Just purely out of curiosity and for beer money, I signed up to be an Appen contractor ie be part of their 'Crowd'. Process was super easy - punch in your details and sign up to their Contractor payments platform and you're pretty much good to go and 'apply' to be part of a project, took less than 24 hrs. Appen has a reputation for being "legit" according to users of Reddit ( /r/beermoney ).
Appen Crowd jobs are split into 3 main categories
- Surveys
- Micro Tasks
- Projects
Some examples of jobs available to the Crowd:
https://jobs.lever.co/appen
- Survey: eg answer a questionnaire survey, get $0.01
- Project: Be an online mystery shopper, get $8 to buy an item worth up to $500 (fully refunded by Appen)
- Project: Drive around in an Appen car for 60mins while they record your facial expressions. $80 for session.
- Project: Drive around in an Appen car, and record eye movements. $120 for session
Is Appen truly dead? Sure, they did lose a major Google contract. However this experience has shown me that Appen is much more than the Google contract. That being said, it's not stock I personally want to buy in - there are better opportunities elsewhere.
