by Francis
(June 29, 2012.)
To illustrate how it is liked to post a job on the Mechanical Turk, here is an example task I have outsourced to this service.
I wanted a list of scary games for a scary games party EBook I wanted to create around Halloween. So I asked several Turkers in a HIT to write me 300 words of content about scary games.
Mechanical Turk is probably the cheapest service you can get for content creation, but it works if you use some tricks.
Check out the job description first:
Describe some really scary games for a sleepover!
Do you just love getting scaring the heck out of your friends? Do you know many, many entertaining – but scary as hell – games? Do you perhaps have a nice side story to contribute to your favorite game? Then you are the right person for this HIT!
I am looking for some creative scary games written in your own words.
Include details of how to play, for which audience it is suited, and if you need any accessories for it. The more interesting games you describe, the better!
- Please write at least 300 words of content. All submissions will be checked for word length.
- The game can be described for teens or adults. When it’s for an adult, it *really* has to be scary.
- In addition to the game descriptions, please provide a name (does not have to be your own) and a country/state/city (does not have to be the one you are living in) to go along with the games.
It is most important that you describe your games yourself. Do not copy some games from the internet! All content will be double checked for plagiarism. Copied content will be rejected!
***NOTE*** Only submissions that follow the above guidelines will be considered for approval.
Please provide feedback on your HIT via this textbox:
By the way, I paid about 80c per HIT for this specific task. You always need to follow through if you say that you are going to check content with Copyscape, as I did.
Note that with Copyscape each search costs you 5 cents which is an additional cost to that of the Mechanical Turk HIT.
Another lesson I learned the hard way on Mechanical Turk is that you are not allowed asking the personal info. That is why in my job description I wrote that “your name does not have to be your real one” and “the location does not have to be where you live”.
I just wanted to have some author name to go with each story, even if it wasn’t a real. In the end, I got a pretty decent collection of great scary games for an eBook with this HIT for less than $10. I am pretty sure you can come up with some useful ideas how you can use the Mechanical Turk, too.
| Jul 09, 2014 | Mturk stuff This is actually a great idea of investing your little stuff with MTurk. But, I don’t think nor dream of going back as a HIT maker.. 😀 Honestly, you’ll be amazed how wide the variations of stuff you will see and outsource on MTurk and no matter how little the offer, they’ll just gonna get it. |
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