If there’s one thing you can learn from Timothy Ferriss, it’s the value of outsourcing. You can gain all sorts of time freedom by getting someone else to do the work.
This makes perfect sense for projects that are reasonably substantial, but what about all those little tasks? How do you go about handling those? Microworkers could be the answer and it serves as the subject of today’s review. Can you get a lot done for just pennies at a time?
Small Jobs for Small Pay
When you go to Microworkers, you have to realize that you’re not going to find a freelance writer who will help you write a lengthy e-book. That’s not what this site is about. Instead, it’s about a series of micro jobs for micro pay.
You can check out the handy webcomic to get a basic idea of how Microworkers works. In short, employers post micro jobs — like getting people to post reviews and “like” their Facebook pages — and the workers sign up for these jobs.
The whole point is that these micro jobs only take a few minutes and they typically pay a dollar or less at a time. If you look at the available jobs, they range from voting on YouTube videos to following people on Twitter. They’re simple and fast.
From the Worker’s Perspective
If you’re looking to make a little extra money on the side, this micro job site might be worth a brief gander. It’s probably not enough for a full-time income, but it could be good for some cash on the side.
Each individual job posted on the site clearly outlines what is expected of you and how you can prove that you completed the task successfully. You fill out the brief “proof” form when you’re done, the employer approves it, and you get paid.
Looking at the FAQ, the minimum payment threshold is just nine dollars. You can receive payment via PayPal, Moneybookers or Alertpay.
From the Employer’s Perspective
This is where it can get a little more sinister and perhaps more applicable to the John Chow dot Com audience. Microworkers could be a very cheap way to outsource, but there’s another way you can use it.
Setting up the campaign is simple enough. You can geotarget your campaign, assign the category, and define the payment amount. A small premium is tacked on to cover the administration of your campaign through Microworkers and this varies based on volume and pay level.
Sure, you could pay people to like your Facebook page or Digg your blog post, but I found several “job” postings that involved filling out a sign-up form. These could very easy be lead generations as part of an affiliate program.
You could effectively “pay” a microworker 50 cents to fill out a form and you earn the $10 commission for generating the lead. Is this evil? A little. Is it against your affiliate program’s terms and conditions? It depends.
Working on a Micro Level
Is Microworkers an entirely novel idea? Not particularly. You may already know about a competitor where people offer to perform a variety of tasks for five bucks at a time. However, Microworkers has two very key differentiating factors.
First, most of the jobs are well under five bucks. You’ll find that most are actually under a dollar, but they only take a couple minutes to complete. Second, the jobs are posted by the employers rather than being offered by the workers. This way, as a worker, you don’t have to wait around for someone to hire you; you sign up for the tasks you want to do.
This certainly offers some interesting possibilities, both for workers and for employers. It’s just a matter of you figuring out how to put the service to its best use.
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Paying someone on a site like this to fill out a lead gen form is almost certainly fraudulent per the terms & conditions of the CPA network. It’s a sure fire way to get banned, so I wouldn’t recommend it.
I’m a bit shocked that you’re suggesting it. T&C’s aside, it’s hardly ethical.
Have you hear of something called as incentivized offers? It’s perfectly legal for those kind of offers where you are allowed to pay incentives to people for completing your offers. It’s 100% ethical.
But however some of their Jobs are really looking unethical.
But however this is real world and this is how real business works.
Sounds like an awesome service I might use it myself as both an advertiser and worker.
I am not getting the micro workers to promote my project, will you guys please define the problem in my case ?
That may be with my blog topic because money not matters I will hire only under the budget.
Great review John. I will definitely check it out. Thanks for sharing with us!
Sorry Michael, i just realized you wrote this post actually, lol
Geat!
I will try
Another great site to outsource more of my work to…micro is an great name also..I think I will take a look John…
“TrafficColeman “Signing Off”
how many money in acc to payment?
Are you talking about minimum project fee?
If you are asking about the minimum investment.. it’s $10 which is great.
this needs to e checked out , thank you for the review
fiverr is another alternative
This is a bit different. On Fiverr, you assign tasks to individual members. Here you can simply define your work and the no. of people who will do it. People will pick up the jobs and complete it for you. You need not pic people individually which saves lot of time.
Yes both have different pattern.
Like in micro people who want to hire people add their requirements and in fiverr people who want to get job add.
So purpose of both is same but with different point of angle and all.
I think in order to grow an online business, you must learn how to outsource and manage tasks because it will be hard for the business to grow
If you want to expand your business than hire hands … hire brain and also hire other people imagination.
Two hands is good for limited business but for expansion you will need many pair of hands.
Awesome! I always keep looking for such websites.
I always use freelancer to outsource my projects. Also, there are other sites like elance, vworker etc that I use.
Never heard of this microworkers. Gonna give them a try.
I think my CPA network would ban me. Perhaps a lit toe too evil?
NO if you use incentivized offers.
I think my CPA network would ban me. Perhaps a little too evil?
Use them for those service which are ethical like searching something and making list or similar kind of jobs.
Hi John,
Some ideas there, not sure about ethics tho.
I use the other site for $5 quite a lot, good for submitting RSS feeds and social bookmarking. Will check out microworkers see if there are some more jobs I can offload.
Pete
Good way to make some money I was already working for LimeExchange which is similar to microworkers but for big works and big money.
Great information John. i liked the information very much. i am looking for the same information as you have posted in it.
Pankaj … its Michael who wrote this post. Not John.
Well I think getting work is a better idea as the work they ask u can make a good business for yourself.
YES and you can see/spy on what others are doing…. a bit evil but everything’s fair in this game
Odesk is where I used to get micro jobs. The great thing about micro jobs is that it benefits not only the employer but a whole lot of micro workers as well.
Yeah, I have used oDesk too. These days I have been using Elance. I guess my jobs are not that Micro, however, as they’re typically in the $100 plus range.
You can also try different reputed forums as well.
Just go through with the high traders service providers and hire them for your sample projects.
Pretty cool… I’ll have to check it out. I’m sure I can come up with some sort of micro jobs.
I have seen this used on other sites and it seems to work OK if John is using them.
I have seen this site and it is great. The only drawback is that the approval process of you tasks takes lot of time.
already making about $20 a day using this method. The only difference is that I hire people from fiverr.com
I have joined just now and also got $1 bonus. Thanks John.
Yes, there is a $1 bonus for everyone who joins. Good for testing before you invest a lot.
I’ve had a HORRIBLE experience as buyer on their site. The work done was VERY BAD and, when I refused to pay the “workers” who haven’t worked, but asked for payment, my job was de-listed. When trying to discuss with the support, letting them know I have paid and will for complete jobs, they just told me my “success” rate is low and cannot continue.
I’ve detailed my entire “saga” in an article, hope the link will get accepted. The main idea is to be careful with the “freelancers” the amount of crappy service there is astounding.
http://ramonaiftode.com/microworkers-com-shitty-freelancers-low-quality-jobs.html
Man… that one is really interesting.
We hope that these people are reading your review and will add something so that a genuine buyer like you can be protected.
Just checked your post (on given link) and interesting to see that with your bad experience you are providing them link juice by adding do follow link on your blog for their website.
You are indirectly helping them in SEO.
This is certainly good for those people who have few minutes and surfing internet.
Simply do these task while surfing and earn money.
So more or less students or retired people is good.
Are their task on the basis of nature of task or simply added. (not checked it fully yet).
I too had a bad experience here as a buyer, it was very fraustrating to be honest. The main problem is that there is no social aspect to the site, you cannot communicate worker to employee and vice versa. I could not get a refund either. There are however many new players in this market so I would suggest googling microjob before signing up here.
This is a great resource, Thanks! I have already created a little side income from this.
Would recommend it to everyone.
Though I’m rather new to the Microworkers site, its been a fair experience thus far. Compared to other similar sites, the tasks are reasonably priced for the job. The main question to ask yourself when picking some tasks is whether or not the spam that comes along with it is worth the pay.
I absolutely love microworkers, ive made over 200 dollars with them in what amounts to be 70 hours or so. some might not find that to incredible but im absolutely thrilled about it. i love them, i actually only do jobs i rarely ever post jobs to do.
THANK YOU MICROWORKERS
$200 for 70 hours that means almost $3.00/hour. That is really less man.
By the way … where are you from ?
I’m currently a worker on microworkers, I just use it for a little extra money but I’ve been thinking about using it to promote my website. So far I’ve made about $60.00 for just a few minutes a day.
Microworkers is actually one of the easiest way to get money. Plus you can get people to do jobs for you. Everyone gets paid. I definitely think people should check this site out.
Micro workers are nothing but the multiplier for your job and revenue increment in the same time period with the heavy increase in the work and time ratio.
Here you will gain more time and more work to be done within a limited time period by increasing the workers.
You can eliminate 10% of you work with micro workers.
Look at your to do list and see what has been sitting on it the longest .
I’ve had a lot of experience with freelancing small piece work jobs and I’d have to say the knowing and trusting the person doing the job is of critical importance. Even if it is a $1 or $2 job. If it is possible for a person to do 15 or 20 of these tasks in an hour, then that is pretty good money, so it’s not like this is brainless work. If you could pick and choose the people you want to deal with – based on, say “reputation” or reliability or past experience that would be one thing. But if you are just getting nameless people with no incentive to do a decent job, then forget it.
A couple of other comments suggest the quality of work is pretty bad.
nice post.Thanks