Appen

Appen Review:

Appen has three distinct types of job opportunities for freelancers — micro tasks, surveys and longer-term projects. All three involve helping companies improve the performance of their artificial intelligence systems.

How it works

You sign up with basic information about yourself and what you do. Once signed up, you may be able to choose between assignments that would involve labeling items in photographs or identifying problems with corporate “chatbots” that are supposed to answer consumer questions. You could also be enlisted to complete video surveys or identify “fake news” on social media sites.

Job availability

But Appen works worldwide and work in any given portion of the world is not guaranteed. You also may need to take tests to see if you qualify for a position. And you are not compensated for the time needed to take the test.

Appen says that it pays a bit more than minimum wage in every area where it operates and it operates around the world. However, there may be comparatively fewer jobs in cities and states where there is a high minimum wage.

Reviews of the site are all over the map, with some people finding regular work and reasonable pay, while others complain of poor pay and few opportunities.

Recommendations:

There’s no cost to apply and remote work presents few risks. So if you’re looking for part-time work at home positions, Appen may be worth a shot. But we don’t have high hopes that you’ll find a lot of decent work here.

Other sites worth checking out: ProductTube, which pays $5 to $35 for video reviews of consumer products; IvueIt, a site that connects property managers with freelancers willing to report on a site’s condition; and Maven, a site that finds consulting positions in virtually any industry.

If you have expertise in a subject that you can teach or tutor, also check out our blog post on the 12 Best Tutoring Platforms.

What their users say (from Indeed):

“If you’re the kind of person who spends all day on the internet, this is great. Though some tasks do get quite boring. You don’t get paid until the 14th of the next month and management/support is on the other side of the world, so technical problems take 12-24 hours to fix, but those are just the quirks of a 1099 job for an Australian company. You have to be accurate and meet their work rates, but I never see anyone complain about meeting them. I’ve done most of these types of work out there and this is by far the best deal I’ve found.”

“The company is good but the tasks they give you are limited.”

No jobs

“I’ve worked for them almost three years. They hired me for the special project for about a year. I was happy to see over 1K monthly. One day I just got an email in one day the project be done so there is no job for me anymore. That was a couple years ago, and I’m still there having an occasional translation evaluation project. This month I made about 50 bucks.”

“Working remotely is fantastic. Pay is awful. Availability of jobs/hrs is very low and there’s practically no one guiding you on new projects. All communication is done via email so if you’re not constantly checking it throughout the day you could miss out on tasks as they are first come first served.”

Social media specialists

“Great for a side hustle. Paid 9 per hour to be on Instagram. Can’t tell you exactly what I did. You have to take a quiz to get on a project. You can work as many projects as you like.”

“The job was rating advertisements on facebook. Though easy, it became monotonous. But they are prompt in payments and very professional in getting you to comply with raising invoices on time, etc. The software is easy to understand and operate”

Fake news

“My work involves evaluating social media for fake news. It sounds like a fun job, and it was at first because I was reading and rating news articles and social media posts, including tweets, Instagram posts, and YouTube videos. I felt as if I were reviewing news articles, including current events, sports, fashion, and celebrity culture, for a living. After a few months, the work became monotonous, and there are no chances for a raise, no matter how long your tenure is. You also have to pass quizzes every few months as re-evaluations, and they are annoying because you are tested for the same material. The guidelines are often unclear.”

“Very flexible work hours. Rating a social media post easy peasy. Only the qualification exam is really hard but it’s open notes so you can “cheat”. Just use a lot of analysis, patience and resourcefulness.”

Hated it….

I started with Appen 2 years ago and I closed my account yesterday. First of all most “projects” send you 100 pages to study and then they make you take long tests that take hours. They DO NOT show you what you got wrong. If you do pass you are expected to work FAST often using a TIMER that if you go over a ridiculously short amount of time, YOU LOSE ALL THAT TIME AND THEY KEEP YOUR WORK! Yep working for free! They pay a tiny bit over minimum wage with NO raises, NO benefits, No opportunity for advancement and horrific “Management”.

“This has been the worst 4 months of my life. I’m stuck sitting at a computer for 16+ hrs everyday for 2.5 hrs of work, and even thats a good day.

10/27/2021