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Amazon Turk is a Mixture of Money and Entertainment

by Glenn Meyer
(San Francisco, CA, USA)

The money is definitely not the primary motivator. It’s not great, especially given where I live. But the tasks are interesting, and the variety is cool, and makes it worth accepting less money than I might make otherwise.

I’ve never tried to stay in touch with a human requester because a HIT was lucrative, but at least two websites so far have had provided the option to ‘upgrade’ from HITs to logging in directly to get work. I’m not sure how Amazon feels about that, but I’ve taken them up on it.

I did consider contacting the requester of one HIT, who incidentally appeared to be someone I’d get along with and lived in my area, but ultimately decided it would be a bit too weird. In general, the most lucrative HITs – not counting the endemic scams that one guy seems to post over and over at the top of the range – tend to be one-offs.

For example, one offered $3 to post 5 designs to Zazzle. I already had CafePress designs I’d been meaning to put on Zazzle anyway, so that was probably 15 minutes of work. Lucrative is pretty relative; the highest rate I can typically get is about $6/hr.

Mostly I do surveys, which tend to pay $3-6/hr if I do them quickly. That’s basically discounting overhead, though – I try to do one right after another, but often it takes too long to find another HIT that isn’t a scam, or already taken, or something I’m not qualified to do. I actually don’t know much about regular outsourcing.

Mostly I use Mechanical Turk because it’s kind of entertaining and I can do it from my bedroom. I’m not sure how outsourcing compares, but I’d be interested in doing similarly easy tasks for low but reasonable pay, if I could keep doing them at home whenever I feel like it. I wouldn’t really know how to start doing something like that.

Comments for Amazon Turk is a Mixture of Money and Entertainment

Jul 16, 2012 So this low pay is OK for you even if you are living in the US?
by: Francis It’s nice to read that the work on the Turk is actually worth it – if it’s fun enough to do.How some requesters allowed to “Upgrade” from a HIT to regular work is probably against the TOS of amazon’s service.

But I don’t think they did a bad thing. They should just not get caught. The guys from Amazon can get pretty fast with banning an account…

“Regular” outsourcing often means that you need to work at specific times – although you can work from home.

If you cannot cope with availabilites and deadlines, then indeed Mechanical Turk is better suited for your working style.

Good luck!
Jul 07, 2014 Jackpot
by: John It’s just like you’re doing it out of boredom or just as a pastime?Actually, in other countries, most tasks are paid less than a dollar. Getting HITs that’s more than a dollar is like hitting a jackpot.

In my own experience, I’ve never tried being paid more than a dollar—probably because I didn’t take much time with MTurk. 🙂

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Found a New Way of Making Money Online

by Name Not Disclosed
(July 16, 2012)

Well I just started doing this kind of work today. I am always trying to find a new way of making money, turns out this is not the one. I added it up and for a lot of the HITS I was only making $1.96 an hour.

That won’t cover my smokes while I am typing and clicking away. I work as an EMT (Emergency Medical Technician) so I do have some down time and that why I am doing this now, just kind of a game to see how much I can earn tonight.

It isn’t hard work but I feel like a tool at the end of the hour and I havn’t made enough to pay for my soda. But with that being said my real goal is to learn android apps, I am hoping that I will learn from my experiences on here and maybe get some apps built in the near future.

But to run you through my day so far as a Mechanical Turk I made my account and that part was pretty easy, then I started some tasks. I can’t believe that people work for 2 cents a job, It takes so long it is not even funny but we do it anyway and I am sure some little Indian boy is on here making his medical school payments but in the states it’s a joke.

I do like the work, it is kind of like playing a game just to see how much I can earn and if it pays out or rejects my. I do think that a lot of these are a waste of time but what the heck so are angry birds.

I did do one that claimed to give me 2.50 for a survey, we will see if that pans out. Well, I hope you enjoyed reading this and I look forward to my 80 cents!

Comments for Found a New Way of Making Money Online

Jul 16, 2012 interesting. But respect other countries too
by: Francis About the little indian boy – that’s hardly appropriate.

Probably there is a person working even harder than most of us (US-based or EU-based readers) can imagine.

—

But that aside: I doubt that working on the Turk is a good start in working on app developement. Perhaps you should try to build a profile on a real outsourcing site, like Odesk.

You should have better chances to learn by doing about app developement if you actually do that.

Or are there many app related HITs on Mechanical Turk?
Jun 12, 2014 Ill-treatment
by: Jomvie It is nice to know that there are available jobs that people can hop on anytime they want. But, what’s so totally wrong in this situation is that people who work for these low paying scheme works are ill-treated.