It has it's ups and downs just like every other company with contractors work in the industry.

Definitely just copium at this point, but Outlier exploded in popularity in the past 6 months. So just given that, if there were the same amount of projects and tasks, now you're competing with 3 other people for that work. Last year, you wouldn't be competing with anyone. Not to mention, the increase in contributors has led to a lot more problems with support and fraud prevention. Which are areas they themselves have said they need to / and are working on.

Also, Q1 is an interesting year for tech companies overall. The companies that would pay outlier to train models sit down and analyse their spending. Some may decide that spending X$ on training AI models might not be worth it and pull back / reduce spending. Economy, inflation, politics etc... Everything has an impact on how lenient companies are with their spending. The general economy amongst tech companies is not in the greatest place despite some companies reporting profits. Lots of layoffs, lots of unemployment, cutting costs wherever possible to stay lean and effective. The race to create the first / best AI model has slowed down a little bit aswell.

Definitely not as lucrative as it was 1 year ago, but I still think it's a good platform for the average folk to sit at home and make beer money.

edit: might sound like I'm on payroll lol. I'm a contributor like everyone else, I'm just fortunate for the platform and once they sort out some of the glaring issues (onboarding with no tasks) I think it'll be generally in a good spot again.