I work as a Japanese web content writer. However, there is a very harsh reality for freelancers/crowd workers in Japan. Typically, crowdsourcing platforms should be useful for crowdworkers to get a job, but they aren’t working at all in the Japan case. In this article, I will tell you about the reality of Japanese crowd workers, you are hard to believe.
The normal unit price of Japanese crowdsourcing platforms
First, I would like you to look at the below image.
This crowdsourcing platform is more popular among Japanese crowd workers. Now, I would like you to notice the red numbers center. These show the unit price of each job and they are written as “1 JPY per character”, but they are too low a unit price than normal. Note, 1 JPY is about 0.0067$ if it replaces the current USD.
From my research, beginner freelance writers in English-speaking countries even earn a reward of more 0.05$ than per word. In short, Japanese crowdsourcing platforms are filled with cheap jobs that aren’t even so close to those. Yes, there are only beggars in this market.
Also, the jobs as “1 JPY per character” are just one part of all. Rather, overall, there are many moreover lower-reward jobs than those low-reward jobs in crowdsourcing platforms. For example, such moreover lower-reward jobs are below.
Could you understand? Most of the unit prices are written in red words at the center showing “lower than 0.1 JPY per character”. Oh my god, those unit prices mean lower than one-tenth of what I mentioned earlier the unit price.
Of course, anyone who has common sense won’t apply so terrible jobs. However, entry-level crowd workers don’t know the fair unit price, so will also apply for such jobs. Thus, Japanese crowdsourcing platforms are just established somehow.
I don’t understand why crowdsourcing platforms can survive they despise crowd workers. At least, I don’t already use Japanese crowdsourcing platforms. Whatever, the reward for Japanese content writers is being lower quickly because crowdsourcing platforms are filled with those inhumanly cheap jobs.
Maybe you already have enough, but actually other jobs exist that plan the exploitation of labor with a way of more cowardice. In concrete, there are also ugliness jobs that cheat with something called a “test” and take away crowd workers’ achievement with unbelievably lower rewards.
For example, the above image shows a test article (2000 characters) that costs 10 JPY (0.067 USD) per article. I say that again once, this job’s reward is the amount per article (moreover 2000 characters), not the amount per character like before it. I don’t know how much its unit price per character is anymore.
I feel that these clients probably have no conscience or have significantly insufficient knowledge about business. I can clearly say the only thing, such people can feel free to enter into business is a complete fault.
As you can see, Japanese crowdsourcing platforms are not being useful at all for crowd workers. I know there are various crowdsourcing platforms in other countries too. I hope please those platforms won’t become like Japanese platforms.
How much time and effort is required of workers for Japanese jobs?
I think there isn’t much difference between Japanese writers and English-speaking countries’ writers if I talk about web content writing. In the English-speaking countries’ case, it seems that writers can write 300 words per hour when they need deep research, etc., but in Japan’s case almost the same that too. To be exact, Japanese writers can write 300-500 characters per hour when they need deep research, etc.
So, Japanese writers will obtain 300-500 JPY (2-3.3 USD) per hour when they work for jobs that cost 1 JPY per character. Needless to say, it is impossible to live on this income. Are there like these jobs in English-speaking countries?
Why have Japanese crowdsourcing platforms become a so miserable condition?
It is not a clear answer but can be able to think of things like the below as possibilities.
Most of the crowd workers have no knowledge or confidence
As things many Japanese crowd workers fall into they will lose confidence if they have scarce knowledge and skills. Therefore, they think to have their own confidence, they first tend to choose low-unit price jobs.
However, if such a situation piles up, the average price of whole jobs will go down more and more. You should already know there are so many beggars planning exploitation online. This situation is extremely convenient for scammers. Crowd workers shouldn’t need to choose low-unit price jobs if each one of them has great confidence, they can avoid such a terrible situation.
Also, There are laws to keep fair trade in Japan, but the clients planning exploitation aren’t excluded by those laws because crowd workers lack knowledge about them. This point can be seen as a serious problem too.
Clients strongly need exactly the same result if whoever works
I feel like job descriptions give workers strangely detailed instructions in Japan. For example, clients just only need a mechanical article added concrete direction when they want the content writing, not needing workers’ creativity entirely. Therefore, Japanese content writing jobs are very simple and boring, so anyone who also burns out sometimes.
Even more so in the short term, it’s impossible for clients to make workers achieve the same results only with directions. Nevertheless, Japanese clients strongly need exactly the same workers’ achievement even in creative jobs.
In this case, whoever are even workers, their skills will be ignored and clients will only give importance to order to more cheap workers. Probably, Japanese clients do a convenient interpretation themselves so they can use workers with equally low wages.
Problems of Japanese cultures
As a well-known one of things, there is a feature that hierarchical relationships are very difficult in Japan. For all jobs, clients (a person gives jobs) are in a high position and workers are in a low position. And high-position people don’t respect low-position people because they know those low-position people are very obedient and patient in all things in Japan’s case.
As a result, it wouldn’t be hard to imagine that workers’ time or effort is being belittled, workers are requested to overwork more and more, proceeding they will be lower-wage workers. Then, in Japan’s current crowdsourcing platforms, The unit price has fallen beyond its lowest limit. This market will no longer flourish.
conclusion
Maybe the other countries’ crowdsourcing platforms contain some scam jobs too, but I would think it’s only Japanese crowdsourcing platforms that are filled with so significantly low-price jobs.
Japan is a rare country that is low-cost and gives high-quality service. However, this won’t be established without workers’ sacrifices. Japan would fall quickly if many workers noticed this abnormality. I really hope that other countries won’t be like Japan which underestimates the rights of workers.
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