I have been working as a Japanese web content writer. I realized that there is a very harsh reality for freelancers/crowd workers in Japan through my career. Crowdsourcing platforms are typically useful for crowd workers to find jobs, but they aren’t truly helping in the Japanese case. In this article, I will tell you about a reality of Japanese crowd workers, which may be hard to believe.
A current general unit price of Japanese crowdsourcing platforms
At first, focus on the image below.
This is a crowdsourcing platform that is more popular for Japanese crowd workers. And, notice the red numbers in the center, which indicate the unit price of each job. Those are written as “1 JPY per character,” but they are actually much lower-paid than normal. By the way, if it replaces the current USD price, 1 JPY is around $0.0066.
According to my research, beginner freelance writers in English-speaking countries even earn a reward of more than $0.05 per word. In short, Japanese crowdsourcing platforms are filled with cheaper jobs that aren’t even close to those. Yes, there are only beggars in the Japanese freelance marketplace.
Don’t be surprised yet. Such cheaper jobs as “1 JPY per character” are just one part of all. Rather, there are many lower-paid jobs beyond the low-paying jobs on crowdsourcing platforms. For example, the following jobs correspond to it.
Could you understand what is happening? Most of the unit prices in red are showing “lower than 0.1 JPY per character”. Unbelievably, the indicated unit prices are lower than one-tenth of what I mentioned earlier.
Of course, someone with common sense wouldn’t apply for such terrible jobs. However, entry-level crowd workers do not know the fair unit price, and some of them will also apply for such jobs. Japanese crowdsourcing platforms are just barely maintained by them.
Honestly, I don’t understand why crowdsourcing platforms can survive while they so despise crowd workers. At least, I won’t want to use Japanese crowdsourcing platforms anymore. Whatever, the unit price for Japanese content writers is dropping quickly because crowdsourcing platforms are flooded with inhuman jobs.
Maybe feeling enough, but other fraudulent jobs actually exist that plan the exploitation of labor in a more cowardly way. In the concrete method, there are also ugly jobs that cheat by assigning a fake assessment test to workers and taking away their achievements with unbelievably low pay.
For example, the above image means assigning a test to workers writing an article (2000 characters), and it pays “10 JPY (0.066 USD) per article.” I say that again once: this job will pay the amount per article (and 2000 characters), not by the character. I don’t know what the unit price per character is anymore.
These clients probably have no conscience or have significantly insufficient knowledge about business. I’m confident in stating that such fraudulent people can easily enter the marketplace is a complete fault.
As you can see, Japanese crowdsourcing platforms are useless for crowd workers. There are various crowdsourcing platforms in other countries, too. I just wish those platforms wouldn’t become like Japan’s.
How much efforts are required of a freelance writer for Japanese jobs?
There isn’t likely to be much difference between Japanese writers and English-speaking writers. In the latter’s case, it seems that they can write 300 words per hour when they need a deep search, and in the Japanese case, almost the same. To be exact, Japanese writers can write 300-500 characters per hour under the same conditions.
This means that Japanese freelance writers will earn between 300-500 JPY (2-3.3 USD) per hour if they work a job that pays 1 JPY per character. Needless to say, it is impossible to live on this income in Japan. If a job pays 0.1 JPY…, I don’t want to calculate anymore.
Why have Japanese crowdsourcing platforms become such a miserable condition?
There’s no clear answer, but it thinks of things like the following as possibilities.
Most of the crowd workers have no knowledge or confidence
Some Japanese crowd workers try to find jobs despite having no experience, but they tend to be unconfident, so they choose a lower-paid job first.
However, if such an action is frequent, the average pay of jobs will decline steadily. And, as you know, there are so many beggars planning to exploit labor on crowdsourcing platforms. This situation is extremely convenient for such scammers. Crowd workers wouldn’t need to choose a lower-paid job if each one of them had good confidence to enter the marketplace, and they could avoid such a terrible situation.
Clients strongly require the same result, whoever works, regardless of cost
In many cases, Japanese jobs provide workers with too much detail in instructions. For content writing jobs, clients just require unified mechanical content rather than human, creative content. Therefore, Japanese content writing jobs will be straightforward and boring.
Additionally, Japanese workers’ capabilities aren’t so much necessary because clients strongly need the same workers’ achievements. In this case, clients ignore workers’ skills and focus on requesting from cheaper workers.
Perhaps Japanese clients consider a convenient interpretation themselves and just want to hire workers with lower pay.
Japanese cultural issue
As a well-known thing, there is a feature that hierarchical relationships are harsh in Japan. In all jobs, clients are in a higher position; on the other hand, workers are in a lower position. And, those in a high position tend to disregard those in a lower position because they know the latter are in a weak position.
As a result, it wouldn’t be hard to imagine that even workers’ time and efforts are belittled, are requested to overwork more and more, and thus, they become lower-wage laborers. The average unit price of Japanese crowdsourcing platforms has already fallen beyond its lowest limit. This market will no longer flourish.
There are countless Japanese scammers targeting freelancers online
The number of scammers/scam groups targeting freelancers exists online in Japan. They are pretending to be freelancers or deceiving both freelancers and companies, and their numbers are rapidly increasing through a pyramid scheme. The following article explains their detailed characteristics and methods.
Conclusion
The crowdsourcing platforms of other countries may also contain some scam jobs, but I would think it’s only Japan’s that are filled with so significantly lower-paid jobs.
Japan is a rare country that gives low-cost and high-quality service. However, this won’t be established without labor sacrifices. Japan would quickly decline if its workers recognized this abnormality.
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