Anyone making money from Amazon's MTurk?

11 replies
Working on Human Intelligence Tasks (HITS) seems fairly mind-numbing to me, especially when you check out the rates being paid.
Is there a secret to maximising earnings here? Doing jobs multiple times?

Here is a job page on Amazon Mechanical Turk Program for reasons of clarity.
#amazon #making #money #mturk
  • Profile picture of the author Michelle Strait
    I just found out about this website. Crowdsource asked me to take a test to qualify for their tasks. I took the test, but haven't heard anything.

    The rates for most of the tasks there are ridiculous. You'd have to do 50 tasks to earn $1. But some of the tasks are so quick and easy, they're not worth more than a few cents. For instance, I found a task that wants me to search a keyword on Google, and copy and paste the first website into a database.

    I hope to hear back from Crowdsource because they have some of the highest paying tasks. You just have to pass their test before you can accept any assignments.
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    • Profile picture of the author WFAlex
      I don't know either how workers maximize their earnings there - I just used it successfully in the past to get a US editor (!) to rewrite about 40 articles for me at about $3 each! I ended up paying her more off-site because she really did a fantastic job but you got to wade through lots of fakes and time wasters in order to get the good stuff.

      Make sure to use very clear descriptions and ask for some kind of code word when they post the job - if they don't mention the word, you'll know they haven't really read the job description.

      Others just copy and paste stuff in there (I guess that's how they "maximize" their earnings...quantity instead of quality and hoping that employers are stupid enough to just accept everything).
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  • Profile picture of the author J Bold
    I don't see how anyone can make money there. The benefit is for the buyers, not the workers there.
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    • Profile picture of the author Tina Golden
      Originally Posted by J Bold View Post

      I don't see how anyone can make money there. The benefit is for the buyers, not the workers there.
      I wouldn't recommending working there forever, but it's an easy way for a newbie to get the money for their first domain or their first month of hosting or an autoresponder.
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  • Profile picture of the author warfornev
    I signed up for it and was shocked and amazed to see the pay offered for stuff. Like 5 cents or 16 cents. I saw one job offering 145$ to transcribe 6 hours of video. I wonder how long that would take me ... 4x? 5x? Even 4x (24 hours) is phew, like 6$ per hour. mTurk seemed promising, but yikes, many jobs listed in cents. I thought the worker competition must be India, but many of the jobs say "must be in USA".

    I'd love to find something part-time. I'm a super-techie, just not sure how to capitalize on it. I've build a dozen computers, put up a dozen websites, built phone networks, and have a Cisco certificate. Any ideas better than mTurk?
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  • Profile picture of the author twister85
    They Rejected My application when signed up for the mturk.
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  • Profile picture of the author rmolina88
    I made a total of 2 cents after a month of doing it.

    What a waste of my time that was.
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    • Profile picture of the author thehobbster
      Originally Posted by rmolina88 View Post

      I made a total of 2 cents after a month of doing it.

      What a waste of my time that was.
      And you kept working on it for a whole month? Lol.
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      • Profile picture of the author rmolina88
        Originally Posted by thehobbster View Post

        And you kept working on it for a whole month? Lol.
        I was pretty desperate back in the day. I even did survey sites! :rolleyes:
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        • Profile picture of the author lucidbs
          IF you not live in the third world countries, it wont' make it with mturk. People have brokered tasks using mturk along with fiverr with 3rd world countries workers.
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  • Profile picture of the author furca
    People on mturkforum.com are making hundreds of dollars per day...

    Check out the daily thread for the best hits: Can't Find Great HITS? 6/6 Thundercats Thursday Edition
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