Appen Review: Is Appen Work-From-Home a Scam or a Legit (2024)?

Welcome to my Appen review.

Is Appen a scam or legit work from home opportunity?

Is working for Appen worth it?

In this article we will look into:

• What is Appen?
• How to work for Appen?
• Is Appen a scam?
• Appen jobs
• Review and complaints
• How much does Appen pay?
• What I like about Appen
• What I dislike about Appen

Here is all you need to know about Appen.

What is Appen?

Remote work can save your time, reduce distractions, save money and it also helps to work on your schedule.

It is a benefit for the employer and the employee as productivity increases.

Appen is a firm which is specialized in providing superior data for machines to upgrade and bring artificial intelligence with a human touch.

Being founded in 1996 Appen has unlocked its company world-wide in more than 130 countries and includes over 180 languages.

Appen has over 1 million independent contractors who work with clients full time or part-time. The workers can choose to do more than one project at a time.

Finance, automotive, retailers, government, technology, and health care are the industries they serve. With the help of artificial intelligence, Appen has helped its clients to perform any intellectual task a human can perform at low rates and improved results.

Is Appen a Scam?

I must say all the websites appear to be a legit one from the outside and unless and until you experience them on your own you won’t trust it and must be confusing and skeptical to choose one.

From my personal experiences and the searches that I’ve done, Appen seems to be a legit website for a work from home opportunity.

So basically, Appen is not a scam.

Although, there might be a lot of bad reviews.

It’s because it won’t be liked by everyone and since there are various stigmatizations created towards online jobs of late they are given bad ratings.

There are plenty of websites out there that are a total waste of your time but surely Appen ain’t one. However, you should beware of some phishing sites who claim to provide you laptops, cell phones and pay more.

Make sure the emails you contact with Appen are coming from:

[email protected]

[email protected]

[email protected]

Now that some websites are fishy, I believe Appen is 100% fine. In recent months more workers are visiting the site, signing up and taking up the test.

It’s pleasing to see that many people are getting to know about such sites and earning a good sum of money from it.

Also, Appen has been included in the top 100 companies proving remote jobs by Flexjobs.

You can apply from any part of the world and get paid through PayPal, they pay you for the work that you do. And since they give a very simple task you will be paid less amount only.

In a nutshell, Appen is a supercool website and is certainly worth checking out. I have given you the basics to Appen but you must check it out thoroughly to understand it.

My take is if you are working part-time and have this extra income it’s going to be helpful.

How to work for Appen?

You will have to submit your resume and add your details like age and zip code. You should be 18 years of age or older and be a native speaker of one language, resident of that country and proficient in your work.

You will be assigned the task based on your locality and your language. Appen does not require you to pay any type of registration fee. You will need a computer, an internet connection, working space and some time.

Login to the Appen website with your registered Login Id and in the career page you will find four types of jobs,

• Raters: Flexible, part-time, home-based work that requires a computer and/or mobile device.
• Language jobs: Flexible work in Transcription, Translation, and Linguistics.
• Micro task: Simple tasks that can be completed in about an hour from the comfort of your own home.
• Corporate jobs: Positions affiliated with Appen global offices focused on Engineering, Marketing, Finance, and Sales.

After picking one of the four, you will have to take up an eligibility test. It is a long process and takes a long time to evaluate the test.

Example: For positions like search engine evaluation, you have both theoretical and practical comprehension test and you will have to gain at least 87% to 90% to pass the test. Similarly, it varies for other positions as well.

If you aren’t clearing the test in the first attempt you will be given one time retake. Once you crack the test by obtaining the pass mark you will be assigned the project.

You can qualify the test with the help of materials available online or you could sign up for some free online courses.

You will either hear back immediately or sometimes it may take 3 to 4 months.

Unfortunately, you won’t be given big projects right away after you apply, the more you work and the better your performance is, you will be given big projects.

Appen jobs

Earning money is always associated with traditional ‘offline’ methods with the recent surge in technology and artificial intelligence, Appen can offer many work-from-home and remote jobs.

Here are few such jobs that Appen provides

1. Surveys, searches, and reviews

Several websites pay you for taking up surveys. Surveys are small tasks that can be finished in little time. Surveys will mostly have questions about your shopping habits and your favorite brands. You will be paid through PayPal or in points.

2. Social Media Management

A lot of companies require a person to manage their social media accounts and post attractive and funny information. Social media is a great platform for advertising.

3. Translator

If you skilled in more than one language, you can put your talent into effect by translating documents.

4. Transcription

Most of the transcribers can work from home by just listening to the audio or reading the documents and typing out what you hear.

5. Search engine evaluation

Being a search evaluator you would put up the most relevant search information on the top and push the rest to the next page.

For example, if you are searching for work from home gigs, the most relevant sites would pop up on the first page.

6. Localization

It is the process of changing or adapting a resource in favor of the native country. For example: personalizing a product or app according to the preference of the local people in a place.

7. Data annotation

Data annotation means labeling the data as a text, audio or video and separate them into categories based on their similarities. This is done to find similar patterns when presented with new data.

8. Social Media Evaluator

A person who looks at the relevance of information about companies put as advertisements or news feeds on social media platforms.

These are some of the work from home gigs that Appen offers, apart from this, they also have many full-time jobs which you can check out on the Appen website.

Reviews and complaints

So there are quite a few bad opinions regarding the payment and the projects given. It said that they pay out one or two pennies per task. The task is very simple and certain tasks were repetitive.

More than half the percentage of the workers have given negative reviews for Appen because of two factors- pays less money and termination without warning.

Having said that, some reviews have also mentioned that the clients are not able to provide enough work for the agents to fulfill the daily work requirement.

Another major complaint was that they have no transparency and they have a robotic response for the mails or other times they do not respond to queries and just ignore them.

You might be deserted without any projects for several months after completion of one project. They do not provide feedback as to how your work was, when and how much you will be paid for your work.

The guidelines can change after you sign up for a project, they will increase or lower your work hours and thus your payment will be affected.

I recommend you to see the reviews given in Glassdoor to understand more about Appen.

How much does Appen pay?

I know that you can make money on this website but figuring out how much turns out to be a challenge. You don’t have to pay to become an independent agent rather you will be paid for your work.

From the reviews that I have read, your pay depends on how many hours you spend working and the type of job you choose, usually if you work for an hour you will be paid from $12 to $14.

As a beginner, the amount they pay for your work will be comparatively less than the amount they pay for you with experience and intensity.

This pay range highly depends on the country where you live. It can start from as low as $10 and will go up to $30 per hour.

As you gain experience and start working on more projects you can make anywhere between $200 to $900 per month.

You can go through the website and look at all available options to see which one you like. You can choose a work from the Appen site, meet the requirements and start working on it.

However, if you don’t get cleared, you can keep trying for other projects.

After finishing the work you have to send an invoice to the Appen team every hour. As you send the invoice they will credit the money to your account.

The clients that you work for will not pay you directly they will send it through Appen once in a month. Although, remember that the company can draw you out of a project anytime for bad performance and it is not an assured job.

The pay scale is $9 per hour if you are a RESEARCHER OR A WRITER and $30 per hour if you are a DATA COLLECTOR.

Apart from this for jobs like

Social Media Specialist is $12 to $13 per hour

Data Analyst – $216 per day

English Teacher – $95 per day

Customer Service Representative – $18.26 per hour.

What I like

• You get meaningful work from home opportunities.
• Since you can work in more than two jobs at a time you will be able to make extra money every month. It will be a good source of side income and an easy way to earn money, especially if you are a 9 to 5 er.
• You can choose flexible timings and work any time you prefer. The tasks are very easy and they are given with detailed and clear instructions and strive to achieve high-end products to the clients. Appen does not provide jobs that include cold calling.
• It is also great if you are out of work and or a parent. You will be allowed to work with a team of highly talented professionals and will be exposed to machine learning. The team you work with will be diverse in terms of skills, languages, experience, and talents.
• You can have hands-on experience in the work that you do. If you are a newbie to a field, with the help of Appen you will have a fast-growing and learning process.
• You will be given the chance to experiment with new ideas and topics and become an independent worker. Appen supports and develops your idea and takes them to the next level.
• They offer task which are not back-breaking and which does not eat your time. There is a pretty easy and heterogeneous task available.
• You can be truly independent by working in the comfort of your home and you should simply rely on your motivation, concentration, and self-discipline. You don’t have to finish the task in one go, you can play around until you feel attentive.
• You can finish the task with detailed scheduling and time management skills. As you are given the advantage of staying at home you can save your travel time and in turn, use it to be more productive.

What I dislike

• Appen carries some disadvantages as well. From my experience, the most appalling con is that the system does not work now and then and you have to contact them several times to fix it up.
• A little to no communication/responses with the project managers.
• For the starters, you must first clear the exam, honestly, it is a pretty heavy task.
• Low pay and too many materials to learn for.
• You will be paid monthly and not weekly or bi-weekly, which might be okay if you trust your clients, otherwise, things might go worse.
• Every client and project will demand a PC and internet connection and no reimbursements will be given for your operating equipment if you are going to buy them.
• The jobs you do will be monotonous and boring and the working hours will be quite long. There’s no room for personal growth if that is the case.
• Not only you have to wait after taking up the exam, but you should also wait long to get confirmed in a project. In essence, some processes may pass through quickly while some may prolong for months.
• You will be an independent agent in Appen if you qualify the test, this doesn’t guarantee you a lifetime payment or settlement. It is easy for Appen to disqualify and terminate you if your performance isn’t up to the mark. And this will be done right away without prior warning.
• You will not get any pay raises and no benefits or insurance included.
• You might not have full access to potential data with data security in certain situations and that can highly interrupt your work.
• You must follow the schedules and manage time effectively, put effort and concentration to complete the task. It can be too much headache for little compensation.

Appen review summary

I hope this review was useful to you.

Appen is a legitimate work from home opportunity and is not a scam. One of the top benefits of working with Appen is flexible hours and one of the negative points is low pay.

But overall it’s a very good company to work for.

To get started, you can apply for Appen jobs here.