Mobileworks Review

URL: http://www.mobileworks.com/


NATURE OF WORK AND PAYMENT

Mobileworks is basically a Mechanical Turk clone, except it has a jankier interface, less jobs available and generally a lower rate of pay. If you're not familiar with Mechanical Turk, it's a collection of "microjobs" that require human intelligence to perform. They often pay literally pennies, but they also generally are very easy and don't take very long.

Pay is on a per-job basis. Pay generally comes through either instantly or within a day, but a Paypal or Skrill account is required. The Paypal threshold for withdrawals is very low at only $1, but to withdraw to Skrill you must have at least $20 in earnings.

SITE HISTORY / LEGITIMACY

Mobileworks is a relatively new company, founded in 2011. It is headquartered in Berkeley, CA, and seemingly co-founded by a bunch of University of California grads. Since it's so new, there's little information out there about it. Their founders list their direct contact information on Crunchbase rather than hiding behind walls of moderators and customer service grunts, so at least there's that.

Representatives from the site seem to monitor and participate on wahm.com's forums.

 I could find no reports of them stiffing anyone on pay. Given the co-founders openness and forum participation, I wouldn't be too worried about it at this point.

INTERNATIONAL ACCESS

 Mobileworks appears to have a commitment to providing work to developing countries, and does not specify any country restrictions that I could find, so I presume it is available anywhere in the world.


STARTING OUT

Users simply need a valid email address to sign up and begin working. You need a Paypal or Skrill account to recieve payment, however.

 Initially the only tasks available (that I have ever seen so far) are transcribing coupon images and choosing images from groups that are out of place. The rate of pay varies, but generally the rate of pay I have seen for these is 3 cents per task. The coupons you are asked to transcribe are fairly long, and you will be asked to go through a good number of image groups, making the rate of pay really quite low for the time these tasks end up taking.

You can earn "certifications" that supposedly unlock more advanced tasks at better pay, but the only three that have been available to me since I started relate to the coupon / image sorting tasks that I've already been doing.

PROBLEMS WITH MOBILEWORKS

To be fair to Mobileworks, they appear to be trying to optimize their site for mobile phones and devices, with a simplistic interface with lots of large buttons. However, even granting them this leniency, the design is still confusing and sometimes outright does not work properly.

Mobileworks does not offer anywhere near the range of tasks that Mechanical Turk does. For some reason, you also cannot see exactly what tasks you are accepting before you accept them; they appear in groupings that are usually titled with random letters and numbers, and you have no idea what the task is until you click on it. The length and duration of tasks is also not clear, as after completing one you get shuttled to another one automatically with no visible progress markers.

As mentioned before, the only tasks available initially seem to be coupon transcription and image sorting at 3 cents a job (and sometimes there are no tasks available whatsoever.) Mechanical Turk also regularly has these tasks available, but at a higher rate of pay and usually with less work time required.

There are some more interesting-sounding certifications available, like "Internet Research" and "Content Creation", but they require completing 5000 tasks just to take the test for! Mechanical Turk lets you do this sort of work right out of the gate.

FINAL VERDICT: WASTE OF TIME

Unless you're in a country with a severely low cost of living and with very little in the way of other microwork/content mill sites available, Mobileworks strikes me as a waste of time. It's really just a very inferior version of Mechanical Turk, and the time you spend here can be spent much more profitably at the Turk instead if you're looking for microwork.