Making Money With Amazon Mturk?

[ViperDove]

Do you think Amazon mturk is a good way to make money? I have tried it before without much success. But I’m not concluding yet because the amount you make depends on your skills and how fast you can complete tasks. What was your experience with mturk like?

 

[sawdust45]

It's not much. I don't want to mislead you and make you think that it's a lot of money. It really isn't. I've heard that if you do it long enough, then eventually you can make it a reasonable part-time job, but you have to go through a lot of low-paying tasks, like hundreds of them, and only get about a couple hundred dollars from it after way too many hours of work.

If you need a way to pay for gifts for friends and families for birthdays and the holidays, then it's a good place to save up money for those types of things, but definitely wouldn't depend on mTurk on any livable income. If you're a writer, like a good writer, who can write quickly, then sure, you can make a pretty good buck at it, but for the most part it's just data entry and repetitive tasks that pay like five to ten cents a pop.

 

[shellyann36]

With MTurk it takes a while to build up your rating level and get the little jobs that pay better than most. I find that it helps to set a goal there. One of the work at home forums I frequent had a daily thread concerning MTurk and they would stop in each morning and set a goal for the day. I think this helped them to acheieve their goals. They had the support of the other members of the forum encouraging them to reach their goals as well as people who would post their successes or not so successful attempts for the day. One lady had an interesting technique that I will share. Her technique was very simple. Her first goal was to earn $1 a day from MTurk every day for a month. If she earned more than $1 that was great but it was a small goal. After the first month she was accustomed to the site and upped her goal to $5 per day. She was quite successful at this.

 

[Murray]

To jump onto what Shelly is saying; you have to trudge your way through 5,000 smaller tasks to get to higher paying tasks. The thing about MTurk in the beginning is that as you do tasks you're going to lag on what's accepted/not accepted because you're learning what you can do quickly, what you need to do to get to eventually higher paying tasks and trying to make sure everything is quality and accepted.

Shelly is right about setting a goal. Hitting a $1 goal per day is a great idea, you'll eventually get to the point where you'll get higher paying things you can do.

Unfortunately, I've seen some of my friends make the most money when adult sites post their needs on MTurk which is up to you if you accept it or not, but gotta put food on the table and tires on the cars you know.

 

[Kristy]

I use mTurk but I've never made a whole lot (last month I made about $47, I think) but then again I just do it sporadically. I don't work it like a job. Some people do but those people are usually able to do stuff like transcription and writing and stuff like that. I've given transcription a shot and it's harder than you would think so that doesn't work for me. And I love to write but only about things I like. There is a site I always check out before getting on there called TurkAlert.com and people post the good tasks that are worth doing on there. It saves you the trouble of digging through all the tasks to find them.

I also have a browser extension that shows you ratings of requesters so you can see if they are really bad about rejecting work and stuff like that.

 

[Sugarhill]

You have to take a little time to find the tasks that you can do in the least amount of time for the most amount of money. It took me about a week to find a task like that last year, but then they changed how they wanted it done, so it wasn't worth it anymore.

But, there are tasks and requesters that if you get in with them, they will always have work for you.

 

[Jodiann12]

I would like to thank Christy for her suggestions related to using turkalert.com to find meaningful jobs at Amazon Mechanical Turk, and I would also like to thank Shellyann36 for her suggestions about setting a goal first before doing any jobs on Amazon Mturk. I'm not an American but I do have a social security number which I got while working in the States on a J1 Visa. I wanted to join but changed my mind when many people said that you couldn't make much money from the site, and I looked at the set up of the site, and I looked as if it was true. I will bear these suggestions in mind and try to find out more about it before I join. Thanks again!

 

[shellyann36]

To jump onto what Shelly is saying; you have to trudge your way through 5,000 smaller tasks to get to higher paying tasks. The thing about MTurk in the beginning is that as you do tasks you're going to lag on what's accepted/not accepted because you're learning what you can do quickly, what you need to do to get to eventually higher paying tasks and trying to make sure everything is quality and accepted.

Shelly is right about setting a goal. Hitting a $1 goal per day is a great idea, you'll eventually get to the point where you'll get higher paying things you can do.

Unfortunately, I've seen some of my friends make the most money when adult sites post their needs on MTurk which is up to you if you accept it or not, but gotta put food on the table and tires on the cars you know.

I have not been to MTurk in several months. I had no idea that they had adult sites posting jobs there now. :redface: But like you said if money needs to be made then there you go.

I would like to thank Christy for her suggestions related to using turkalert.com to find meaningful jobs at Amazon Mechanical Turk, and I would also like to thank Shellyann36 for her suggestions about setting a goal first before doing any jobs on Amazon Mturk. I'm not an American but I do have a social security number which I got while working in the States on a J1 Visa. I wanted to join but changed my mind when many people said that you couldn't make much money from the site, and I looked at the set up of the site, and I looked as if it was true. I will bear these suggestions in mind and try to find out more about it before I join. Thanks again!

Yes turkalert.com is great. I actually forgot about it. It will save you the time of working for companies that don't pay or give everyone a hard time about what they turn in. All online earning is a process but MTurk is a reputable company and once you get the hang of it you can make some decent money. Set goals and work on it daily.

 

[dannyboy]

It is going to take time to really get any financial benefit from Amazon Mturk. If you are looking at that site as just a small side venture, then i guess i could say go for it. But honestly you are not going to make any decent money from there. I tried, but it just was not worth it in the end for me.

 

[Trista]

I would like to thank Christy for her suggestions related to using turkalert.com to find meaningful jobs at Amazon Mechanical Turk, and I would also like to thank Shellyann36 for her suggestions about setting a goal first before doing any jobs on Amazon Mturk.

Likewise, I appreciate all of the tips and pointers. It's very helpful. Many thanks!

I joined MTurk a couple of months ago, but I had not gotten started as I was looking to find a strategy for maximizing my time. turkalert.com is a fantastic resource; I can tell already. Going through those pages of tasks on my own was very daunting to say the least. But now I have some direction as I would ultimately want to get into the higher paying tasks, especially those that require writing skills.

 

[ViperDove]

I use mTurk but I've never made a whole lot (last month I made about $47, I think) but then again I just do it sporadically. I don't work it like a job. Some people do but those people are usually able to do stuff like transcription and writing and stuff like that. I've given transcription a shot and it's harder than you would think so that doesn't work for me. And I love to write but only about things I like. There is a site I always check out before getting on there called TurkAlert.com and people post the good tasks that are worth doing on there. It saves you the trouble of digging through all the tasks to find them.

I also have a browser extension that shows you ratings of requesters so you can see if they are really bad about rejecting work and stuff like that.

You made $47 last month working sporadically? Wow, I never knew someone can make such an amount from Amazon mturk.

Also, thanks for this tip about turkalert.com. I'll check it out and see how it goes.

 

[Sugarhill]

I've heard of people making around $47 on the regular. When I was doing it, I put in about two to three hours a night and I think I had a $1+ per, so it's possible. Like I said, you just have to find the highest paying for the least amount of time to invest.

 

[Dahlia02]

I've heard of people making around $47 on the regular. When I was doing it, I put in about two to three hours a night and I think I had a $1+ per, so it's possible. Like I said, you just have to find the highest paying for the least amount of time to invest.

$47? Wow. I think the most I've made from mTurk was $7 in a day. I was content with that!

 

[Sugarhill]

$47 in a month! Not a day. If that were the case, there would be no questions about mTurk, just users trying to keep it a well kept secret.

 

[klassiter]

I was using Mturk. I have not been on the site in a few days. It is so time consuming. I feel like I could make money faster on other sites. Most hits are only a few cents and you have to complete hundreds of them sometimes in order to be eligible for higher paying hits. I visit the site sporadically to complete a few hits but not on a regular basis. Sometimes some of the Mturk forums can be helpful with finding some of the higher paying hits.

 

[Murray]

Part of getting a high amount of money from Mturk is finding the niche's that pay the most. You can find that writing, transcribing and then the occasional odd job are going to be your best bet. Another thing that you'll run into is the need for a Masters Qualification which is part of the just turking a long until you have the necessary statistics to qualify as a master turker... hehe..

Anyway, @Shelly they aren't all adult sites. A lot of sites are larger forum style sites or are third party web content filtering people who need images flagged under specific categories. So, its like .05 to flag 15ish images, takes about a minute. I have a buddy who makes about $6/hour doing that style hit for a couple hours a night.

The other thing to find is hits that will refill their quantity. Its always nice on a slow day to fall back on something that's guaranteed to have 300 - 3k HITS waiting.

 

[Kidzukai]

I wanted to get into MTurk, but just found it to have too many hoops to jump through for meaningful payout. From what I've seen, in order to qualify for the higher paying HITs, you have to be qualified to work on the higher rated categories. And a lot of those higher paying hits are article writing tasks, which isn't bad, but I'd like to do other things too. I might give it another shot. On another forum, I heard someone was lucky enough to find a HIT that paid out $800, however I don't remember what the job was.

 

[Murray]

I've made 25 bucks just tossing about on that site this week. It's not big money but its not bad at the same time. That's around 45 bucks in two weeks. You gotta deal with that site as just a thing to do for a few minutes, or set a goal for yourself and hit the goal and walk away.

 

[thenextGeek]

No it's not. You'll end up earning dimes for your work and honestly, (I'm not trying to bring down other countries in what I'm about to say here.) that's only excusable if you're living in a third world country where the cost of living is much lower.

mTurk is only good when you're still a beginner in "online money making" because you'll be able to experience how to interact with clients which is to say, what you'll be doing for the rest of your online career. You'll also learn how to cashout and learn how to use paypal but other than that, I don't see any advantage in using mTurk.

I earned around $10 during my stay there until I found newer and more profitable work in the form of internet and affiliate marketing.

 

[jessman]

It's only good in certain circumstances. The ROI in terms of time investment is very minimal and poor. The tasks are often listed for pennies and they will take a long time for you to earn something that is substantial.

But, the ease factor is there and this is a way to start making some money online. However, once you find the right venture for you, it would be a good idea to branch away from mTurk and look for something more profitable. If you are desperate for money and have nothing else, then go with MTurk