Amazon MTurk: worse and worse

We're hitting the wall right now in IM. Content has ALWAYS been king, and the people who figured it out were able to get it on the cheap from places with a favorable exchange. But now, those people are catching on, and pretty soon, the price of UNIQUE and FRESH content will stabilize across the globe. Quality will keep costing more and more, and it will put the focus BACK on making methods of INTELLIGENTLY spinning.

In fact, try that. Get someone who KNOWS what they're doing to write ONE article for you on topic. Then outsource people to REWRITE that one article sentence by sentence. Get that done 4 or 5 times, then use some software to randomly sift together each sentence from the variants.

You'll basically have a 60-70% unique article each time, and have a much higher incidence of quality, because they are all based on one GOOD article, and they can't copy.

I tried Mturk about a month ago for articles. I had the same problem - people cutting and pasting from Wiki even though I clearly stated I would check. Plus when I would ask for a 300 word article I would get a 150 word article half the time.

Yup, I noticed the same thing even when I clearly state unique articles only and will be check with copyscape...

I'm guessing most people don't check for duplicates, the cool thing with MTurk is you can reject those articles that are not unique

Kinda like going to the dime store to buy a Mercedes.

Doesn't work.

Colin, I'd been considering that too, and might just try it out.

Vegasgreg, LOL. I don't want a Merc tho... just a Matchbox model of a Merc would do, but can't even get that any more!

I found Mturk to be effective in the premature development of gray hair! I got the heck outta there!

Nah, your looking at it one dimensionally. First off never underestimate the power of competition. Or how poor these people really are, the simple fact is that costs really haven't gone up and the quality you get is what you earn by preparing the workers properly before hand and doing the proper vetting. People will always try and get away with doing less work, you just need to be smarter than them.

Yeah, if you want it blunt. It's your fault. I don't mean to be harsh but we're all big boys and this is business - take responsibility, take ownership. I live by a philosophy where I always try to blame myself first, that way I never pass the buck for my cock ups. Sure sometimes people are just downright incompetent but you can't control that, you can only control what you do. You should ask yourself "did I do everything I could to prevent a bad outcome here". Forget about the worker, they are a variable you can't control, you can only manage them, this is the essence of what I was saying.

Your missing the point. This is to weed out all the crap in one fell swoop do that you can sift through the rubble and find the gems. It won't leave you with glittering candidates right off, but it gets rid of the worst so that you can concentrate on separating the mediocre from the best.

Your predictions are wrong, at least based on my findings. This is something I do regularly so the advice I gave was based on actual fact, not armchair reasoning. It's very easy to sit there and pick holes in something, but you haven't tried it so I'm baffled that you are able to make such bold statements.

No, why would I do that? I pick the best provider for the job at hand I barely ever recycle because there is no need to the pool is deep and there are plenty of people desperate to work. And on the odd occasion that I have used the same worker twice I certainly have not experienced a price rise. Why would they? I mean, who do they think they are? They're just content writers, they're not special and I don't need them, they know they can be replaced in a heartbeat so they're not exactly in a very string position to go about jacking up prices.

Has this been happening with you? I honestly can't imagine being treated that way by unskilled workers. If you strike the right tone when talking to these people they won't be giving you these hassles. I don't think my results are amazing.

Yeah ONLY 10% as in my RAC project is viewed 200-300 times per day in the first few days, which gives me 60-90 people to pick from after a few days. That's plenty for me. Why would you want to sift through more people?

I know your determined to cry gloomy days on the low level outsourcing but to be honest I have no idea where you have been getting your workers, whenever it is it has left you cynical and jaded. Just becauswe you're having a rough time of it doesn't mean we've hit a wall or that we're approaching some sort of wall.

In fact as employers we have the upper hand in this climate as people are losing jobs globally, especially low skilled office jobs etc. Which is probably where a lot of these content writers come from. Sure they're literate but they ain't gonna spin you a best seller, but then again that's not what your paying them for.

My final word on this is that there is no "wall", there is no crisis, in fact the future looks bright. I, for one am excited. Call me Mr Burns, but all these people out of work is excellent for me, it means I can pay them less and increase my bottom line. Because let's not kid ourselves here gentlemen, when all is said and done it come down to one thing above all else, profit.

(cue rant/flame about how there's more to business that profit - tell that to your investors)

Thanks, always glad to swap ideas and experiences.

Testify!

You are a scholar and a gentleman. I see you thoroughly deserve "the Riot" title. You're a great laugh.

Take care