Internet Analyst at Appen: What It Is and What to Expect

Is the Internet Analyst job at Appen worth it? Are you going to learn things that will give you a foundation in areas like digital marketing, for example? Is there an opportunity for promotion? What is the exam like and how much does the job pay?

The goal of this article is to clarify these points once and for all and help you make an educated decision about whether this job is right for you.

Since you are looking for information about jobs at Appen, you may also like to register on these other websites that offer work from home opportunities.

Job Description

The Internet Analyst role at Appen is a home-based, part-time job that can involve the evaluation of search engine features and results, social media features and ads, speech and translation, answering surveys, or perform morphological annotation for linguistic systems.

When a candidate applies to join Appen as a rater, they are applying for the Internet Analyst position. Depending on which type of work there is available after their application is successful, the internet analyst can also be referred to by other names. For example, search engine evaluator, social media evaluator, annotator, etc.

Here are examples of opportunities that may be available to internet analysts:

• Search Engine Evaluator Jobs
• Social Media Evaluator Jobs
• Translation
• Transcription
• Survey and Data Collection (Short projects that last from 15 minutes to three hours)
• Linguistic Specialties (Text to Speech, Computational, Phonetics, Pronunciation, Annotation, etc.)
• Lexicon Annotation
• Speech Evaluation

Each of these opportunities has its own qualification process, which will be informed to the candidate once their application is accepted. If you are interested in these types of jobs, make sure to read our step-by-step guide on how to work from home with Appen.

Appen Internet Analyst Exam

The exam to become an internet analyst at Appen will depend on the project for which you will be assigned. For example, raters invited for Google's search quality rating project, known as Project Yukon, will have to go through a qualification exam that is divided into three parts.

Raters who are invited for other projects, such as Social Media Evaluation, will need to follow other guidelines and go through different types of tests, which are generally much easier than most of the search engine evaluator exams. At the Search Evaluator Academy, candidates will find courses that were specifically designed to boost their preparation for the Yukon Project exam.

Appen Internet Analyst Salary

The pay rate for internet analysts at Appen varies considerably depending on the country where the rater is located. According to our research, it can range from $3/h to $20/hour. Candidates are informed about the pay rate once they are invited to a specific project.

Considering that internet analysts can work from 5 to 30 hours per week on average, their average monthly income can widely range from as low as about $60 to as much as about $2400.

Unfortunately, right after Appen acquired Leapforce in 2018, they cut the pay rate by over 50% in some countries. If you were invited to a qualification exam at Appen, let us know what the pay rate is in your country for the project you are applying for. In the future, we are looking to provide a list of the exact pay rate for each locale. With contributions from our visitors, we believe we can bring more transparency regarding the information available about these projects.

Are there promotion opportunities?

If you are looking to join Appen as an internet analyst assuming that you may be promoted to another role (e.g. a corporate role) based on good performance, that is not going to happen. Appen makes a strict distinction between their home-based evaluation jobs, for which candidates apply via the Internet Analyst application page, and their corporate jobs, which are available through this other application page.

And what about a horizontal promotion based on performance? For example, something like from junior internet analyst to senior internet analyst. Sorry to disappoint you, but this is not going to happen either.

Let's make things clear once for all: You should not apply for the internet analyst role hoping that it could forge career opportunities for you at Appen or any of its clients. A promotion for independent contractors at Appen is very unlikely. In fact, the company is known for its aggressive moves aiming at making it more competitive and profitable, even at the expense of worsening the relationship with its raters.

Appen’s accelerating expansion is making it accountable to a larger number of investors and shareholders who want the business to become more profitable. Even if you manage to be a very high-performing internet analyst (e.g. top 10%), you are just another Joe in a crowd of thousands, and there are always people willing to do this type of work for lower rates. At the end of the day, it is more interesting for them to hire people for lower salaries than awarding high performers with some sort of incentive. Unfortunately, it looks like their clients don’t really care.

Does this role help in any career field?

Sorry to inform, but this is not what you should expect.

It is true that the internet analyst role is dynamic, and you may be invited to a variety of different evaluation projects for clients like Google and Facebook. However, although there are many different projects, the tasks are almost always very specific to those projects and it’s hard to establish a connection between those tasks and any particular career field.

The fact that you may be evaluating things for Facebook, for example, doesn’t imply that it will give you a foundation in SMM (Social Media Marketing).

One of the few exceptions to this is Google’s search quality rating program, which is known as Project Yukon at Appen. It is an exception because, to perform the core of that job, Google raters are required to master the instructions provided in a document known as general guidelines, which explains what high-quality pages should look like and how the relevance of search results should be assessed. This kind of knowledge is useful for people who own a website or for those interested in pursuing a career in search engine optimization (SEO).

Is it worth working as an Internet Analyst at Appen?

Well, you can bet that it is, and the reason is that you should approach home-based opportunities like the internet analyst role as a chance to use your earnings and flexible schedule to invest in yourself. There are so many possibilities out there, from building a business to learning a variety of skills that are valuable in today’s world, and it doesn’t make any sense for you to solely rely on a third party to give you opportunities.

The best thing about this kind of job is that it gives you the chance to make money while escaping the so-called 9-5 rat race, and time is a precious gift for those who want to thrive. If you have bigger goals in mind, you can use that spare time to learn about things that interest you, which can open doors for many other opportunities to come your way.

If you want to use this job as a stepping stone to higher goals, you should start by reflecting on a career path or skill that appeals to you. This way, you can focus on using your earnings and spare time to develop that career or skill.

If freelancing is what you're looking for, a good starting point is to read this post on how to start freelancing from scratch and becomes successful.