Top 10 Amazon MTurk Tips and Tricks
What is Amazon Mechanical Turk?
For those who don't know, Amazon Mechanical Turk, or MTurk, is a 'crowdsource' program where you earn money online by performing basic tasks (known as "Hits") for employers (known as "Requesters").
You can be paid either in the form of cash (which Amazon pays into your bank account), or by purchasing Amazon gift cards which you can spend at their website.
In my experience, Amazon Mechanical Turk can be one of the fastest ways to make money online and my top 10 Amazon Mechanical Turk tips and tricks should help you to earn more, as well as lower the chances of you getting ripped off.
Typical MTurk HITs that you might find on the site are simple, but ones that a machine is unable to do, for instance: rewriting sentences, completing surveys, writing original articles, copying text from scans and photos, transcribing audio files.
(Mechanical Turk has a number of rivals, one example being Microworkers, read my article: The Pros and Cons of Making Money with Microworkers for more details.)
The Main Pros and Cons of Amazon MTurk
Rather than write a formal Mechanical Turk review, I've listed the main pluses and minuses of MTurk in a pros and cons format below.
PROS:
You can work from home.
You can pick and choose the jobs that you want to do.
It's free to sign up.
CONS:
Amazon doesn't regulate it, so there are quite a few scams and rip offs and you don't have any comeback.
The payments can be stingy (and they seem to be getting stingier as time goes on).
Top 10 Amazon Mechanical Turk Tips
Here are some of the tips and tricks that I have picked up.
1. Watch out for the scammers!
Stay clear of any hits that ask you for your real email, full name, address, credit card details etc. You don't want to end up being spammed, or even worse, defrauded. Genuine Amazon Mechanical Turk requesters won't ask you for personal info. (For more details see my article: How to avoid MTurk scams).
2. Use forums such as Turker Nation and MTurk Forum to keep yourself informed.
The MTurk Forums will keep you up to date with what's happening with Amazon Mechanical Turk and and you can learn from other worker's experiences. These forums are set up and self-run by Mechanical Turk workers and though they won't give you any comeback against the rip-off requesters and scammers, they may help you to avoid the worst of MTurk and direct you towards the best requesters and practices. You'll find Turker Nation here and MTurk Forum here.
3. Download and use the Turkopticon toolbar.
This is maybe the most important of my Mechanical Turk tips and tricks. The Turkopticon toolbar will allow you to see how previous Mechanical Turk workers have assessed a particular requester. You can see helpful reviews from other Mechanical Turk workers before you decide to take a hit or not. Did they reject an MTurk hit without good reason, did they pay in reasonable time etc. (one scam that some unscrupulous requesters use is to reject your work on the grounds that it is inadequate in order to get out of paying).
This tool is worth having if you're a regular Mechanical Turk user, in my opinion, as it really does work. There are toolbar versions for Firefox and Google Chrome browsers on their website, though I didn't see anything on their website for Internet Explorer.
4. Avoid the 1 cent hits on Mechanical Turk, unless they look like fun, or you're desperate.
Even if a one second hit takes you only three minutes to complete, you are still looking at a pay rate of just 12c an hour. That means you'd have to spend an entire day working on Mechanical Turk just to earn a single dollar. The 2 cent Mechanical Turk hits aren't much better. The only way that these hits pay is if all you're doing is clicking on something or copying and pasting a word or phrase.
5. Think through how long a task takes in Mechanical Turk and the relative pay rate.
It's worth looking at whether it's worth it before you get involved with an Amazon Mechanical Turk hit. Some of them require a qualification test to be passed before you can even begin working on the hit(s) proper. Some of them have extensive instructions, slowing you down and increasing the chance of you getting your submitted hits rejected. If there are plenty of Mechanical Turk hits for you to do and the pay's not too bad, it may still be worth you accepting the hit, but give the matter a little thought too.
6. Surveys are often good payers in my experience.
The surveys you find in Amazon Mechanical Turk pay better than most hits generally and you are more likely to receive your money, as they are often conducted by colleges and universities, rather than virtually anonymous individuals. Some of the Mechanical Turk surveys will pay you $1 or more for 5 or 10 minutes work. Just be wary of the scam hits that sometimes dress themselves up as surveys, eg answer some questions about our website, fill in this form giving us your personal details etc.
The other good payers in Mechanical Turk, if you have writing skills, are the short articles hits that are often advertised, where you put together a 100-200 words for between $1 and $2. Most of the time you can just reword information that you copy from Wikipedia. UPDATE: Since I wrote this article, the payment rates for surveys have gone gone considerably and you often get paid 40 or 50 cents for a survey that 18 months ago may well have paid you $1 or $1.50.
7. If it looks too good to be true, then it probably is!
Unfortunately the big paying Amazon Mechanical Turk hits are usually put there by scammers. Generally speaking, nobody is going to pay you $10 in Mechanical Turk just to test their website. If it looks too good to be true, it probably is. Those Mechanical Turk requesters who offer $10 or $20 for a 1 or 2 minute tasks, eg wanting you to check if their website is working, are pretty much always up to no good.
8. Read the instructions carefully before you accept a Mechanical Turk hit.
One of my most important Mechanical Turk tips. If you regularly end up having to return an Amazon Mechanical Turk hit because you are unable, or don't want to complete it, then this will affect your "hit return rate" adversely. Alternatively you may complete and submit a number of Mechanical Turk hits incorrectly, then get them rejected, which can be very frustrating, as well as a huge waste of time. This doesn't matter if you do it once or twice, but if you do it regularly, then it will limit the range of Mechanical Turk hits that you can take.
9. Use the Sort By and Search options to find the Amazon Mechanical Turk hits that you are after
For instance, if you were looking on Mechanical Turk for a new survey that paid over 50c, you'd type "survey" in the search box and set the hit value to 50c. You can then put the results in order with the newest hits first. Searching like this can save you a lot of time on Mechanical Turk. There are over 100,000 MTurk hits on offer sometimes and you don't want to end up wading through them one at a time.
10. Link your bank account to Amazon if you want to get paid in cash from your Mechanical Turk Account
Amazon keep you posted on how much money you've earned with Mechanical Turk as you go along (though be prepared for the fact that many Mechanical Turk requesters won't pay you immediately). The Mechanical Turk money will appear in your regular Amazon account in a section called Amazon Payments. You can convert this money into gift card money which you can spend in Amazon. Alternatively, if you want it in cash, then you have to link a bank account to your Amazon account.
© 2011 Paul Goodman
Comments
Great article - thank you!
However, it seems very odd that mturks just denied me. I found the process very strange, when I went to apply it simply asked me to log into my Amazon account, which I did, and then it asked no other information about me.
All that they know about me is that I've purchase 10s of 1000s on their site in the last few years... and, that I recently cancelled Amazon Prime.
There's apparently no means to contact them about this (see full text below). Any suggestions?
Thank you for your guidance! :)
Stephen
Full email text:
Greetings from Amazon Mechanical Turk,
We have completed our review of your Amazon Mechanical Turk Worker Account. We regret to inform you that you will not be permitted to work on Mechanical Turk.
Our account review criteria are proprietary and we cannot disclose the reason why an invitation to complete registration has been denied. If our criteria for invitation changes, you may be invited to complete registration in the future.
Thank you for your interest in Mechanical Turk.
Sincerely,
Amazon Mechanical Turk
Honestly I don't know what some of you all are talking about, I just looked at MTurk and some of those HITs surveys are about 5 dollars! When I get accepted I'm going to work extremely hard, Christmas is coming up, and a new computer has my name on it lol.
I just got approved to be a turk worker. Also since I'm a developer, I was curious to see what the other side looks like as a requester so I also got a requester account, deposited some money and created some sample HITS. I've started learning that people tend to look at a HIT, decide its boring or too difficult and move on. I look forward to learning more about using Amazon Mechancal Turk.
Hello,
Do they accept people from kenya?would wish to try it.
Kindly let me know
Paul, this is a very good review of things to watch out for with mturk requesters. I tried it a few times just to see what can be accomplished. I like the fact that the money earned can be moved to Amazon so it can be allied to future purchases.
I did run into a few requesters that seemed to be asking for too much personal info and I avoided them. Now that I read your hub I realize that I probably was right about those few. But as you said, there are many good ones there.
Just a heads-up: the hyperlinks you gave to the resources marked "here" don't work?
I'm constantly learning about these money making sites on Hub Pages, and to be honest this was a new one on me. I'm still debating whether to check it out or not, I've wasted a lot of time rating phone calls, transcribing, etc., and the payoff was just not worth the time and effort. Thanks for sharing these tips.
Paul, maybe I missed it, but is mturk still a good deal? Thanks for your articles.
- Author
Hubpages pays MTurk workers to assess the quality of newly published hubs.
Mturk was listed on my hub traffic data. Not sure why they came to my hub, but at least I now know what it means! Thank you for this info.
I tried to sign up with Mturk and they simply denied me...It doesn't make any sense to me...why?....any idea??
I started using Mturk the beginning of this year. The first few months, I was really that in to things, since the pay is so low for most HITS. After spending more time there, I have learned how to find HITS that pay more for the time that I spend there. The money is not enough to pay major bills, but it is nice to have a few extra dollars to buy lunch or some coffee.
If your Australian don't bother trying to sign up, they just reject you stating rubbish about not being able to tell you why and when I googled it there were a lot of other Australians out there that were rejected too.
Very useful and informative. I will check it. Thank for your super post.
Hi is there any one out there that can tell me how to get the master qul so am able to do more of the better paying hits or what it takes
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Bonuses are usually paid in my experience. Pay rates have been drifting downwards for some time - mainly because it's international and people who live in poorer countries with lower living costs will work for less money.
Thanks for this article. What about the M Turk bonuses? Do some of the Requesters still pay bonuses? How are the pay rates now compared to the past?
register in mturk is not possible
i need to register
muthucbe24@gmail.com
hey man I appreciate all of your help... beings that you DO have a life outside of the interwebs.. I think im gonna give it a go!!!
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No idea what you are talking about, sorry! Most of the tests for specific HITs you can only do once, if you fail it, that's it!
will u pls tell me classification accuracy I am having 80 whether I am allowed to retake the test again when it come. or only once. Pls clarify
Thanks very much. I appreciate your help.
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There are different types of HIT, but where you have to click on a link to start, I would recommend this. Accept the HIT then leave that (Windows) page open. Right click the link to start and select "open in a new window". Complete the HIT in the new window, then copy the completion code over to the old window.
I have tried Mechanical Turk and seem to have considerable problems finding my way back to the original HIT page in order to enter completion codes. Several times, that has meant not getting credit for performing the HIT. I was hoping you might be able to help me. Thanks.
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It sounds like you've failed the test for the qualification. You will have to find another HIT to do, if that is the case.
I am having qualified for only 80 instead of 85, not able to work in Amazon requester (browser classification). when I click it shows, you cannot retake the qualification again.what is the meaning of this ? It means hereafter I should not request the qualification or what? Pls comment.,
I would advise everyone here to try CloudCrowd. It's much better than Amazon Mechanical Turk in many ways. Once you start working, you'll see the difference.
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I personally have never had any problems of this nature.
I've heard about accounts being suspended and the money taken away when a person builds a large amount. I just ALWAYS withdraw as soon as I hit $10.00. I have been several hundreds over the past couple years and have never had a problem. It's still making money on the internet, so there's always a risk. Try to minimize by taking money out as soon as you hit the minimum payout.
I have worked on MTurk site and have something to say that is not good. I built up a good amount of money and suddenly my account was suspended and I was not allowed in my account to get my money. Basically I have been ripped off. They suspend you and take away access to all the money you earned. Everything I did that I was waiting for payment for is gone too. No reason given, no answers to my emails as to why. I even called and can get no where with getting access back. So Beware.
Thanks Paul for the rundown on Amazon Mechanical Turk. I just signed up for it (didn't even know about it till now, jeez!) Anyway, good tips here. Voted up and useful!!
i am new to mturk i have 92% approval rate with 500 hits
can u help me to get more money...
I like Mechanical Turk. Many of the hits are easy and quick. I can do searches blind folded these days. If my attention is longer, then I focus on the higher paying surveys. The most I ever made in one day was $13.00 dollars but that was really rare. I usually make a dollar or two before my attention span wanes and I decide to work on Hub articles or something. ;) I did a couple of writing assignments on MTurk but I'm a slow writer so it was not worth what I was paid. I also didn't like the fact that I didn't get credit for the article and also that I no longer owned it. I'm choosing not to work this semester so I can concentrate more on doing better in my college classes so I will be spending more time on Mechanical Turk. Wow, I'd love to be able to make $20 daily!
Wow, thanks a bunch!
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I thought this was a great question, but one that requires a full answer, so I have dedicated a new post to it at my blog: http://mturkishdelight.blogspot.com/
Can you talk at all about the HITs that require qualifications tests or have you request a qualification? Many of these seem to pay well but I am not sure what is involved and if they are worth it. Thanks
iam faceing one probm that is iam click one hit then accept hit but automaticaly sin out my accout what is the probm plzz help meee
I got regret mail from mtruck amazon...what was the problem..i registered 2 times wit alternate mailid...i didnt able to join to hit the job..give me the solution guys..
I've been doing work on mturk for about two weeks now, and I've found that my favorite requester is Claritrans. Their snippets that they want transcribed are short, and they pay a decent amount. If I really buckle down, and do some serious work I can make about $50 a day.
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hi MzChaos, it is definitely harder now than it used to be. There seems to be a steady downward pressure on earnings.
Hi Paul, giving you a progress report. I signed up, and in about 12 days I have made $35...that is going much faster than WebAnswers, let me tell you! Thanks for the helpful hints...I can easily see doing $5 a day here, but I sure don't know how you would get to a $25 day.
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I don't know. You could try asking on one of the MTurk forums? http://mturkishdelight.blogspot.com/2011/04/mturk-...
I filled out the information to join Mechanical Turk and I recieved an email back from them saying:
Greetings from Amazon Mechanical Turk,
We have completed our review of your Amazon Mechanical Turk Worker
Account. We regret to inform you that you will not be permitted to
work on Mechanical Turk. Thank you for your interest in Mechanical
Turk.
Sincerely,
Amazon Mechanical Turk
I don't understand why as they have not given me a reason. I live in Saskatchewan, Canada but that should not be an issue if they are giving work to people overseas. Does anyone know why people may be rejected. Their website says they give work to anyone.
I was just asking questions about this on WebAnswers. I will probably be checking this out in a couple of weeks - thanks!
sir i created an account in amazon ...bt it got rejected...
i been trying 3to 4 times...result is same...will not be permitted...
dont knw wat's the cause...pls help
- Author
Depends on the HIT requester. Can take up to a month in theory, but normally it is hours or days - the majority within a week or so. It's best just to move on and do other HITS rather than waiting on them to be approved. The Turkopticon toolbar http://mturkishdelight.blogspot.com/2011/06/turkop... has comments and ratings by other turkers on how quick specific requesters approve and pay out, as well as other info.
Hey how do I know if my hit was accepted or rejected when you submitted how much time does it takes for you to know?
No fb, only turk 4 me.
Made 1500$ in my past year, used it in my college fees.
@PaulGoodman67, about 5 months ago I found mturk on my own. Looking for help in finding good HITs etc, google gave me this article, and others, but I remember this one being particularly useful.
Now, I have decided to write my own articles on turk, and other work from home/make money from the web opportunities, and lo and behold I find your article again. I wasn't on HP at the time and forgot where your article was. So I write my first article and you show up on the side. I hope I provide a fresh perspective, and also I do not want to step on your tows too much!
I also wanted to say thanks a bundle for showing me some tips when I was getting started. I too now make $5-$30 a day with mturk, and have made much more (my best day was ~$100). Cheers!
Yeah! $640 per day??
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$640/day?!?!
hi all really it's good job.now i am doing perday 640us dollers.good nice
@PaulGoodman67 hey man can you tell me which hits did you do, because i made 5$ for 4 days and that is not much, please ? :)
Ok thanks
- Author
It takes hours at least before it shows in your account. Check again tomorrow.
So I just started using mturk and I've made about $1.35 lol but my account balance still says $0.00 why is that?
how exactly do u link your bank account to amazon?
- Author
I have no idea about being a turker in India, sorry.
hello sir,
i am from india. can i create an account here. if yes please tell me how?
- Author
Contact Amazon.
Hello Sir,
My account shows $15 as my earnings, but when I Click on account settings its showing current balance 0, it has been like that for 8 days and I am from India. what should I do?
I will be thankful to you for the information
Very nice list of tips for workers. Coming from the requester side, we have used Mechanical Turk successfully to support a wide range of business processes, from creating lots of seo content to completing various types of online data gathering. We have found that it pays to take the the time and effort to make sure that we are treating workers fairly. For other businesses interested in taking advantage of Mechanical Turk, we have summarized some our best tips here:
http://houdiniapi.com/2012/04/five-mechanical-turk...
If you have other tips for requesters on how to build good relationships with workers, please let us know!
Thanks for the help!
- Author
Yes, wait at least a couple of days before you think about complaining to Amazon. The minimum is $10 for transferring to a bank in the US. You can spend smaller amounts on Amazon.com, however.
I don't have any pending hits, they have all been approved. I'm in the US, do you think I should still wait a few days? Is there a minimum you can transfer?
- Author
I think you'll find that the money takes time to be transferred to your account settings after the hits are approved. It usually takes somewhere between a few hours and a day in the US, where I am. But it might take longer in other countries. That is the likeliest explanation from the info that you've given me.
When I'm on mturk my earnings are posted around $16, but when I go to account settings to transfer funds it says my current balance is zero. Any idea what I'm missing?
very nice and good hub.I am doing mturk
i was on mturk when i started to earn some extra money my boyfriend got interested, and he now wants to join. he will just do it in his spare time, would he be able to use my bank account to transfer his earnings, since i already linked that bank account to my mturk account.
if i have an account in at that time i can be paid
- Author
Amazon don't pay to PayPal. Here in the USA you either have to buy a product from the Amazon website with your Amazon credit, or transfer the money to a bank account to get cash. I can't really give you any advice for Bangladesh, sorry.
i am already working in it . i am bangladeshi resident . i made some income . but how to convert in cash or get in my paypal account . if u plz help me .
thx for ur good post
hello sir
I came across Amazon's MTurk site today, signed up, and then figured I'd better find out more before accepting a hit. Your hub was #1 in the SERPs for "tips on being an amazon mturk provider." This is excellent information and I'm glad I decided to do the research. Voted up and (very) useful.
what are the do and don'ts in mturk? plz explain
hello sir: i have a doubt, already a member in mturk,shall we accept more hits same time and do one by one? becoz hits are vanished quickly becoz of large amount of users. please reply
Turkopticon is slow. And I mean PSTN days slow. You can't register to their site, it took approximately 3 minutes and then gave me an error message, tried again another error and in the end a "page not found". I am going to use it for a while -without an account which I cant seem to make- but even looking at it on the mturk page drives me nuts. Its been 5-10 minutes that its trying to load the rating on a single hits page and I have a fast line.
Ive hired out to mturk before client a/b testing. I always intended to see what it was like from the other side. This gives me a feel for it, I think. I didnt realize they had surveys, gives me some ideas!
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Yes, if you get rejected too many times, you will get a bad hit acceptance rate and it can cause problems for you further down the line.
MTurk is my favourite as far as this type of site goes. However, I do think that the earnings are gradually being driven down over time. Microworkers in another site similar to MTurk, but it's smaller with less jobs.
Hi i just started Mturks, i've already made 45 cents. I have also learned how important it is to follow directions. I completed a survey and X'd out of it before i posted the redemption code!!!! I really appreciate this hub of yours. I see you have posted other sites. How do you think they compare to Mturks in the time:money ratio?
Yes, definitely mturk is 100% genuine.I have received few cheques from mturk.As an Indian I feel hardship in receiving payments,as they sent cheques and takes long time to arrive.Again it takes long time to get cash from bank.I request mturk management to arrange payments through paypal(verified a/c only).
Regards........
sir i dont know how to work in mturk. will u teach me
I started out on mturk last year. There was a content farm that consistently had assignments for around 200-300 words for various subjects at $1.80 a shot. I made around $100 and then the content farm started pulling some crap so I left. I have yet to come close to that on HubPages, but I definitely like the fact that I still own what I write.
Dear sir i am making a 0.44 $ in my mturk account but suddenly i am not geeting that hits which i am get i am just do the hit of oscar smith but today i am not geeting the oscar smith in the hits list so what we can do for that please tell me as soon as poosible becoz i am helpless i am not do this work it is very intersting work
Like Justin, also posted this to your blogger page. Paul-- I've gotta say that you have the best and most informative guides for the aspiring Turker! The more I Turk, the more I understand your tips.
If folks want a better sense of what it's like starting out, you can try following my Turking experiences here: http://turkingforfunandprofit.blogspot.com/
Thanks Paul for your valuable infos..I started HITTING!!!!
Sir,
The works I got most from Microworkers are rewriting articles. I think this is the online job which s suitable for me. Now a days, this type of work is not found in MW. Hw can I get these type of jobs at least 1 or 2 per day from MW or any other genuinely paying websites?
Happy X-Mas-)
Hi paul now i'am work mturk i need some job websites address!!!!!
* that was sometimes 50 cents, not 5 cents! I don't believe the 1-5 cent jobs are worth it for the time. I suppose some may say $1 isn't worth 15 mins either! But at least where surveys are involved, you're contributing to higher learning while getting pocket change ;)
I joined MTurk about a month ago. At first I thought it was a complete waste of time, but I've gotten addicted to it :) I'm a stay at home mom, while attending college part time. I spend about an hour or so on MTurk on most days. I always look for the college/university surveys. Yes, they pay poorly (about $1 a pop, sometimes 5 cents). But I've also found some that are $5 or more. They usually take about 15 mins of my time max. Besides finding them really interesting, I managed to make $80 in the past two weeks. As we're struggling to make ends meet, even this amount was a wonderful bonus to playing around with psychology surveys online. With the money I bought two new cell phones & Christmas gifts :) I find it helps to have something in mind. I'm working toward a Kindle now lol!
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@Stephanie - I think the surveys pay less and less as time goes on, although $1 surveys aren't uncommon. But you're right that most pay under 50 cents nowadays. (This is a downside with MTurk, wages get driven down and down!)
Generally speaking, writing quality doesn't have to be that great on MTurk, they usually want a fluent English writer (not a non-English speaker) and basic spelling and grammar - usually basic, high school level stuff.
The requesters make their own specifications though, at the end of the day.
Hi, I started amazon turk about 2 and a half weeks ago. My best day I made $13.19 on 57 HITS. I don't and haven't seen any legitimate surveys that pay more than a dollar for the most part. Usually only between .15 and .50 cents. I haven't attempted any writing surveys yet because i'm afraid that my work will be rejected. How high quality does the writing have to be? I'm not the best writer, but I can do an o.k. job usually.
Thanks for the article. I've actually been turking on and off for a while now and find that article writing and surveys are the quickest way to earn any kind of money. I'm not in it for any substantial money, but when there's a Blu Ray or a game I would like, I'll try to turk for a few days to raise a little extra money to spend at amazon and that's where I find it's biggest value for me.
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Amazon Mechanical Turk is a good way to earn extra money. Will you make enough to live off? Probably not. It is casual work and what is available varies from day to day.
wats this i really dont accept this...is there any proof
I just found out about "turking" today and thanks to your extremely helpful article I think I will give it a try
Do you have any idea? Qualifying as a worker for all hits!
Dear's what is the name of your favorite work in amazon Mechanical Turk
nicomp thank you
I searched for McDonald's but I didn't get it.
Thank you PaulGoodman
@ABOOBACKER : You can make $1-5/day at McDonald's, probably in less than an hour.
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