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by Tina Botwin
(Calgary, Alberta, Canada)

1. I’m motivated to work on Mechanical Turk for a little bit of extra spending money. My husband and I recently bought our first home – a fixer-upper – so we’re mortgage poor. MTurk allows me to purchase some items off Amazon that enhance our home without the money coming from our already strapped chequing account.
2. The most unusual HIT I’ve done is one that asked me to say a prayer for this gentleman and the woman he loved to get back together. It gave words to say and then had to record your voice saying them. The prayer also asked for good fortune for the MTurker completing it and paid pretty good for a short, quick HIT so I did it.
3. Some of the most lucrative HITS I’ve had is writing short articles that include certain keywords. Generally you have to write up to 200 words and include a short phrase within that, word-for-word (e.g. include the phrase “orthopedic dog bed”). These HITs generally pay $0.50, but you can really write anything, as long as it isn’t plagiarized, so it doesn’t take very long to do.
4. I find there’s a lot of HITS that expect you to do a lot for very little. There are HITS that pay just a couple of cents that can take forever, like going through a series of 100 photos to determine if they meet certain rules of decorum. I try to avoid these.
5. I probably make about $2/hour. I strive to make $1 per day. Some days that’s easy if there are a lot of good well-paying HITS that I qualify for and some days it’s not.
6. I like the flexibility of MTurk. I’m not committed to anyone in any way. It’s something I can do while I have time to do it and drop when it’s no longer working for me.

Comments for I Got Paid for My Prayer on Mechanical Turk

by A Turker from India
(July 17, 2012)

Mechanical Turk has been a blessing for me since one year. I am an Indian from Kerala state. An institution of my state was providing guidance for working. I was not having money for joining the course.

I borrowed the amount from my friend and joined for Amazon. I was not sure whether this is going to work. I just trusted in God. The first few days I was very sad that I did not receive any HIT.

Later I started working for each and every work. I was surprised by the change. I started up doing a 1 cent job. There were many other jobs but I was not sure whether I would be able to complete those.

Then I started working an essay and many more. Within 3 weeks I was able to earn a 70 dollar. I was happy.

70 dollar was a good amount in Indian rupees.

I was able to repay the whole amount which I borrowed.

When my first cheque came I was shouting with great joy. I thanked my God for his blessings. I used to wake up early and sleep late. My brother also helped me at my work. The surprise I had was when I played a game and won 5 dollars.

I could not imagine I got money for playing a game. The best HITs I love to do are surveys and games. I am among the one who takes surveys seriously. The more money I got the more I was interested in working.

But now a day I do not get any work. My earnings have reduced to a great extent. I am not able to understand the reason. I do not keep any relation with the requestors. Normally I work for at least 2 hours, but previously I used to work at least for 5 hours.

I am happy that I earn my pocket money or even more sometimes. I always wanted to thank the founder of Amazon. You have helped me a lot when I was in need of money.

Comments for Mechanical Turk Helps Me to Earn My Pocket Money

by Arun
(Limassol, Cyprus)

Few months ago, I read about Nasubi, a Japanese comedian who was locked in a room for a reality show until he managed to win ¥1 million on mail-in sweepstakes. I found that very interesting & tried to find out ways by which I can make money JUST using internet.

I wanted to see, how long it would take me to win/earn 500$ on the internet. Within few hours of research, I came across M-Turk & it seemed interesting. So, for me, sure, the money is a good incentive, but so is this personal “Nasubi-inspired-mission”.

I found that it is a good way to kill boredom too, some of the tasks are even addictive. I have done quite a few weird HITs, there were few in which I was asked to make accounts & vote for some people in online polls. There are others which ask me to write fake reviews of businesses.

I did some, but soon hated myself for it – I was actually helping someone to cheat. Anyway, this guilt didn’t last long as I rationalized this as : The genius who decided to use Mechanical Turk, deserves to win because he knows how to win.

There are few requestors with whom I shared some emails. One of them posts very technical HIT (which requires Java experience), so I guess he doesn’t get many. I was interested in the work he was doing, we exchanged some emails for a while. There are few tasks which deal with mathematics, they pay good money (& great bonus).

On one day, I made more money than what I would make in ~45 days because of these HITs. Unfortunately, we don’t get those often. I still search for them every day, perhaps they would post it again. On most other days, HITs with “survey”/”study” in them are easy to do.

When I need to improve my approval ratio, I fall back on “Oscar Smith,” they take time/effort, but he never rejects. When I find HITs which pay more than 15 cents & which have allotted time more than one hour, I accept them all before working on one of them.

This ensures that the HITs are not gone & I would have time to work on all of them. As for the last question you posed. Well, I already have a regular job – which pays well. I Mechanical Turk for at most 2-3 hours in a day. Also, since I don’t live in the USA, I am left with very low-paying HITs, so it will be silly to quit job for this.

Comments for Nasubi-Inspired-Mission on Amazon Mechanical Turk

by Kevin Martin
(Ontario, Canada)

What motivates me (30 year old) to work on Mechanical Turk is the money, as well as having something to do when I am bored at home. I was one of those people that sat around all day reading random pages on the internet looking for things to do.

With Mechanical Turk I can have fun helping others complete jobs as well as get paid to do it! The most unusual HIT I have done was one that required me to look at the screen and move my head around mimicking one already on the screen.

I had my camera turned on and was recorded as I made all sorts of silly head tilts and bobs. It gave me a good laugh when it was over. I have not been able to get in touch with a requester as of yet.

I have sent out two different requests to requesters to let me know if they have any other work I could do and that I really enjoyed them. I have not yet received a reply. I am still pretty new to Turk, but the most lucrative job I had was to look at still pictures of a patch of land and make a little box around any squirrel I saw.

I believe it was only two cents a click, but it only took about 6 seconds – 25 seconds per picture. All of them being the same minus the squirrel made it go much quicker as you were more and more able to see the little guys standing out.

The second best one was where I had to play a simple number game against another random person. It was about 10 minutes long and we had quite the battle. When the HIT completed we were told we got a 3$ bonus. Was very fun and good money with a nice surprise at the end waiting for us.

The task that really turned out to be negative was one that wanted me to go on a webpage and give advice on it. It only paid a penny and after giving a few suggestions with links to explain why I thought what I thought and examples it was denied with a “No effort” tag.

I spent a good five minutes and wrote a small paragraph only to get denied a penny. I will be avoiding that person and line of work from now on.

I only make roughly a dollar an hour at this time.

I know it is small but, I am still pretty new and I am under the 500 HIT mark so I cannot accept any of the bigger HITs yet that requires more than I have. I also have pending qualification tests that if I get I will be able to take better jobs.

Besides Mechanical Turk, I would not know where to look for freelancing work. I like Mechanical Turk because I can do it on my break at work or for fun on and off after work. I have a very broad range of jobs I can do so it keeps me entertained. If I was offered a side job though, chances are I would take it.

Comments for I live in Canada, Earn $1 Per Hour, Still I am Happy 🙂

by An Anonymous worker from Mechanical Turk
(July 17, 2012)

I am motivated to work on this site by money, but more so by the ability to lessen the amount of money I spend on entertainment as a whole. I have a set monthly budget on my spending and at times it was not enough to do everything I wanted in that month.

This allows me to add in more money to that monthly amount so I can spend more, or in some months spend less from my normal check due to the extra funds.

There was a HIT on morality, it would ask you weird questions then ask if you thought it was right or wrong basically.

One HIT was very disturbing and had a story about a kid with a kitten. The kitten would walk across his lap and the kid got excited and started to rub the kitten on his crotch. The HIT then asked if this was morally wrong or not.

I have not stayed in touch with any requester, but I do recognize some names now and will gravitate towards their HITs. I find and I do enjoy working with groups I am familiar with.

Most lucrative HITs tend to be quick surveys, but I have made the most off of Google results. There was a HIT that had you Google a keyword then paste the most relevant search result. It was $0.10 but only took a few seconds and had thousands of hits listed for it.

I was able to make a few quick bucks in no time just taking more and more hits from that group. Surveys are very hit and miss, some take far more time than they lead you to believe in the description. I was stuck on one for almost an hour and got very little pay out for it.

Other than that anything requiring video seems to take longer than it should. I currently make about $1 an hour. I do a few hits back-to-back and then go away for a while.

The people who referred me to this site make about $6 an hour so I am pretty sure I am doing something wrong. I guess I didn’t know that was an option and I have no clue how to get into something like that.

Comments for My Overview of Different HITs completed on Mechanical Turk

by Tejas
(Bangalore, India)

Mechanical Turk is a very good site to earn money; I enjoy working here and earn money whenever I get free time. I love earning here because I sometimes learn new things like checking Amazon website or going to Google and doing and doing research there.

I feel that M Turk is the best place to earn small money in free time; I do Oscar business card regularly and I participate in surveys. The good thing about M Turk is the worker can select the HIT any time and there is no target to be reached.

Or there is no limit to do certain task. Here the person can earn something for enjoyment, like I earn money and enjoy spending them for my luxury than spending my parents’ money. Sometimes some funny HITs come around like the one I remember is “TRACE THE DOTS” I was being paid for enjoyment, it tested my concentration and gave me money for my effort.

The Mechanical Turk site is really innovative to give opportunity to common people do some unusual task than rather making us participating in some scam website.

Here we get paid for our work, and the amount is good for that task, if we are not satisfied with the amount then we have an option to ignore the HIT.

I earn approx. 2.5 dollars in 1hr, I hardly spend 1.5 hour a day. I do this M Turk as part-time when I am bored or have no other work, it makes me feel proud that I am earning for my satisfaction.

3$ is not much when it comes to USD, but in INR its 56Rs Indian currency, it’s like I earn Rs. 3500 per month, this money is satisfactory for me if I have given my 100% efficiency for 1hr for 30 days.

I love M Turk and love to do more HITs as much as possible, I am interested in doing research HITs because it makes me know about new things. Mechanical Turk is a place where small people do small task but get more returns.

Comments for Mechanical Turk – From the Eyes of An Indian Turker