$1936 While the Baby Sleeps? My Review of Amazon Mechanical Turk

Amazon’s Mechanical Turk program is a marketplace for labor that requires a human touch. The available jobs (Human Intelligence Tasks, or HITs) range from surveys to data entry to recording your facial expressions via webcam. These jobs don’t pay much but if you’re looking for a way to earn during your downtime, keep reading.

How does one get accepted to MTurk? It’s quite easy to sign up, although whether you are accepted is up to the fates. It seems, from my reading, that there really isn’t a rhyme or reason. The people who are let in are all 18+ individuals who have previously filed tax returns. (Note: While Amazon does allow people from Canada, India, the UK, and elsewhere to join, I am going to be discussing my experience as a US-based Turker. If you are from outside the United States, please look into whether MTurk will pay you in cash or gift cards before you sign up, as these differ depending on your country.)

What do you need? A taxpayer ID (you can get an EIN if you are uncomfortable giving Bezos your SSN) and a device are the bare minimum. Many surveys require desktops or laptops, and I really suggest getting a mouse instead of a trackpad. Sometimes requestors want people to test apps or sites on specific mobile operating systems or devices. Sometimes you need a microphone or a webcam. Sometimes they want you to take a picture of a specific item in your home.

How do you get paid? Unless your work is rejected (more on that later), you are paid up to 30 days after you perform the work. Your work will almost always be approved long before 30 days, and you will be paid within 12 hours of approval. You can either transfer to an Amazon gift card or to your new Amazon Payments Account. You will need to link your bank account to it (credit cards won’t work). Amazon say the transfer takes 5-7 business days, but it generally takes one day to hit my account.

When you first sign up for MTurk, you are on probation for ten days. During that period, you may not transfer money and you may not do more than 100 jobs a day. Amazon has tiers of workers based on how many approved hits they have. I found MTurk  to be a real struggle for the first 1000 hits, partially because I was still learning about things like browser extensions and what tasks I performed most efficiently. In addition, some requestors prefer to work with people who have completed a certain number of hits successfully, and 1000 is the magic number for some. I did not notice much difference at 5000 hits, although I seemed to receive a substantial increase in the number of jobs for which I was eligible at 10,000. There is a final tier at 50,000.

Is it worth it, overall? Well, a U.N. study recently found that earners on five microtask platforms, including MTurk, averaged $4.43 an hour. Once searching for work and researching requestors was taken into account, the figure shrank to $3.31. I have had writing tasks that paid $12 an hour, and then I’ve done jobs where I ended up below $2 an hour (mostly surveys). And I have indeed spent quite a lot of time refreshing the page in hopes of seeing something new.

MTurk is not a viable work at home solution on its own. It has become part of my routine to check MTurk after I put my daughter down at night and I am usually able to pick up a few dollars that way.

Taxes and Other Legal Stuff

You will owe taxes on what you earn at the end of the year. Amazon will report your income to the IRS. Please consult a tax professional regarding your liability.

Occasionally, you will see a requestor ask for something that goes against MTurk’s TOS. I do not recommend doing jobs in which the requestor asks you to do something unethical. If you leave a fake Yelp review, you may not get paid because Amazon will scrap the entire HIT. If you leave a fake review on Amazon, you will have your account suspended.

Please note that while I do receive a commission from affiliate purchases, I do not receive any bounty if you join MTurk.

Starting MTurk

You will need to apply here. I was accepted and Turking in about two days, but I have heard stories of others who had to wait longer, fax documents, etc. I believe those experiences were atypical.

After you reply to the acceptance email, you should start poking around on the forums and subreddits. They will give you more up-to-date information on bad requestors, easy HITs, and browser extensions.

You will also need to install some of these scripts and extensions. The ones I currently have installed are MTurk Suite, Turkopticon, HIT Forker, and Block Requestors. Most of these can be found on Greasy Fork. You will need to install a browser extension called Greasemonkey. These scripts can also be run by browser extensions called Tampermonkey and Violentmonkey, but I have not used either.

Please note that these browser extensions are not available to mobile phone users.

Finding HITs

I highly recommend grabbing at least a couple of browser extensions. The three that are most useful to me are MTurk Suite, HITForker, and Turkopticon. I like being able to sift out jobs for which I don’t qualify (although new Turkers may want to stop running extensions every so often to see what qualifications they could grab). I also like being able to block certain requestors. And it is very helpful to be able to see what previous Turkers have thought of a given requestor.

When you first sign up, there isn’t a whole lot available to you. I do not recommend doing big batches unless you know the requestor you’re working with does not reject often.

As time goes on, more and more qualifications will be open to you and you will figure out what your strengths and preferences are. I don’t like data entry and I’m bad at transcribing voices. You may not like doing writing tasks or surveys.

As stated above, it’s better to err on the side of caution when you’re a new Turker. A new Turker can very easily dip below 90% approved and lose out on a lot of jobs.

Qualifications

Requestors can place qualifications on who can do their jobs. Sometimes, there is a qualification test–I really recommend new Turkers take as many of those as possible. You may view the qualifications you have by clicking the Qualifications tab on your Dashboard.

Requestors may want Turkers from certain states or countries, Turkers who have completed a certain number of hits, or Turkers who have a certain percentage of approved hits.

One qualification that is often seen is Masters only. There are very few people on MTurk who have this qualification, and it is rarely handed out.

Another qualification I recommend new users jump on when they see is the Adult Content Qualification. While there are some HITs that have explicit nudity, requestors often warn about adult content when they are dumping batches of words or images, or when they’re using user-generated content that they have not manually checked. On one of these HITs, you may find yourself looking at images of electrical parts. Or jackets. Or lines of PG dialogue.

With that said, dating app and pornography companies do use MTurk and if you do not want to risk accidentally accepting their HITs, make sure you use a browser extension that allows you to block those requestors.

Freebies, Bonuses, and Rejections

Recently, Amazon has begun allowing requestors to post free jobs. So unless you’re looking for volunteer opportunities, don’t click those. Sometimes these requestors offer bonuses. However, they are not bound by Amazon to pay you bonuses. I have always received bonuses promised to me, but if I hadn’t, I would have no recourse.

Rarely, you receive rejections. I have 12000+ HITs accepted and 24 rejected. Most of the rejects were from a batch I did early on. (Keep reading and I will teach you how to avoid this.) Other reasons I have been rejected include filling out the same answer for too many of the survey questions (but they asked me the same question in 5 different ways!), filling out surveys too quickly, and putting in someone’s initials when the survey taker wanted me to use their full name. Really.

If you receive a rejection that you feel was in error, politely contact the requestor to dispute it. If they don’t? There is nothing you can do except leave a review on sites such as Turkopticon and /r/mturk.

Note: When talking to requestors, you have to be very aware of the language you are using. Amazon does have an automatic system that flags abusive terms and will threaten users with account suspension if they use those terms. If you are messaging a requestor regarding a HIT that uses such language, it may be possible to slip up.

How to Avoid Bad Requestors

How do you avoid getting caught up in a bad batch? I have already mentioned checking Turkopticon ratings. If you have the browser extension, all you need to do is hover over the symbol by the requestor’s name. If they have several rejects, avoid. Some requestors will jam many tasks on one hit and reject if you miss one. New requestors can also be risky. Depending on your comfort level and percentage of HITs approved, you may prefer to avoid them. Personally, I tend to do a few and kick myself later when they all approve.

Another dirty requestor trick is to make you take a survey and then “screen you out” after you have answered many questions beyond demographics. These are rare but you should always report them to Amazon, as this violates the MTurk TOS.

A third type of bad requestor, very common unfortunately, pays very badly for the work they ask for. Twenty cents for a half hour survey about sexual assault. Fifty cents for an hour of logic puzzles. Five cents to find a blogger’s email address and phone number (which you spend five minutes looking for but never manage to find).

How Much Can You Earn?

Well, it took me six months to earn $1936. I made a lot of money when writing tasks were offered. At other times, it was a real struggle to find anything worth doing.

Some users claim to earn $50+ each day but unless they are sitting at the computer 24 hours a day, scraping and refreshing, I do not know how they’re doing it.

Remember that UN study I told you about earlier? They weren’t lying. I feel like the norm for me is $3-4 an hour, punctuated by a few $11-14 an hour days. Sometimes you start a hit and don’t realize how much work you will have to perform, either because of lengthy surveys or paginated hits (screen after screen of receipts, for example).

When Amazon launched the program in 2005, it was suggested that workers be paid the equivalent of $6 an hour, at a time when the federal minimum wage was $5.15 an hour. Thirteen years later, some requestors still fail to pay that much. Amazon releasing volunteer opportunities into our midst might catch some Turkers unaware and bring the wage further down still.

My thoughts, after five months and $1866, are that MTurk is a fairly painless way to pick up a few extra dollars. It’s great for people who can’t exactly leave their kids at home while they work a part-time job. But there are times when it has felt quite exploitative. I actually get angry when I consider how much some of these requestors want in exchange for $4 an hour or less, especially since there are people who rely on MTurk to help pay their bills. We devalue labor in this country and it is unfortunate that many requestors share that view.

This is my first side hustle review. What did you think? Did you fall asleep? Did I explain everything clearly? Let me know in the comments!