As of November 30, 2013, this wiki is on hiatus; it will not be updated while on hiatus.
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Online work sites for pay

(rather than virtual volunteering sites, for no pay)

Examples and studies

Online staffing platforms where companies and individuals can hire independent freelancers for projects that can be completed online. Because workers are paid as contractors rather than employees, those that hire them through such sites do not have to file forms for, nor pay payroll taxes, and they avoid laws regarding minimum wage, overtime, and workers compensation. Workers, though, must report their income as self-employment income. They are also called freelance marketplaces.

These are included on this wiki because many of the types of paid work offered on these sites are done by online volunteers - people not being paid - for charities, nonprofits, NGOs, etc. It's offered as a way to further illustrate what online work - paid or unpaid - can look like.

Examples:
crowdspring
oDesk
Elance
People Per Hour
Telesaur

Yahoo Contributor's Network is an "open publishing platform" where anyone can submit original articles, photos or videos on a subject of interest to Yahoo or its partner companies. Contributors can submit original content per the guidelines of the Yahoo Contributor's Network and, if it is accepted, they can receive payment. Some content accepted by Yahoo ends up on its YahooNews site, as well as various other Yahoo sites; all accepted content is featured on the Yahoo Voices site. Articles tend to be around 500 words. Prospective contributors have three online certificates they can obtain through three separate online trainings; each training is followed by an online quiz to access the person's understanding of the material. Contributors can, at any time, browse the Network's assignment desk and "claim" an opportunity. Many assignments offer up-front payments, typically ranging from $2 to $25 (although some partner opportunities may pay up to $100). Contributors can also submit content at any time, without waiting for an official assignment. Up-front payments for accepted unsolicited content typically range from $2 to $15. In addition to any up-front payments, published content is also eligible for unlimited monthly performance payments to the contributor, based on the amount of traffic it receives. The aforementioned links are to the USA version of the network; this is the U.K. version of the site. The USA site says, "If you're not a U.S. citizen or resident, you may still be able to claim certain Work for Hire assignments that are targeted to your account based on your profile details."

Microtasking for pay

Ubiquitous human computing is the phenomenon of dis-aggregating a task into small, component pieces and then parceling them out for people to work on - people who can be anywhere in the world with Internet access.

Crowdsourcing is the practice of obtaining needed services, ideas, or content by soliciting contributions from a large group of people, and especially from an online community, rather than from traditional employees or suppliers. The general concept is to combine the efforts of crowds of volunteers or part-time workers, where each one could contribute a small portion, which adds into a relatively large or significant result. (from the Wikipedia entry)

Both of these practices involve microtasks.

Microtasks can be done for no pay - by volunteers - and for pay.

These are examples and studies of microtasking initiatives where contributors are paid:

The Amazon Mechanical Turk (MTurk) enables companies, known as Requesters, to create small tasks, known as HITs (Human Intelligence Tasks), that can be completed by anyone with Internet access. Tasks include: choosing the best among several photographs of a store-front, writing product descriptions, identifying performers on music CDs, etc. Workers (called Providers in Mechanical Turk's Terms of Service, or, more colloquially, Turkers) can then browse among existing tasks and complete them for a monetary payment set by the Requester. Workers set their own hours and are not under any obligation to accept any work they do not wish to do. Because workers are paid as contractors rather than employees, requesters do not have to file forms for, nor pay payroll taxes, and they avoid laws regarding minimum wage, overtime, and workers compensation. Workers, though, must report their income as self-employment income. Because HITs are typically simple, repetitive tasks and users are paid often only a few cents to complete them, some have criticized Mechanical Turk as a "digital sweatshop". In addition, some requesters have taken advantage of workers by having them do the tasks, then rejecting their submissions in order to avoid paying.

Crowdflower enables businesses to create small tasks that can be completed by its virtual workforce. It is similar to MTurk, but there are no details on its web site regarding who makes up its virtual workforce, nor how a person can become a part of this workforce.

Samasource is a nonprofit organization whose mission is to alleviate worldwide poverty by connecting unemployed women and youth in impoverished countries to digital work. These workers are trained in basic computer skills and paid a fair wage (as determined by the Fair Wage Guide) for their labor. "Samasource’s staff also makes a point of understanding the skills native to each region so that it can channel projects to centers best equipped to handle them." As of April 2013, the organization had connected over 3,400 women and youth supporting an average of over three dependents each to paid employment, thereby directly impacting 14,100 people. In 2013 Samasource launched a pilot program in northern California called SamaUSA,[12] designed to give low-income community college students digital skills with which they can earn a living. The model focuses on training students to perform digital work competitively, to prepare them for success on online work sites like oDesk and Elance (neither of which are microtasking sites but, rather, fee-based online work sites - see earlier on this page).