Are you a Turker at Amazon Mechanical Turk also known as Mturk? Are the transcription hits among your favorite hits? Are you excited about quick payouts? Then CrowdSurf might be the place for you.
What Exactly is CrowdSurf?
CrowdSurf is a website where you can sign up with your Mturk account and take advantage of the CrowdSurf transcriptions HITS (Human Intelligence Tasks) or just “hits”. While you can certainly do these hits in Amazon Mechanical Turk’s platform, performing them on CrowdSurf’s website will allow you to separate out these coveted transcription hits.
CrowdSource does a similar thing with its writing hits and allows you to work on Mturk or use its own separate website just for the writing hits.
To sign up for CrowdSurf, you will need to have an Amazon Mturk account to be able to get paid for CrowdSurf’s transcription hits. As the website explains, the work is called CrowdSurf, but you will be known as a Crowd Virtualizer.
With CrowdSurf you do NOT leave Mturk, you just generally have access to more work and incentives, especially if you like the transcription hits.
What Do Workers Do at CrowdSurf?
Workers will be doing short transcription hits. CrowdSurf claims to be able to use a platform to make it easier to do transcription and captioning even if you are hearing impaired or a second language user.
If you log into Amazon Mechanical Turk, you will find that the CrowdSurf (CrowdSurf Support) hits are short and can be done quickly. You will see the payment listed, for example, 25 seconds of audio for $.10. If you do not have an Amazon Mturk account, it will take you a few minutes to create one with a verified email and bank account. The whole process will take about 48 hours.
You will need to take at least one of the CrowdSurf Support qualification tests on Amazon Mechanical Turk to be able to perform CrowdSurf hits either there or at CrowdSurf.
What Are the Work/Computer Requirements to Work for CrowdSurf?
Generally if you have 200 to 300 approved CrowdSurf Support transcription hits at Mturk, you will be invited to become a Crowd Visualizer. However, it never hurts to try to apply at any level.
As long as you have a good, functioning computer and a way to turn up the speakers and listen, you have met CrowdSurf’s requirements. CrowdSurf will provide their own resources page complete with videos to watch and grammar and punctuation guidelines. Everything can be done on their website.
What Are the Workday and Schedule Like at CrowdSurf?
Just like Mturk, you can work whenever and wherever you want for as long as you want. You can set your own schedule; however, CrowdSurf does require that you maintain at least 20 hits with a score of 3.5 or higher per week.
Even if you are new to Mturk, all levels of Turkers are welcome with requirements for each level. Once you become really good at being a Crowd Virtualizer, you can advance to much higher levels. The good thing at CrowdSurf is there are bonuses and a blog and many more great tools to use for those die-hard transcription hit lovers.
Are You an Independent Contractor or an Employee at CrowdSurf?
Just like on Mturk, you are an independent contractor and responsible for your own taxes. Should you make over $600 a year, you will be sent a 1099 Income Tax Form.
What is the Pay Like and When is Pay Day at CrowdSurf?
The pay is every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday via your Mturk account. Once it is there, then you wait until you are able to transfer it to your Amazon Payments Account and from there to your banking account.
The pay itself varies from hit to hit or from batch to batch.
What is My Overall Impression of CrowdSurf?
I know so many Turkers who believe that the transcription hits are some of the best hits on Mturk. Others Turkers I know tend to lean towards either the survey hits or the writing hits.
So if you are one of those die-hard transcription fans, here is your chance to take it to a higher level.
How Can Someone Interested Apply to CrowdSurf?
Go to the website and follow all of the steps listed. Good luck to all who apply.