Mechanical Turk: Complete Guide to Make Money on Mturk

One of the few websites that pay for your hard work is Mechanical Turk – though it can be small for many people across the world. But it’s still worth a few hours of your time to work on some fun HITs or task.

One thing which is good about Mturk is that there is no fixed time that you should allot to work. It’s like you’re your own boss at Mturk. Plus no phone calls to make or to respond emails. Any time of the day you can log on to your account and start your work, but depends on the type of HITs available at that point of time

Work available is plenty, most of the time to the tune of lakhs (hundred thousand) of HITs. Task that reward from 1 cent to 10 dollars. While most experienced turkers advice not to work on tasks that pay .01 cent. To a new comer the lowest paying HITs is a way to spend some time on doing HITs as well as getting familiar to the interface and the site workflow.

Now for many people who are looking to make money on the Internet and yet haven’t found a genuine website that pays, Mechanical Turk can be the first time that you earn money online. Withdrawing money is prerogative of yours. There is no fixed schedule for withdrawing money; it can be done anytime that you like.

Now let us consider two types of persons that might consider working on Mechanical Turk.

• Exclusively looking to make money on the Internet.
• Looking to make a part-time income on the Internet.

Generating a Full-time Income Online

For those who are looking to make a full-time or close to that income on the Internet should consider Mturk only as a part of the whole strategy apart from writing articles on revenue sharing websites such as Hubpages, Squidoo etc. and maintaining their own site.

It’s true that writing articles and maintaining their niche sites is the top way to earn money online, but considering that nobody can write all day along, Mturk is a way to spend some time doing other task. Look to start small by spending some time on Mturk. Slowly and steadily anyone can make at least USD 100 to USD 200 provided you work daily. Not good but not bad at all.

For a Part-time Income

For part-time workers Mturk is really fun to work, consider spending 1-2 hours daily and increase that time at the weekends. Also on weekends the numbers of HITs also go up. Target of USD 100 for the first month is a good start.

 

10 Points to Keep in Mind.

1. If it’s your first month consider doing HITs which pay less i.e. 1 or 2 cents. Some HITs are adequately priced even at 1 cent such as a requester might tell you to type an 8-digit number from an image in to the form.
2. As your experience grows try doing only HITs that pay more than one cent. Avoid task which you feel are inappropriately priced. This time your target should be to at least to make three dollars for every work of hour.
3. Beware of scammers. HITs which require to sign up or ask for personal details should be completed avoided. The task which pay exorbitant reward should also be shunned as they are most probably by scam requester.
4. Read the Help section and understand which types of HITs are genuine. Task which require creating accounts on third party sites also violate the policies of Mturk; even if the requester pays adequately and promptly. Report HITs that are against the terms and conditions of MTurk from the link “violates the Amazon Mechanical Turk Policies”.
5. Test the requester before doing large number of HITs. Do a small number of HITs from a requester to check if he pays properly.
6. Install Turkopticon add-on to your browser. Add-on exists for Firefox and Google Chrome. Using Google chrome will be helpful because its low on memory and is a fast browser compared to others. If you are using Internet Explorer there does not exist a similar add-on. This add-on is a gem; it gives other turkers reviews on a requester who has worked for the requester. Do the same and help in expanding the add-on by adding your reviews.
7. Surf mturkforum.com for more information on the happenings, and what others have to say about their experiences, also share your experience; ask questions if you have an issue.
8. Contact a requester if you feel you have been cheated. Very few requesters will respond. Often times it’s a futile exercise, but still consider it to explain your concerns.
9. Never try to scam Mturk by creating more than one account for a person. Creating more than one account will lead to closing of all accounts and all the earnings will be forfeited. No further explanations are provided. Even though it's not mandatory but operate a single account from a house or IP address; it creates confusion among the fraud detection department of MTurk which may lead to cancellation of accounts.
10. Work daily in order to make it a viable amount of money at the end of the month. At the most transfer or request money only after 15 days, though not mandatory. Don't get discouraged by negative reviews from other turkers and consider it as fun way to make money.

So, by keeping the above mentioned points in your mind you can definitely make the most of your free time and earn money.

Happy Turking!