Appen Review | Scam or Legit? How Much Can You Make?

2020 was a game-changing year for remote work. Working from home is the future, it seems. I am therefore reviewing Appen, a platform for crowdsourcing where users can work from home and get paid for completing tasks. But is it really worth joining? Get all your questions about Appen answered and decide for yourself –

• What is Appen and How does it Work?
• Is Appen a legitimate website?
• What Kind of Work Appen Offers?
• How to Become a Contributor on Appen?
• How to Work with Appen and Earn Money?
• How to Access UHRS through Appen?
• How do I withdraw my Earnings from Appen?
• How much One Can Make on Appen?
• Are There Any Tips I Can Increase my Appen’s Earnings Using?

What is Appen and How Does It Work?

With the help of its 1 million registered independent workers/contributors, Appen is a microjobs platform that assists businesses in improving their artificial intelligence systems. Appen manages projects for their clients, hires workers from all over the world, divides complicated projects into manageable tasks (collection, annotation, classification, etc.), and assigns those tasks to qualified personnel. Workers perform tasks from home to earn money, and Appen processes and combines all the data collected to produce a useful result that is then sent back to the client. Their clients include leading companies (like Google and Microsoft) in technology, automotive, and several other industries as well.

Appen platform with data annotation capabilities combines human intelligence from 1 million+ skilled contributors from all over the world with cutting-edge models to generate high-quality training data for clients’ machine learning projects.

Is Appen Legit or Just Another Scam?

Appen is definitely a legitimate crowdsourcing company, established in 1996 in Australia. It has more than 1 million registered independent contractors/workers from all around the world as well as prestigious clients like Google, Microsoft, Amazon, IBM etc. Appen, with an experience of 20+ years, is working in 130+ countries and has 700+ employees in 9 offices.

Flexjobs ranked Appen No. 1 in 2017, 2019, and 2020 as the top company that provides work-from-home jobs. Appen acquired the famous crowdsourcing platform FigureEight(Crowdflower earlier) in 2019 and rival Leapforce in 2017.

You can find a lot of positive reviews and experiences of users on the internet with payout screenshots. I’ve also received money from Appen. Here is my most recent proof of payment received from Appen-

What Type of Work do You Get to Do on Appen?

The beauty of Appen is the variety of tasks it offers. Do you have an iPhone that can take great photos? You will get a lot of projects. Are you good at web research? Appen really needs you. You can write down what a person in an audio file is saying. You will get a project in no time. I hope you have got what I want to say.  Appen has many exciting work-from-home jobs, ranging from doing a simple survey to complex projects only a very small number of people can do.

Here are some types of tasks you can expect from Appen as a contributor –

• Search Media Evaluation – relevance events
• Text annotation – Identifying sentiments in text, classifying documents
• Social Media Evaluation – identifying the emotion a post contains
• Translation Services – Translating languages
• Testing – like user interface testing
• Content Moderation – reviewing user-generated content
• Transcription Services – Converting audio into text
• Survey and Data Collection
• Linguistic Specialties – like Text to Speech, Phonetics, Pronunciation, Annotation, etc.
• Speech Evaluation
• Image Annotation – classifying images, object detection etc
• Video Annotation – object detection, video relevance for a query
• Sensor Data Annotation i.e., LiDAR, Radar, etc.

How to Become a Contributor on Appen?

Appen is looking for people around the world who can participate in their work from home opportunities. Every person has some skills like one might be good at researching online, one might take great shots on a camera, or one might have a degree in linguistics. The good news is that there are so many different tasks to complete on Appen that everyone will find something they enjoy doing. All you need to have is a fast internet connection, a computer or smartphone, and good web research skills. You must be at least 18 years old and good at following instructions. Let me explain how you can become a contributor on Appen –

Opportunities/tasks on Appen can be divided into 2 major categories and so is sign up process –

Micro Tasks –  kind of work you can start right away. For example, categorizing social media posts like what emotion a post contains. Other tasks can be transcribing audios, moderating content, drawing boxes on images etc. If you are someone who wants to complete such tasks and get paid then –

• Sign up on annotate.appen.com
• Fill up your full name carefully same as it is on your bank account and PayPal account
• Verify email. Complete Profile. Select the payout method. That’s it. You are ready to complete tasks.

Projects – the kind of opportunities you may need to qualify for and projects that may take a longer time to complete. For example data collection projects, video annotation, search engine evaluation etc. If you want to be a part of such projects then –

• Create an account on connect.appen.com . Appen Connect is a platform Appen uses to manage projects, recruitment, invoicing, and communication.
• Select your country, Primary language, and dialect, add another if you know any to be eligible for more projects, fill in contact info, and educational details, upload your resume and submit the application.
• Sign documents such as your contract, NDA etc. Finally set up payment and you are good to go.

How to Work and Make Money With Appen?

So, You have completed the sign-up process, verified your account, set up payment, and are logged in to your Appen account. Let’s talk about the projects. Projects are tasks/jobs(usually long-term) posted by clients/employers on Appen. Contributors can select a project according to their skills and complete it to get paid hourly or per task depending upon the project. Appen makes sure you get qualified for your first project earliest.

Here is how you can make money on Appen  –

Find Projects – Log into your Appen(connect) account. Click on All projects from the main menu. You have an option to see projects you are qualified for, or you are not qualified for, or all projects.

Choose a suitable project – You can get a list of projects according to the skills you possess by choosing a type of project from the top right drop-down menu if you are good at web research then you can select web research and click Go.

Apart from it, every project listing will have all the important details mentioned along with like hourly rate, the goal of the project, no. of tasks available, hours you need to work in a week, instructions on how to complete the project, what is expected from you, qualification contributor needs etc. Accuracy matters a lot on every micro-jobs platform so make sure you only choose projects you are capable of completing.

Qualify for a project – Some projects can be started right away without passing a qualification test but then there will be many projects you will need to qualify to get assigned to you. Once you have chosen a suitable project that matches your skills, click on the green button that says ‘Qualify’. You will be redirected to the project description page or qualification exam they ask some questions to make sure you are the right candidate for the project.

Apply for as many projects as you can think you can successfully complete increasing your chance of getting selected for a project. By clicking on the active processes at the top of the page, you can check the status of all your applications.

Complete the project – You will be notified by email if you get accepted into a project you applied for. Complete the project. Submit all the tasks carefully. Follow guidelines and instructions while completing the task.

Get paid – Submit an invoice for all the hours you worked on various projects during the current month at the end of the month. Invoices will be auto-submitted for some projects. Submitted invoices will be reviewed by the Appen team for errors. Invoices get approved in a week and Appen takes another week to process your payment via PayPal or Payoneer whatever you have selected as your payout option in the payment section.

How to Access UHRS through Appen?

UHRS (universal human relevance system)is another crowdsourcing platform that provides a lot of tasks you can complete easily to get paid. Appen being a UHRS partner works like a door between workers and UHRS. You can enter into UHRS through Appen. Whatever you make on UHRS during the week is transferred to Appen at the end of the week and paid by Appen.

Workers on UHRS are called judges. Projects are called HIT Apps and tasks are HITs. HIT Apps are arranged according to the type of work involved such as text annotation, video annotation etc. You may need to take a qualification test before you can perform actual hits. You are temporarily or permanently blocked from performing HITs on a HIT App if your accuracy is low.

A Complete Guide To Make Money With UHRS

How to Withdraw Your Money From Appen?

In order to withdraw your money from Appen, at the end of every month you must submit invoices accounting for all the hours you worked on projects during the month. Appen processes payments monthly.

Payout options at Appen –

• PayPal
• Payoneer

The minimum payout threshold is kept at $5 irrespective of the payout method you have chosen. Once you have submitted the invoice they will review the invoice for any error and approve/disapprove the invoice within a week. You will get payment in your PayPal or Payoneer by the end of next week.

This way, Payment for all of the work you have done during this month will be made by the 15^th of the next month.

How Much You Can Make From Appen in a Month?

Well, it depends on several factors like availability of projects in your region, your skills, the time you can give it and pay rate of project you are invited to etc. The pay rate varies with projects and ranges from $3 per hour to $20 per hour. Small tasks earn you $0.10 or less typically. Your skills and accuracy can bring more opportunities to your door.

How to Get Most Out of Appen?

It can take a while for a project on Appen to be approved. The following advice will help you obtain more projects, increase productivity, and make the most of Appen:

Keep checking for new project listings at least once every day.

In the main menu, you’ll find a button for my languages under All Projects. Click it to add additional languages or different dialects of the same language. Don’t forget to add your native tongue because Appen frequently has projects for regional dialects. There may not be many workers on Appen who are proficient in your native tongue, so with less competition, you stand a better chance of being chosen for a project.

Apply and qualify for as many suitable projects as you can. Before you are accepted into a project, it could take a few days to months, and you might not get all of the projects you applied for. So applying for many projects increases your chance of getting something to do regularly.

The project guidelines may initially seem confusing to you, but I urge you to persevere. With time, you will discover your own ways to make your work easier.

That’s all. Share it with friends if you find it useful.