A lot of people may be unfamiliar with this
crowdsourcing market place, Mechanical Turk. But, if you are one of those who want to make
extra cash doing simple tasks, then you should definitely take time to know what Amazon Mechanical Turk is all about.
I have been using this site for a long time now, so in this post I’ll be going over how it works, what you should expect, and basically giving you a complete review of Amazon Mechanical Turk, so you can decide whether or not it’s worth it for you to pursue making money there.
What is Amazon Mechanical Turk?
AMT or short for
Amazon Mechanical Turk, is also referred to as Mturk. It is actually owned by no less than the Amazon corporation.
It is a place to sell jobs that cannot be completed by machines or computers, or simply put, tasks that require the human intelligence to be completed.
What is a HIT?
What is a HIT? Well, it stands for Human Intelligence Tasks, and it refers to tasks that need to be completed. You get paid for completing a task.
Tasks that will be assigned to you are relatively simple and can be completed quickly. In fact, majority of them can be finished in less than 20 to 30 seconds.
Lingo
Mturk has its own unique terms for some words and phrases:
- Hit – As explained above, a task/gig that you get paid to complete.
- Requester – The client, employer who posts a job and pays you to do it.
- Worker – The freelancer who works on hits.
Examples of Hits
- Say a company/website has thousands of images in archive. They want to organize these images so people can find them by searching with related terms and keywords. They go on Mturk and ask you to look at each image (as many as you want/can) and describe it in ten words or so for $0.07.
- A company is trying to find out how user-friendly their site is. They’ll post a “Hit” on Mturk, asking you to visit their website, spend 20 seconds looking and playing around, then come back and fill out a quick multiple-choice survey for $0.15.
- Identify the differences between 2 images that are seemingly identical by looking closely at both images.
- Another example – you will be asked to look at a specific photo within a page, and point out whether the image is an unlawful one or pornographic.
How Does Mturk Work?
Companies that have pending tasks that computers cannot complete, or needs human intervention for precision, post jobs in Mturk. Some of the jobs include writing reviews and detecting phonographic image, as well as examples I mentioned above.
Mturk works like the usual micro freelancing site. One must register, and start looking for tasks that you can do. Take note that tasks will be assigned to you without any contract.
Once you complete the task and submit the result, the client will go through it. If you did follow the direction given by the client, you get paid, if not your hit will be rejected.
I have been using Mturk both as a “Requester” and a “Worker” (requires two different accounts), and while as a requester I have had lots of clearly bad work done by workers, I haven’t had any problem as a worker myself. I have always gotten paid for my work.
That said, there are hundreds of thousands of individuals and companies that use the site. So, you never know who you’re dealing with. But these are (mostly) real legit companies. So if you do actually follow their direction and give them what they ask, you’ll get paid.
I never experienced any scam myself, but have heard of few folks who didn’t get paid despite doing everything right. But those are far and few in between. Plus, you can always report them to the site if you believe your submission was wrongfully rejected.
How Much Can You Actually Earn?
Some say that Mturk is the simplest way of making cash through the use of the internet.
But just a fair warning…
The pay for finishing tasks in Mturk may vary from the money one makes in holding conventional jobs. What if I ask you if you would be willing to get a job that only pays $0.10 per task finished?…
Of course, you would answer with a big NO. This may sound like a bad deal, but actually it is not. Because at Mturk, that $0.10 can actually turn into $10, $100, $1000, and so on.
Think about this. Let’s say you get a hit that pays $0.10, but that hit will only take you roughly 20 seconds to finish. Then let’s assume you work for an hour. Do the math, and then you’ll know that you can actually make $18 in an hour. Isn’t that more than what most make?
Also, take note that not all hits only pay $0.02 or $0.10. There are actually some chores that pay $3 to $4 per hit.
However, remember that competition for high paying hits can be quite stiff. Keep in mind that other workers would want these high-priced hits too. So, you have to be really fast in grabbing these hits. Consider refreshing your browser when searching for tasks to help you get those high paying hits.
Hits are posted continuously. So refresh that browser of yours since you’ll never know when a high paying hit is already being uploaded.
Bonus
Now, most requesters do pay bonuses as well for jobs well done. So, ensuring you do the job as it was requested is a great way to earn more than the actual rate stated for completing the hit.
Needless to say, depending on how much the hit pays, the bonus can be as low as a few cents to as high as $20-$30 (although bonuses above $20 are rare).
How Does Mturk pay?
Here is how the getting paid part of it works:
- You submit the completed hit.
- The client (or hit requester, as they are called on Mturk) approves it.
- Once your work is approved, the money will be automatically transferred to your amazon gift certificate account.
Once the money is there, you can either transfer the money straight to your bank account, or you can simply keep and add it to your Amazon.com gift certificate balance, and use it to pay whenever you shop on Amazon.
Is it a Scam?
Like many other online
money making methods, there are some people who think Mechanical Turk is a scam as well. But, it is not. It is a legitimate micro-freelancing job site backed by one of the biggest companies in the world.
What more proof you need for its legitimacy than the fact that it is owned by Amazon!
I personally use Mturk both as a “requester” and a “worker”, and I think it’s great for both parties.
As a requester, you can get small and repetitive that can not be automated using tools and software quick and on the cheap without having to hire a full-time employee. And as a worker, you can earn some extra cash by completing simple tasks whenever you have some free time without the fear of being scammed.