Amazon Mechanical Turk- Paid to Do Short Tasks
As many people have stated, it’s important to have several “eggs”. A few weeks ago I did a review on a new egg I’d found, Scribie, which is a transcription company that deposits pay into your PayPal account. This review is about Amazon Mechanical Turk, or more easily known as MTurk, an egg that I’ve worked off and on for several years now to make money to spend on Amazon.com.
What is MTurk?
MTurk is a site that is affiliated with Amazon.com. There are different types of tasks (or HITS, as they’re called) posted by different requester. These tasks could be anything from writing articles on certain subjects, to filling out surveys, to even doing some general transcription, among other things.
How much does MTurk pay?
The amount you get paid per HIT depends on the requester. I’ve done hits at MTurk that pay as little as .01 per HIT to as much as $10 per HIT. Once the HIT is approved, payment is made to your Amazon payments account. From there you can do one of two things: If you shop on Amazon.com a lot, you can transfer your earnings to your Amazon.com gift card balance. Or you can have the earnings transferred to your bank account. you do have to have a $10 minimum balance in your Amazon Payments account, and it takes 5-7 business days to be processed, per MTurk’s website. You only have to have a $1 minimum balance to use the money to shop on Amazon.com.
Will I need anything other than my computer to do the HITs at MTurk?
That depends on the HITs you choose. If you choose to do the transcription HITs, you’ll want to have a transcription pedal and possibly a headset as well. Every HIT has its own requirements that you can read before accepting.
How long do you have to finish the MTurk HITs?
That also depends on the requester. Some requesters will only allow a few minutes to do HITs, others will allow a few hours or even days to complete HITs. In my experience however, the amount of time the requesters allow to complete the HIT has never been unreasonable.
Is there any help available for MTurk?
Yes. In most cases you can send the requester a message just by clicking on the requester’s name if you have a question. There is also a message board called Turker Nation that I highly recommend signing up for an account on if you choose to sign up for MTurk. You can ask questions as well as get a lot of valuable information on different requesters on this message board. In addition, some requesters, such as the ones that post transcription hits, have created their own websites that you can sign up on to keep track of your stats.
Is there anything else I should know about MTurk before signing up?
Some HITS were created for the purpose of generating leads for certain websites. Be very careful of these HITs, because they will ask for information such as your mailing address and/or phone number. If you accept a HIT and find that it asks for this information and you don’t feel comfortable providing it, you always have the option to return the HIT to MTurk.
I’m finding that I’m not able to work on a lot of HITs. Is there anything I can do to increase the number of hits I can work on at MTurk?
Yes, many HITs require certain qualifications. If you find that you’re not able to work on certain HITs, you can click on the link that says “Why?” and you’ll get a pop-up stating why. If you’re lacking a certain qualification, there may be a link that says “Request Qualfication.” Click on that, and you’ll get information on what you need to do to request the qualification and therefore increase the number of HITs you can work on.
How do I sign up with MTurk?
Go to MTurk’s website and click the button that says “find hits now”. If you want more information before signing up then click on the link that says “learn more about being a worker”.
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