrong.

If you have never heard of Amazon Mechanical Turk, it is an online program that allows users to complete tasks called "HITS", such as writing articles, for amounts of money. Incredible tiny, ridiculous, slave labor amounts of money.

The employers who pay users for work are called "requesters."

For example, here are a few life "HITS," or assignments on Amazon Mechanical Turk:

Hit:

Verify a US Business Address

Pay: $0.04

Requester name: Dolores Labs

Hit:

Write an article 450- 550 words on specific topics related to education

Pay: 1.00

Requester name: Smartsheet.com Clients

This isn't the half of it. Many of the assignments pay one cent, otherwise known as a penny. You may think that this could add up, and you could do many of them quickly, but that is not the case. Many assignments that pay a penny have multiple forms and information to fill out, and you end up doing ten or fifteen minutes of work and research for a penny.

For article writers, requesters work with web clients who ask them to secure content for their websites, catalouges, or businesses. Then, the requesters go to Amazon Mechanical Turk, or mturk, and get desperate people to complete the needed assignments for slave wages. For example, a client may be paying a requester on mturk 15.00 or 20.00 apeice for 500 word article. The requester then goes to mturk and posts a HIT that will say, "500 word article, payment 1.00."

Then the requester retains sole rights to the article and completely rapes the mturk worker for all that they are worth.

Just today I found out that I was writing 500 word articles for a requester named QuestionSwami, who was paying me $5 dollars an article. Then, I learned he actually works for Mediapiston.com, and the rate that they charge their clients is $16 for a 500 word article.

Its wrong. There is no justifying it. People are writing content, and online companies are taking them for all they are worth.

This may sound naive of me, but whatever happened to honest work and honest pay?

I contacted the MediaPiston website to address the vast difference between what they charge their clients for the work, and what they pay mturkers.

Before I was able to get any information, I went to the writers section on the MediaPiston website. The writers are advertised as experienced, Phd holders. MediaPiston may have those extremely educated writers hanging around somewhere, but in my experience directly from working through mturk, the people who are actually producing the work sold to clients are random, faceless, mturk workers. And like myself, do not hold a Phd.

I understand the concept of business, but saying on your website that your writers are PhD holders, and then outsourcing article work to people who are not PhD holders, well, that sounds like a touch of false advertising to me. And that is not good business.

I am aware that companies must charge the customer or client more for a service than they pay their employee. However, the extreme difference I found in the MediaPiston case, as well as the false advertising, is probably just one of the many horrors of examples that exist on the web for SEO/content writers and article writers.

I am not the only worker who is aware of the extremely unfair wage problem, or the fact that requesters on mturk can reject a workers HIT for any reason at all, and the fact that workers have no way to contest or fight when their work is unfairly rejected.

Requesters say that they do not use their work after they reject you, but there is no real way to find out. You may spend your time writing a 500 word article to only be rejected based off of the whims of the mturk requester, and there will be nothing that you can do about it.

Not to mention that the issue of the requester using your work anyway, even after they have rejected you, is still present.

For an interesting read, try Amazon Mechanical Jerk, an article that highlights more of the problems on mturk. The author humorously, yet truthfully sums up part of the issue with a heading beneath the title of his article that reads, "One Man's Struggle for 10 Cents, How Horribly Pathetic."

The author also touches on the fact that even if you do the HIT exactly as requested, the requester can still reject you. Upon rejection, your statistics ratings on mturk go down, which closes your opportunity for assignments on mturk. Most requesters will only work with mturkers who hold a 95% acceptance rating for HITS, and this number is quickly driven down by unfair rejections. And as the Amazon Mechanical Jerk article states, requesters will rip you off for your hard earned ten cents. The author laments, "I immediately thought, "wow, this cheap skate bumped my rating and ripped me off 10 cents and still got his end of the bargain....."

I know brother, I feel ya.

You can make money on mturk, but its rather humilating. Requesters want high quality articles from users who have a competent grasp on the English language, yet they do not want to pay for the quality.

In HITS that require users to produce articles, Requesters are either working for a client to gather content, or representing themselves and need content for their own websites.

A majority of the work I do are product descriptions, whether it be for prefabricated homes, hotels, printing companies, etc.

After paying you a dollar for your work, these requesters retain the sole rights to your work. You get paid once, but they continue to rake in the profits from your product descriptions, as these descriptions help sell the items and services on the HIT requester's website, or their client's website.

I guess my only question is, how can these people sleep at night? What is so wrong with paying someone an equal amount of pay for their skill, time, and hard work?

I have been laid off for months, and I have to use Mturk to make money to put gas in my car. I think that this is what Amazon is counting on. Cheap pay for people who may not have many other options.

There are Requesters out there who pay better amounts, but not the 15 or 30 bucks per article that professional websites allow writers to make. It simply isn't fair, and there isn't anything I can do about it.

If I don't write for slave wages, I cant make money to put gas in my car. I am a waitress in real life, and make 2.50 and hour and sometimes I make no tips the entire day. This is the only job I can find right now, although I had an interview today and have applications at various fast food restaurants. I used to be very successful and made about 15 dollars an hour, which isn't bad for someone who doesn't have a college degree.

At the end of the day, Amazon Mechanical Turk basically allows requesters to completely rape users with unfair amounts of pay, and provides a platform for them to do so. Mturk could be so great if there was more regulation, and if Amazon would stand up for the little guy.

Until the day that happens, MJerk will continue making life harder for struggling writers, and people hoping to make a little cash to make ends meet.

Sometimes you just can't win for losing!