Crowdflower

About CF (Crowdflower)

What is CF?
CF is a site dedicated to manage what we call MiniJobs (abbreviated as MJ). CF manages the MJs and partners with other sites so they'll manage the payments to its contributors (we, the users who complete the MJs)

How do I get paid?
You can't work directly with CF. You have to do it through one of it's partners who'll deal with your payment. How you cash out that money will depend on the partner you chose (you can use several partners though).
Neobux is the best partner you can choose. It takes the least commissions and it gives you a bonus for ever dollar you make. Also it's been up and working for a very long time, so it's trustable. Neobux guide here 

What's are MJs?
MJs are repetitive tasks that are complex enough to not be made by a computer. Companies decide to put people up to the task, so they hire CF who presents these MJs to us.
MJs can consist of any sort of thing the company (we know them as taskauthors) decides. Like searching the author of an article, read photos of wallmart tickets and take information from them, comparing wine tickets to decide if it's the same bottle, reading a twit and decide whether it's positive or negative. All of those are tasks that I've done myself. The ones you'll find will surely be different, or be similar but having different questions
Each MJ is divided in tasks, and each task is composed by a number of questions. You are paid for each task you complete on work mode (as opposed to quiz mode, which doesn't pay)

MJs explanation
This is a screenshot of a part of the job's list. I'll explain its parts

• Job: Also known as Job ID. It identifies a single instance of a Job. If you are expelled from a job you won't be able to do that Job ID anymore. But you can do any other job, even if it has the same Job Title. For example, if you are expelled from the first job, you can still do the 2nd
• Job Title: Usually it provides a short explanation of what the job will consist on. To actually know what the job is about you have to enter the job and read the instructions. Don't worry, you can enter as many times as you want without consequences, as long as you don't actually submit anything. 
• Level: This is the minimum required level you'll need to do the job. The levels go from 0 to 3 and when you just join CF you'll do so as level 0.
• Pay/task: This is how much you'll get paid for every task completed on work mode. A common mistake on this area is mixing units up. When a job says something like "0.82 cents" people think it means 82 cents, but it actually means less than a cent (I got confused by that too when I first made MJs).
• # of tasks: It's the max amount of tasks you'll be allowed to do. However if the job is completed before you manage to do them all you won't be able to continue. There are many contributors doing jobs at the same time and you are competing against them.
• Rating: After you are done with a job (whether you are expelled, complete the job or just abandon it) you'll be asked to rate the job. The rating here is the average rating given by other users. It can be a good indication of whether you should try and do the job or just stay away from it.
  Jobs are not designed by CF, but by taskauthors. Taskauthors don't always know what they are doing and they may end up creating broken jobs. Broken jobs affect your account and make it difficult to level up. You can file a ticket to support when that happens and get rid of that mistake. However CFs support is so slow it may take a week before they actually fix your account. If you know for a fact that a job is broken, just avoid it.
  Another reason why a job could have a low rating is because it demands too much time or effort for the amount it pays. Rating is a subjective qualification, so it doesn't mean a specific thing. Just whether other contributors liked it or not

This is a screenshot of a job's header

• Mode: Details which mode you are on. There are 3 modes: Quiz, Work and Expelled
• Quiz: It's the first task of every job. It's a test to make sure you understood the instructions. Every question on this mode is a test question.
• Work: This is where you get paid. There are a few test questions hidden on every task so you don't relax and start answering carelessly
• Expelled: Each job has a minimum accuracy. If you go below that accuracy at any point, you'll get expelled. All you'll see on this mode is a message explaining that you can't continue that MJ anymore
• To pass: This only shows on quiz mode and it details how many test questions you need to correctly answer to pass. In this case there are 10 questions on the task and I need to correctly answer at least 6 of them to continue (meaning, at least 60% accuracy on quiz mode).
  The minimum accuracy to be kept during work mode is secret, but I've observed that it tends to be the same as the quiz mode's
• Timer: Each task has a maximum time to be done, which you can see here. Usually task authors will give you a lot more of time that what you really need so there's no reason to pay attention to this.
  There's also a minimum time, but that one is secret. The purpose of this minimum is to prevent careless answering. If you answer too fast it means you are not paying attention and you'll get automatically expelled. Since the minimum time is secret I don't know what's the usual minimum. But don't worry. As long as you pay attention to what you are doing, you shouldn't have any problem with this.
• Instructions: This is where the task author lets you know what you are supposed to do. Usually they have a small set of instructions and a lot of examples. The instructions are available both during work and quiz mode and you can hide them by clicking the instructions button.
• Menu: I'll give a more detailed explanation about this in a moment

How to properly file a ticket
Filing a ticket is easy to do. Properly filling a ticket has some tricks (actually, it's just common sense. But common sense is the least common of senses).
Keep in mind there's a human being on the other side who has to answer thousands of tickets every day. You need to be precise on what the problem is but don't over extend it to the point of being repetitive.

Tips

• Use proper grammar. Don't do stuff like replacing "you" with "u", or using slang. If support has problems understanding you because of this you'll have no excuse.
• Don't insult. Support has nothing to do with jobs creations and it's not their fault if the job is broken. A ticket that contains insults is likely to be ignored. Keep it cool and respect the human being sitting on the other side of the internet.
• Use screenshots. Screenshots are an easy way to show information because support already know what to look at. Tools such as lightshot make this easier

What do you need to say on the ticket?
After failing a test question on work mode you'll be shown the question and its expected answer. If you consider the expected answer is wrong, then you need to file a ticket that includes the following information.

• Job and contributor ID: As said before, these are already included if you file the ticket using the button on the job's header.
• Failed test question: You must quote it or provide any other way for support to recognize it. Don't say something like "3rd question of the list" because the order is aleatory 
• Expected answer: Task author's must provide an expected answer for every test question. If you are filling a ticket it's because you think they provided a wrong answer.
  You can provide both failed question and expected answer with a screenshot. If the question has a link in it, it's still a good idea to include it.
• Reason why the expected answer is wrong: Explain yourself. Answers are not wrong "just because", there must be a reason.
• Correct answer: Explain where you found the correct answer or what makes you think it's correct

What are flags?
Flags are given to you by task authors. They mean that the task author was not satisfied with your work and he doesn't want you to be a contributor at CF anymore.
Having more flags than the specified on each level's requirements will impede you from earning that level, and will take it away from you if you already had said level. 
Whenever you are given a flag, you can dispute it on your jobs history and ask CF support to review the case. If support fails in your favor the flag will be removed. If support decides the task author was right then you are in a big problem
Flags never expire. Only support and the task author who gave it to you can retire it

Methods to level up
There are 2 methods to level up. Doing jobs and the entrance exam

• Doing jobs method:
  To level up you must meet the previously listed requirements. And to do that all you have to do is doing MiniJobs whenever they are available.
  However, level cero jobs are not too common, so leveling up is hard at first regardless of your ability because there's no work to do. There's also a little characteristic about jobs I haven't told you about yet. Not all of them are considered on your statistics.
  If you do a job but it's not considered on your statistics, you'll get paid but it won't help you to level up.
  The reasons why a job could not be considered is because CF only considers jobs which are representative. They won't consider jobs which are too simple, or that have no correct answers (like a survey) or which have been deemed broken by its author or by support. 
  There was a time when you could know whether a job was considered on your statistics or not by just looking at the jobs listing.
  Now, you have to do at least 1 task, then access your CF account and check your job history
• Doing the entrance exam method:
  The entrance exam is a set of unpaid tasks which you do to meet the requirements to level up. With most partners, all you need to do is access your CF dashboard and click on the exam.
  This exam is not available through Neobux (CF hasn't explained the reason yet), but it is through persona.ly (which you can access through Neobux).
  This tutorial will explain how to do that. This tutorial also explains how to register, so if you are having problem with that, give it a look.
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pQ0iWngt_OA