Captcha Encoder - Is Captcha Worth Your Time?

CAPTCHA or "Completely Automated Public Turing Test to Tell Computers and Humans Apart" is a tool that most online web services used to protect their system from spammers/scammers. Many of us have encountered it - when signing up for a new account or in a social networking group. In case you are still clueless about it, well it is a set of letters and number usually in box, or a distorted image where you will need to identify the letters or numbers and type what's in the box.

CAPTCHAs are widely used by web services such as Yahoo, Facebook, Hotmail and others to prevent automated software from performing actions which effect their service - from abuse or other illegal online activities.

I've been seeing a lot of CAPTCHA encoding jobs on the internet and I must admit that I was once became a victim of it (only for 20 minutes). After 20 minutes of encoding CAPTCHAs, I stopped and told the buyer that it's not worth my time. Why? Do the Math. $0.75 - $1 per 1000 CAPTCHA's. I've tested it for 20 minutes and I was only able to input 80 entries. Even if you are a faster typist than me (60-70wpm) or you have a 5mbps internet connection, it is still not possible to earn $1 within an hour. To earn $1, I still need to 920 CAPTCHAs. Imagine that! I wonder why there are still a lot people who continue to work for this kind of job. Well, I guess it's better to do something productive than doing nothing at all. But if you are a seriously looking for home-based jobs why not try Odesk or RentACoder.com.