I don't think it's possible for Mturk workers to behave as a community, the workforce is just too diverse. Having said that, is there anything that you feel would help you achieve greater earnings? Masters is the obvious answer, but what if quals were available for longer? Do you feel that would help? I'm interested in any ideas.
Well right now I need my main laptop fixed because I can't grab shit on this one. Funny, this is the laptop I started with, made more money on, but it is way too slow to grab anything these days. But my main laptop being injured just happened...which sucks because I was going to mturk through summer and then I was on my way to a new career. Now I'm going to have to go out and get some bs job for three months. At one point I thought I would mturk for a living...that was possible in the past, for a number of people. Now? Not unless you have certain tools.
As for how to make more money in general: Well, everyone says, "You need quals". Ok. The problem is, everyone has the same quals. Used to be so much work to do, that we could have a variety of quals - some would have A, some B, some X, some W...now? Everyone scrambles for every last bit they can get...the majority end up with the exact same quals. There's still a few out there that not many have...but that number is decreasing.
So what else can be done? turk longer. I've seen people do that. It doesn't negate the fact that it didn't take all day to make $50. I didn't say that's all I made, I said I made that without trying. Now? Oh, you have to work for it.
There's the issue of people working on hits that don't pay jack all. We're never going to conquer that problem, and it doesn't help a new turker right now...so that's not it.
Fact is, while the count shows more than there used to be, 700,000 + compared to maybe 90 -100,000 on a good day, the fact is, those 700,000 aren't exactly all different requesters. They are the same requesters who throw out 30,000 at a time...but are such insulting trash, we mock them....the problem is, there's not the same amount of hits that there used to be. Different requesters, different hits. I'd say the best years were 2013 and 2014. Those were lucrative years.
So how does a new turker make the money that we used to make without masters, without the closed quals that we can't get no matter how many suck up emails we send?
That's a damn good question.