Microworking (PDF, 59 pages, 1106KB) - Forfás

FORFÁS MICROWORKING
1.5 International Market Places
There has been a rise in the number of international market places where Irish people can
source microwork. Examples of international marketplaces are:
• Gapbuster Worldwide, based in Australia is a company carrying out mystery shopping,
audits and surveys for global clients in over 105 countries using a 400,000 strong field
force of mystery shoppers and professional auditors. Mystery shoppers in Ireland are
co-ordinated directly from Australia.
• MySurvey is a consumer panel made up of individuals who have volunteered to
participate in market research studies. MySurvey is owned and operated by the market
research firm Lightspeed Research which operates and performs research around the
world. Irish microworkers complete surveys for points which can be redeemed in gift
vouchers and charity donations
• 99 Designs (www.99designs.com) is an Australian design-based marketplace specialising
in logo design and webdesign. Payments to designers in August 2012 amounted to
AUS$1 million.
• LiveOps “the largest cloud contact centre in the world” allows call-centre workers sign
on for shifts in 30-minute increments and then uses the Web to route calls to them. It
has a team of 20,000 independent home agents who deliver the customer service.
• UTest, established in 2007, has 60,000 testers and QA professionals in 190 countries
providing a 24/7 software testing service.
• In July 2012, Elance had almost 1.8 million registered contractors up from 1.1m in
2011. In 2011 earnings by contractors reached USD$140m. Over 2,000 jobs are posted
every day. Of current contractors 5,200 are registered in Ireland 4 and earnings in
Ireland since 2006 have been almost $870,000 at an average of $1,660 per person at
$25 per hour. 15,000 jobs have been posted from Ireland since 2008 with an average
budget of $937 and average pay of $18 per hour;
• Mechanical Turk, established by Amazon in 2005 has 50,000 ‘Turkers’ – with some listed
in Cavan, Athy, Ballina, Naas, Kilkenny, Waterford 5 . Workers on Mechanical Turk are
paid in dollars in the US, in rupees in India and in Amazon gift vouchers in the rest of
the world. In 2010, Panos Ipeirotis, Associate Professor of the School of Business of New
York University, carried out a survey of workers on Mechanical Turk6 and found that the
average worker in the US was young and relatively well educated. He further observed:
“Approximately 50% of the workers come from the United States and 40% come from
India. …Significantly more workers from India participate on Mechanical Turk because
the online marketplace is a primary source of income, while in the US most workers
consider Mechanical Turk a secondary source of income….. Most participants in the
US use Mechanical Turk as a supplementary source of income, and often Mechanical
Turk is used by stay‐at‐home parents, unemployed and under-employed workers, and
so on. Since females are more likely to fit into these categories, there is a
corresponding increase in representation (60%)…. In general most workers spend a
day or less per week working on Mechanical Turk, and tend to complete 20‐100
4 https://www.elance.com/trends/talent-available/geo#GeoRanking
5 http://techlist.com/mturk/global-mturk-worker-map.php
6 Demographics of Mechanical Turk http://archive.nyu.edu/bitstream/2451/29585/2/CeDER-10-01.pdf
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