What is task-based pay?
Pay per completed task rather than per hour. The effective hourly rate depends on how fast you work within the quality bar.
Task-based pay means being paid a fixed amount per completed task, instead of for your time. It is common on labeling, transcription and rating projects with short, repeatable tasks.
How to judge a per-task rate
What matters is your effective hourly rate: the per-task amount times the number of tasks you complete in an hour at the required quality. A rate that looks high can be poor if each task takes long, and a low rate can be good if tasks are quick. Time yourself over a realistic batch, not your fastest few tasks.
Things that change the real rate
- Rejected tasks, which are often unpaid.
- Time spent reading guidelines and onboarding, which may be unpaid.
- Waiting for tasks during an empty queue.
- Bonuses for quality or volume, where offered.
Compared with hourly pay
Hourly pay is more predictable and common for expert work. Task-based pay rewards speed and suits people who become very fast at one task type. Our stats page shows how listings on this board split between the two.
Example
A task pays $0.60 and takes about 90 seconds. That is 40 tasks an hour, or about $24 an hour before rejections. If 10 percent are rejected unpaid, the real rate is closer to $21.60.
More terms: how the work is organised
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