Appen jobs. What is it?… Normally I try not to talk much about ways to make money online because the reality is there is no guarantee you will make anything. Many of the projects I have worked on which succeeded, turned profitable after months (or years) diligently working towards building brands and partnerships to grow such project and it took 10xs more work than working a regular job. Very few are the cases where someone can find a cool product or affiliate offers, build a landing page, run paid adds and make a killing as there is a lot of competition and fraud going on.
As I have found, many people who are just starting out trying to supplement their income online often times can’t tell between real opportunities and scams. I have been there myself. I have worked to promote affiliate products where I sent leads and never got paid for it. I have helped sell e-books from clickbank only to see the sales I made dissapear. I have filled out surveys which claimed they would send money within a certain time frame of participating, never hearing back from them. Heck, I even tried surfing traffic exchanges and filling captchas to see if there was real income potential.
More than true financial freedom my goal had been to find a source of income of $2000+/mo from the comfort of my home. Even better, would be to achieve this passively through affiliate marketing and taking advantage of Google Adsense. I know for a fact I will achieve this goal and more in the long run as it can take years to see success from the work I have put in the past. This is normal for almost every blog or business on the internet.
Update 1/06/2022: Of course my goal above which I made a reality is not any good in the current times where prices have gone up on literarily everything. The minimum wage where I live in Florida also went up, and most companies pay $15/h even to employees that have no formal education. Luckily I have stuck with Appen and they keep opening more projects for me. In December of 2021 I was able to make $3200 from this source and I did not fully maximize my hours because I do have a full time job with Shift4Shop.
My reason for sharing this with you is to show you that for those who work hard and provide quality work as an Appen contractor they do open enough projects to make $20/h-$50/h on a semi consistent basis. At times some of the projects do end, and it may take a few weeks for a new one to open up. Some projects only last a couple months. But for those like me who can multitask (work on multiple projects at once) and do quality work this can actually become a source that generates income like a full time job or in my case better.
Here is what I made with Appen in the last 4 months. December is when I worked the hardest since I took vacation time but I could have put more hours also in the other months. The problem of doing so many hours is that it can become exhausting so managing your time and physical resources is important to be able to work long term. Thus far it took me two years working with appen to get to this point where I can break $1000/mo consistently and I had to work pretty hard. Payment is in USD.
As I have found, the bigger majority of what I did was hit or miss. Half the time I would get something in return. Other times I would get nothing, but all of it served me so I could learn about what worked and what didn’t. Since I invested time to work on this blog today I get more freelance and independent contractor opportunities than I did previously. I have found there are many companies out there who need skilled internet marketers to help them improve and optimize their websites.
Appen who are they?
One of the companies which invited me into their rooster of independent contractors is Appen Limited as they can leverage my skills to help improve search results and ads shown on platforms like Twitter, Bing, Instagram, Pinterest, Facebook… among many others. They have many different clients and projects. Some of the jobs they offer include linguistic and transcription jobs, social media evaluator, web search evaluator among others.
I’m taking a more comprehensive list of available opportunities from www.techiewave.com/:
- Business development
- Crowdsourcing
- Data collection
- Image annotator
- Information technology
- Linguist
- Project assistant
- Project management
- Pronunciation specialist
- Recording supervisor
- Recruitment
- Sales
- Social media evaluator
- Supervisor
- Transcriber
- Translator &
- Web search evaluator
There are also other companies which are similar to Appen like Lionbridge and Leapforce. Some of them have actually been acquired by Appen. You can apply to those companies to maximize your chances of being invited into a project if your goal is to supplement your income from home. For a list containing what some of the currently available projects are about you can check this resource.
If you are having trouble getting invited to projects check out some of the tips in this post. In my experience, the first time I tried to join over two years back I was rejected. I did not hear from them whatsoever. However, after I began working on this blog then the opportunity presented itself and I got an invitation. Now I keep a healthy relationship with the management at Appen so if you join using my link it can actually boost your chances of being invited.
Ultimately, starting a blog and working the skills they need for their projects can really help you become noticed. The great thing as I see it, is that other companies also pay attention and will also give you opportunities. Real companies that pay well for 15-30 minutes of your time to take a survey or share your thoughts about a website or application. Having multiple sources of income can greatly impact your life and the life of those around you.
Appen how does it work
As a company, Appen crowdsources to fill and complete projects for their clients as fast as possible. Currently, they have more qualified workers than work to be done so getting invited to projects can be challenging. With Appen you are an independent contractor which means you have to declare taxes for yourself. Some people use this platform to produce full time income.
Something which I find to be very useful is that at the end of the year Appen Butler Hill Inc will send you a 1099 form detailing how much you made with them during the period of time. What’s great about this, is that it would allow you to qualify for many tax advantages and income tax deductions for being considered an independent contractor and having the 1099 form.
I have yet to do my income taxes for this year but I do plan to deduct some essential services I have to use as an independent contractor to be able to work from home, such as the gigabit internet connection I currently use which is rather expensive. I would also deduct hardware I have had to purchase in order to set up my computer systems at home. This article from investopedia can give you an idea of what can be deducted as self employed. I know some people even deduce a portion of the rent or mortgage they pay, since they have a specified room or space in their home which is only used as their work office or home office.
Anyway, other people use Appen to supplement their income as they have already retired or their job doesn’t pay them enough to cover all their expenses. Some people even live overseas comfortably, in cheap countries in the Caribbean and Thailand with the income produced working as an Appen contractor. Appen employs contractors from many countries including India, Australia and the United States. In countries where the quality of living is lower they pay less to the contractors as compared to countries like United States.
Appen my Experience so far…
I first got invited to work as an independent contractor for Appen, in May of last year. Then, I found their website did not work too well. Often times I would get onboarded to work on certain projects and the tools I needed to use to do my job would not work. There were many glitches on the main website ranging from not being able to log in to Appen connect and not being able to load the projects so I could qualify to work on them.
I had lost hope of testing this as a source to supplement my income but then I lost my high paying job during September of 2019, so I decided to give this another try when I got an email about project Abaya. A project for which all tasks had to be completed before the end of December 2019. There was no cap on the amount of work that could be done, the goal was to finish everything in 9 days or so – the time until new years. Looking back the only reason I even had a taste of success is because I produced many times my rate with my internet marketing knowledge.
When I started working on Abaya I was not sure what rate I would be paid. Some people online claimed it would be 2 US cents per task. That’s worse than Amazon Mturk which I also tried. In actuality my rate was more than minimum wage in Florida as it was over $10/h. I did enough tasks just to test if they would pay because I had been burned so many times. So on Valentine’s day (yesterday) I got my first payment from Appen – a little over $100. Yayyyyyyyy!
How Appen pays
Appen has multiple paying options. Really it depends on the project you work for. Some projects will allow you to set direct deposit. In other cases they send the funds via PayPal or Payoneer for which there are some transaction fees. I have yet to test whether they send out checks or not and if there is any way I can avoid paying transactions fees when I withdraw the funds.
Thus far I have only used Payoneer to withdraw and there was $1.50 in transaction fees. I absolutely hate paying transaction fees. To collect funds on your bank account will take 30 days after the invoice is submitted through Appen. Also add 3-5 days for the transaction to go through from Payoneer to your bank account. If you will try this out we can both earn $25 once you receive $1000 through Payoneer with my affiliate link.
Since I did a good job with project Abaya, now I’m also getting access to more projects which pay the same or bigger rates. The more challenging projects could pay up to $30/h based on, experience, skills and qualifications. There are also certain surveys which pay fixed rates to be completed. The way to make Appen work, is to produce sufficient value on the projects worked so they invite you to more projects.
UPDATE 09/26/2020:
I hope everyone is doing well. The pandemia has made the prices for many goods and services go up and many jobs have been lost to never come back. Luckily my contract with Appen was extended for another six months. I have been taking advantage of the jobs that I like when I have some free time. Some months I approach $1000 but I’m not working that much because I work on many tasks that pay per tasks completed and not per hour.
By being effective at finishing tasks quickly and accurately I could make a lot more currency in less time. I’m looking at what is going on around the world and there is so much uncertainty right now there is no point working way too hard so I’m taking it easy for now and making the extra bit I need to pay the bills, help my family and have a little bit of fun. Right now I can tell you it was totally worth it being patient and giving Appen a shot as a source to make some extra income.
Recently, there are many new projects to which I have been invited and many new ones are also opening. I encourage you to apply, maybe it works out for you as well. In the future I will keep exploring more of what the platform has to offer! Below is a picture of what I made so far from January 2020 up to August 2020. Note there was a month I took it as holiday… had too many things going on back then.
UPDATE 03/16/2021:
At the end of the post I said I would test doing as many hours as I could to see what the income potential was. During February 2021 I hit my first month where I made over $1600 from this source of income. While I probably could have made even more as there was more work, I’m already working a full time job that takes most of my energy, and I worked an extra 135 hours through Appen to be able to break over $1500.
The reason I’m able to do so many hours is because the projects I’m working on are very easy and have countdown timers for each task that give leeway so I’m able to watch movies simultaneously, read, or watch content from fromthefield.tv where I’m learning about off grid planning and self sustainability. So I work but also get to do other things I want to do at the same time.
Below is the invoice from Appen for February 2021 (Here are the transaction details from Payoneer):
The main reason I’m doing this is because currently I’m in the process of building a whole food forest and that requires a lot of resources. I want to put together a nice off grid homestead so I’m able to become as close to self sufficient as I possibly can, and Appen is allowing me to make the extra income I need to make this project happen. Later I will drop a whole blog post about the progress on the homestead and what I have learned about farming crops.
One thing I want to note is that translation and linguistic tasks are paid at much bigger rates. I will perhaps try some of those since I am bilingual English, Spanish. I know one of the projects currently going on has to do with translating the content from Wikipedia from English to an array of many other languages so if you happen to be proficient in any of these language pairs:
English <> Yiddish
Send me a quick email (in English) to rey@reyrrodriguez.com and I will help you by giving you my personal referral for the project. For this to work I will need in the email your full name, a valid email address you use, and your contact number. The good thing about linguistic and translation projects is that many of them can go in the range of $25-$30/hour depending on the language pair they need. If they can’t find people who speak a specific language easily, then they pay much more.
Since I have worked so much over the years, I have become somewhat lazy and I like to preserve my energy. So I would rather do the easy tasks I can do mindlessly without thinking much and make over $10/h, than do the more complicated translation tasks which pay a lot more but do require a lot more energy and mind input.
Something I have also now learned since I got to work 135 hours in one month is that there is no limit to the amount of work that can be done for certain tasks when there is work available. Some people claimed the maximum amount of time I could work on a particular task, weekly, was 35 hours but clearly I can do much more it all depends on the amount of work available! I will have more updates in the future if I break the $2000 mark in one month or more. I’m continuing to open more projects and testing them and I do those which I like. Please note although it may be possible to do many hours on certain projects when there is a big load of work, there is no such thing as overtime where the rate becomes time and a half the rate.
Like I shared previously. Perhaps in the beginning you will have to work very hard as an Appen Contractor and do the jobs most people don’t want to do. But as recompense, management will open up a lot more projects you can try and then you can pick the ones you like. You can even work on projects simultaneously if you open many of them and double or potentially triple your hourly rate if you can in fact produce quality work for all the projects at once. I have been able to do some of this myself, but is not common to have more than two projects with work available at the same time.
Appen how to quit
I can tell you some projects in Appen won’t work out. They will expect you to work hard yet only invoice a portion of the time invested #BS. Projects like those just stop doing the tasks and they will remove you. Other times the rate won’t be as you expected. Also qualifying for some projects can be difficult and they don’t pay you to take the assessments and pass them.
I found someone on YouTube who worked for Appen as social media evaluator – one of the projects I’m currently working on. She talks about her experience in the video below. I can tell you the work is not glamorous, but for someone who did tons of clicking in Runescape and is addicted to internet marketing and who values time freedom so much I can tolerate it. Here is the video about her experience:
I wouldn’t recommend you to quit completely once you get in. Actually, if you show good skillset and the ability to produce great work they will open more projects with higher pay. Also you never know what can happen in the future. If you lose your job like it happened to me, this may keep you afloat while hunting for another job. I’m in a position where I got no choice but to help my family. #adulthood…
As I have found, the good thing is in the pile of projects that you try out, there will be some good ones which will exceed your expectations in terms of compensation and the actual work you need to do. Some tasks may actually be fun like have you playing video games like minecraft. *Appen!* Just pay me to play old School Runescape!
The only way you will find the really good projects is if you are qualified to do great work. Most projects I have been accepted to work on I did not prepare for any of the assessments. I just took them with the current knowledge I have. Appen wants to give opportunities to contractors who can add substantial value to their clients. Since I have spend so many years working in different projects online I think that gave me a big advantage as I know what tools and criteria to use to rate adds, websites and search engine result pages.
So based on my current experience, Appen is a good way to generate some supplemental income if you are patient and willing to try out different projects. For now, I will keep trying out different projects and doing the ones I enjoy with the aim to generate an extra $200-$500 a month. I will keep doing this and share my full experience later as I work with more projects.
If you want to try out Appen remember to be very patient. It almost feels like is a job at Google what you are getting. Getting invited and onboarded into projects can take months. Getting the tools to work correctly can also take multiple tries or waiting a few weeks before trying again. However, as I have found, in time, the tools become accessible and so does the ability to generate a little bit of extra income from the comfort of your home. This is money that could be used to invest for retirement, advertise, have fun, food for the family or whatever else!
If you want to greatly increase your chances of success I would recommend you communicate via email with Appen support every time you have a problem. Normally they take a few days to respond but they do try to fix your problem if you reach out to them. The email address will be provided once you are invited to one of the projects. If you are nice in your email and don’t complain they will help you a lot more. Applying to one of the jobs is the first step to getting invited.
NOTE: I updated this post with affiliate links because it greatly increases the chances Appen will review your application and let you join. Most of the rater roles will last up to a year, because they are looking for data or set of samples from multiple people. Make the best of it!
As I have found, the tasks to be performed are the same once you know what you are doing. This is most common for rater type tasks. Right now what I like the most about working on rater tasks is that I can see what it takes to optimize search results for the biggest platforms – an experience which is invaluable to my current role in SEO/Marketing department at 3dCart. I also get to see which ads are crushing it and what products are trending because I also get to review ads and offers on the major platforms with the aim to improve them even more.
All in all I can tell you all the platforms and search engines are connected in many ways. The more I work in different projects and see from different angles the more the puzzle pieces come together. I’m happy all my hard work gave me opportunity to work on Appen projects as the supplemental income can greatly help me achieve my goals which is to live debt free and not to be tied to any job I don’t like.
Hope you learned something useful! I’m starting to watch some shows and movies. The last 7 years I worked non stop and burned myself out more than twice just to enjoy some of the opportunities I have today.
For the second month I made shy of $200 working 2 extra hours per day 5 days a week and new projects are opening up. Some people on the internet claim I can only receive payment for up to 35 hours each week no matter how many projects I join. Then there are others who say Appen changed their policy and I can do as many hours as is allowed for each project I’m able to join after I pass the exams and get on board.
In other words, if I join two projects which allow a maximum of 35 hours per week and pay $16 an hour (as it is for some search engine evaluator type projects), that’s $1120 per week on a 70 hour workweek. If I take out 30% for taxes, that’s still $780/week. I will try to test this out to see if it works because if it does, and there is sufficient amount of work, then I can turn this into a full time source of income. The big problem as I have researched is that work availability is scarce, unless we are talking of complex projects that need substantial training. Still this is a good way to supplement income.
-Rey
PS: Something else which happened recently is that Quora allowed me to create my Space about digital marketing. Quora Spaces are a great way to build audiences and generate exposure as they actively promote content from spaces to their visitors. They carefully pick elite members of their community who are perceived experts on certain topics to grant them the opportunity. I’m humbled they pick me. If you have anything interesting to share to do with internet marketing, SEO or ecommerce leave it down in the comments or at my Quora space.