Taxes and Amazon Mechanical Turk

We’ve all heard the line, “Everything can be put off, but death and taxes.”

Well, you’d think in this arena of making money online and the shamefully low wages offered on Amazon Mechanical Turk (Mturk), you’d be exempt from taxes. Well, you’d be wrong. Well, partially wrong. If you only make a small amount of money off Mturk then you are exempt from paying taxes, but there is a threshold amount you can make before you have to legally pay Uncle Sam his due.

One you reach a certain threshold on Mturk, you will be prompted by the system to enter you tax information. (The system will already have some of your other vital information when you set-up your account and associated bank account -- provided you do set-up a bank account.) Being a U.S. citizen, all I had to do was provide my Social Security number. They already had my address.

One thing you don’t want to do is what I did. When you first get that prompt, please don’t ignore it. It will just stay there and bug you. And if you wait too long and refuse to provide your information, guess what happens? You get your account shut off. Well, at least the capability to earn more money. I was slothful in my response, but did eventually enter my information. My problem came when Amazon was slow to process my information and I did get my ability to take on new HITs shutdown. Fortunately, I sent Amazon a message early in the morning and they processed my information and I was back in business in a few hours. There’s no guarantee that they will be as responsive with you.

So, take my advice, when prompted for your tax information, just go ahead and enter it. Then you’ll avoid all the hassles.

Now, you may ask, what is the my income threshold. Amazon defines this amount as:
“...the minimal payment a company can pay a Worker before the company must report the payments to the IRS.”

So there you have it, death and taxes are truly unavoidable even in the world of Mturk.

Getting Paid For Your Work on Amazon Mechanical Turk

If you’re looking to make money on line and you’re curious about Amazon Mechanical Turk (Mturk), my first piece of advice is....find a better way to make money. Okay, for all you Mturkers out there, I don’t want to offend you, but there’s got to be a better way to make money -- either online or in the real world. If you’ve worked for Mturk for any amount of time, you already know of the deplorably low wages.

Okay, that’s out of the way. You, like me, have decided to spend time at the modern online version of a sweatshop and you’re wondering how it works and, more importantly, how you get paid.

Well, getting paid on Mturk is a mixed bag. The two factors I will discuss are how you get paid and how quickly you get paid. I will avoid the discussion of how much (or little) the wages are.

As far as how, you have two options. Option one is that you can choose to link your Amazon payments to a checking account. This is a fairly painless procedure -- just follow the links to your account, follow the instructions, and enter your account information. Just a note, though; this does take some time to process. Amazon will test your account by sending one or two small deposits to your account and you have to confirm that you have received them.

Option two is using your hard won earnings Mturk to buy merchandise on Amazon’s incredibly large and diverse store. It’s easy to start using your money to buy merchandise. Just go to your account settings and then look for a link under “Your Earnings” then look for the link that talks about transferring your money to your bank account or to use on Amazon. Easy as pie you will be taken to your Amazon Payments page where you need to log-in and then chose how you want to spend your money.

When considering timing, you have to know that some Requesters are notoriously slow in play and there’s not a lot you can do about it. If you get terribly impatient, then you can elect to write to them and see what’s up. Writing Amazon staff doesn’t do a lot of good. I currently have one Requester who hasn’t approved one of my HITs I completed from 15 days ago. And this is for a lousy $.50 cents.

I have used both methods of payment. I have transferred money to my bank account and I have purchased merchandise off Amazon with my hard-won earnings. I recently wanted a new MP3 player and started putting in my time in the virtual salt mines. Three weeks later I had the money and pulled the trigger when Amazon dropped the price on my coveted item.

300

No, it’s not the movie with all those Spartan warriors. It’s my first month working for Amazon Mechanical Turk (Mturk) in which I have eclipsed the $300 mark in earnings. Woo-woo, for me.

In the past, I was a pure hobbyist when it came to Mturk. I dabbled around taking HITs enthusiastically for a couple days, then lost enthusiasm, going through periods of waxing and waning with productivity with Mturk. It was only recently that I decided on a more systematic and professional approach to Mturk.

I set a goal of earning $10 a day and averaged that throughout the month even though I had a couple days in which I made very little. To offset those low earning days, I put in a couple long weekend days in which I pushed my total earnings to over $20 per day.

Now, if you’re envisioning me sitting hunkered down over my computer from sun-up to sundown, then you’d be wrong. I have a fruitful and busy day job. I do Mturk to make a few extra bucks in my spare time. Yes, on the high earning days, I did spend between three and fours a day working on Mturk HITs, but most days have me working 90 minutes to two hours. I tend to get up early before my family is awake and work for one hour on Mturk. Then I do some HITs over lunch. If I meet my quota, I may stop for the day, but if I have a few extra minutes in the evening, I might fit in one or two HITs before I go to bed.

I’ll be writing an article soon that discusses my strategy in more detail. For now, I just hope the attractive and well paying HITs just keep coming and I can maintain my new found discipline.

Who Works for Mturk and Why - Part IV

Here we are back in the rough and tumble world of making money online -- little bits at a time with Amazon Mechanical Turk (Mturk). If you’ve been following my series Who Works for Mturk and Why, you’ve now come to my fourth and final installment. In my last article, I wrote about data collected by researchers from Mturk workers, focusing on the marital status of workers and how much time they spent working for Mturk.

In this article you get the big WHY for workers on Mturk. What motivates people to slave over a “hot” computer for hours for just pennies an hour.

Well, there are a lot of people with a multitude of reasons out there. For the purposes of this article, I’m going to attempt to stick data from U.S. worker as much as I can because the differences in standards of living when comparing the U.S. to other countries are striking and the reasons are pretty obvious why foreign workers do work on Mturk.

The Big Why
I sometimes wonder why anyone would work for Mturk, but then I just look in the mirror and understand.

The research I’m using as the basis for this article put some probing questions to Mturk workers and found out some interesting facts. Nearly 70% of U.S. workers stated that they found working for Mturk to be “fruitful way to spend free time and get some cash.” But conversely, they also said that tasks on Mturk were not fun. So, what I read between the lines is that Mturk is not a lot of fun, but it’s not too challenging of a way to make some extra money. Many (60%) report that Mturk is a good way to kill time and make a little money.

Here’s comes a telling figure and I will contrast U.S. and India data this time. The question was: Is the money you make on Amazon Mechanical Turk your primary source of income?
India -- 28% U.S. 12%

The follow-up question asked if Mturk was a source of income for less than essential purchases.
India -- 38% U.S. 61%

So, it’s not hard to glean from that that a lot of U.S. workers are using their Mturk money to buy “toys” or other non-essentials. While workers from India actually see Mturk as a substantial and essential income.

Thus ends my series on the “who and why.” Feel free to let us know your why and who?

Who Works for Mturk and Why - Part III

Workers trying to make money online with Amazon’s Mechanical Turk (Mturk) are not few in numbers. I’ve always been curious as to why someone would choose to work for Mturk and who they are. Fortunately for me, there is someone out there doing research on these very issues. I hope to take the insights of these hard-working and generous researchers and share them with you. By the way, I will spend most of time focusing on statistics of U.S. workers for the purpose of this article.

In two past articles, I talked about who the workers for Murk and why they do this tedious and low paying work. The first article covered where workers lived and in the second article I discussed some demographic information including age and educational ranges and income levels of worker. In this article, I want to share with some of the findings in terms of the marital status of Mturk workers and how much time they spend taking HITs.

Marital Status of Mturk Workers
The vast, vast, vast majority of Mturk workers are single. That category hits 35%. But around 13% of workers do report being married and a similar amount reported being married with children. Also, the majority of these married workers reported having two kids. My take is that married folks with kids are feeling the pinch of the economy and are looking at places to earn a few extra pennies around a busy life and work schedule.

Time Spent on Mturk
As far as time spent working for Mturk, the biggest response was 4-8 hours spent a week working for Mturk with a response rate of around 25%. 2-4 hours was the second most reported response at 21% and 8-20 hours not far behind at 19%.

I thought I should report my details in these areas. I would be in the married response area and also would have to select the response of 2-3 children. As for time spent, my time does vary. Lately, I’ve found HITs I can tolerate and can make tolerable earnings with. So, I would say that I spend about 10-12 hours a week working on Mturk. Now, if you asked me two months ago, I would have to had reported 2-3 hours a week at best. I’ve found a groove and am mining it for all I can get. At least, for now.

I will wrap up this series next time with an article on the motivations why people work for Mturk. Hope to see you back.

Who Works for Mturk and Why - Part II

In my introductory article on who works at Amazon Mechanical Turk (Mturk) and why, I just brushed the surface of this topic talking about where Mturk workers live and some basic rationales for why some of these folks work on Mturk along with talking about the gender distribution for Mturk workers.

With this article, I’ll go more into depth and discuss the age distribution of works, their educational levels and income levels. If the data provides this info, I’m going to focus on U.S.-based work data.

Age Distribution
Not surprisingly, there are a lot of 20 and 30 somethings work on Mturk. Roughly about 40% of Mturk workers hit this range. These folks are in that age range that are computer savvy and might be in a position where they need some extra income.

BTW: About 4% of the folks on Mturk are 60 plus.

Educational Levels
There is somewhat surprising data here. The vast majority of Mturk workers have college degrees. Over 30% of workers report having a bachelor’s degree with around 12% having a Master’s degree. Those having some college, but no degrees came in at around 25%.

My gut would have told me that most of the workers would not have degrees, but obviously my gut can’t deny the hard data.

Income Level
Remember, I’m focusing on U.S. worker numbers here. Still I found it somewhat surprising that the two largest income ranges reporting that they work for Mturk are $25K to $40K and $50K to $60K. My suspicion would have been that lower income folks would be doing this work, but maybe they are busy making a better hourly wage. My other thought would be that workers in the two most prolific income ranges could be a tell about how tight the U.S. economy is during these recessionary times.

Look for Part III of this series when I discuss the marital status and the time spent working for Mturk.

Who Works for Mturk and Why - Part I

When trying to capture the essence of the people who work for Amazon Mechanical Turk (Mturk), you quickly discover that a lot of different people work for Mturk and for a lot of different reasons. This article will the first in a series of article I present on research looking into the people who work on Mturk and why.

It’s reported that many of the people working for Mturk are from overseas. India and the Philippines are two likely sources for workers for Mturk. The cost of living in those countries are so much lower than in the United States. So much so that some of these workers can make a decent money.

That’s not so true with the U.S. Mturk worker. Of course, that depends on your definition of what “decent money” is. For those out of work and need some income, then just about any source of income is decent.

I’m by no means and expert on this subject and I have only done just a small amount of research on the topic and I really owe much of what I know to others like the people at CrowdFlower.com. They are a labor-on-demand provider and also study entities like Amazon Mechanical Turk.

CrowdFlower conducted a survey and their findings were interesting. Now before I go into that I must say that their survey sampling seemed somewhat low with only 67 respondents.

Now with some of their findings:
> India placed first as to the number of people who work on Mturk at 46%
> U.S. Workers were close at 42%

Another researcher completed his own survey of Mturk workers in early 2010. His findings were similar, but did show some differences and also provided more details.

This second survey showed that U.S. workers dominate Mturk and not workers from India.

> U.S. workers 46%
> India workers 34%

This second survey also showed that in the U.S. females made up the majority of workers in Mturk at over 60%. In India, males made up 70% of the Mturk workforce.

The researcher posits that the reason that females dominate the U.S. Mturk workforce is because most of the U.S. Mturk workers look at Mturk as a supplemental source of income. In many cases, they are stay-at-home moms who can take small amounts of time and devote it to working for Mturk.

Tune in next time when I talk about some more in-depth data on Mturk workers. Maybe you will find yourself in there somewhere.

Taking HITs: The Low-Paying/High Volume Strategy

Making money online with Amazon Mechanical Turk can be a time consuming drone -- especially on the low value HITs. The work can be grueling and tedious at times. Some workers like to take on a smaller amount of higher paying HITs while others like to have a mass harvest of a long series of the same type low-paying HIT. I like to call this strategy the Low-Paying/High Volume Strategy.

This strategy basically consists of finding a repetitive HIT that has a large number to pull from, learning what it takes to complete them, and then putting your head down and churning them out.

I’ve done this before. In about 90 minutes one day, I completed about 120 HITs and was $1.20 richer for it. Woo-woo But that’s not really my cup of tea, though.

This article will focus on that strategy. For some people, they really don’t look at Mturk as a place they want to put on their thinking cap. They need or want to earn a few extra bucks and don’t really want to have to work up a mental sweat.

Knocking down a long series of low-paying, uncomplicated HITs can be relaxing or so does one Mturker report. He said:

“For the most part, I like simple, plain, straightforward tasks. The repetition relaxes me, in a sense, but at the same time drives me to see how many I can do before they run out.”

This strategy might work for someone who has sedentary job in which they might have to monitor something on a computer or watch an area like a night watchman. It’s sort of like double-dipping because you’re making a wage from your job and also making money on Mturk.

There are some downsides to this approach. First, if you have a requester who rejects your long series of HITs, your rejection rate is going to skyrocket. Also, if you mistakenly get something fundamentally wrong with the HIT, you’re setting yourself up for a whole slew of rejections.

The other downside are slow payers. For the Mturker who likes this strategy of low-paying/high volume working, slow payers can be quite frustrating.

Anyway, for quite a few workers, this strategy is the only way to go. Set up the cheap HITs and they will knock them down.

Turkopticon’s Amazon Mechanical Turk Extension

As I’ve said before, making money online is a tough game. In an earlier article, I mentioned Turkopticon as a good resource for workers on Amazon Mechanical Turk (Mturk). They provide an extensive Requester reviews submitted by workers. These reviews are invaluable as you select you should work for to protect yourself from getting scammed or rejected.

Well, the Turkopticon people have taken this review approach to the next level and now have an downloadable extension that works directly with your browser while you are on the Mturk website. It’s added a pull-down menu to the AMT HITs listings that allows you to see Requester ratings from other providers. It also provides a link back to the Turkopticon database of Requesters.

This is pretty slick. So, you can now seamlessly cruise HITs on Mturk and see who to work for and who to avoid. This is a must for the discriminating Mturk provider. You’d be a fool not to use it.

Technical Note: This extension only works witgh Firefox 3.0 and above and also on Chrome.

Turkopticon: Another Resource for Evaluating HITS on Amazon Mechanical Turk

Making money online is a rough and tumble game. There are scammer and spammers. There are con artists. And then there’s Amazon Mechnial Turk (AMT) -- the online version a sweatshop, but you know what you’re getting into. Right?

Well, sometimes. Since AMT is an on-demand workplace in which workers and “employers” can come from anywhere, there’s always a chance of a con artist ready to take advantage of workers by posting jobs they never pay for.

So, how do you protect yourself? One way is by using the online forums on Turker Nation (see my recent article) and one other excellent resource is Turkopticon. Turkopticon is a basically a big online database where workers can leave evaluations and feedback on Requesters.

Workers can rate Requesters in four different categories:
Fair (Fairness)
Fast (Speed of payment)
Pay (A decent pay for a job)
Comm (Communication)

While the ratings can be quite useful, the comments left by Providers are very useful. You just have to watch for contradictory feedback. I’ve see several very good Requesters get scathing reviews from Providers undeservedly. Some Providers just fail to or don’t want to follow directions and get annoyed when they find their work rejected.

If you have any questions about a Requester, this should be first or second stop to find out if they are legitimate.

The phrase is “Caveat emptor.” In this case it’s the worker that needs to beware.

With Amazon Mechanical Turk, Avoid Rejection - At All Costs

Rejection in real life, be it for a job or asking for a date, can be painful, but rejection in the world of Amazon Mechanical Turk (Mturk) can have some serious effects to your earning potential. That is if you’re serious about working for Mturk for the long haul and trying to make some money online.

If you working on Mturk for any amount of time you’re likely to encounter a HIT that makes you think twice. It could be badly worded such as including contradictory instructions or be poorly worded. This should be your red flags to steer clear.

You see, your earning potential on Amazon Mechanical Turk is tied to your Acceptance rate. It’s really better correlates to your Rejection rate. To be able to access the greatest amount of HITS on Mturk, you need to have a high acceptance rate. If you drop below 95%, you will see a dramatic decrease in the amount of HITS available to you.

It turns out Requesters do have standards after all. They don’t want just anyone working on their HITs.

My example of this is a sad one because it happened to me. Early in my Mturjk days, I found a quick and easy series of HITs and while they didn’t pay a lot, I could plow through them at a speedy rate. I read the instructions and while I felt there were some contradictions in them, I proceeded anyway.

Big mistake.

The HIT did have contradictory instructions. I was categorizing some-such thing and they wanted the worker to select a categorization in an “either/or” fashion, but they didn’t design the question criteria in the correct way. It was sort of like asking a question about a flower and saying it is either red or blue --- or green or white, but it can’t be both, but you have to provide answers to both. So, with each subsequent question, I was building a slew of contradictory responses...and rejections.

My acceptance rate dropped below 95% and I saw a precipitous drop in the number of HITs available to me once I dropped below that 95% line. It takes doing a lot of HITs over a lot of time to move that needle back up above 95 depending on how far you’ve dropped down. It’s sort of like tanking your first term in college with a C, 2 Ds and an F. It’s going to take moving a mountain for a long time to get get that old GPA back up into a range where your parents will send you beer money again. If ever.

My advice is that you carefully read all instruction for a HIT. If you come across a red flag, read them again, this time very carefully.

I’ve taken a very conservative approach to low-pay, mass-issued HITS. I only do a couple and then submit them. Then I wait to see if they are accepted or rejected.

If I lose out on some HITs, I guess it’s worth the risk avoidance. That's just my humble opinion, though, but enter iffy HITs with caution.

Getting Help Evaluating HITs and Requesters

Turker Nation Forums

You’re ready to make money online with Amazon Mechanical Turk (Mturk). You open up the Mturk homepage and you browse the list of HITs. After a couple minutes, you see a nice juicy HIT that provides a decent reward.

But how do you know who this Requester is and how do you know they won’t capriciously reject your work? Well, if you’ve read my earlier article, “You’re on Your Own,” then you know that Amazon certainly won’t take your side.

So, what can you do? Well, there are a number of strategies you can take to protect yourself. I have written article detailing my advice on how to Avoid rejection, but there are some helpful resources out there for you. In this article, I’m going to discuss one of the best -- the Turker Nation online forums.

Turker Nation provides an array of forum topics for the Amazon Mechanical Turk Workers...and Requesters. For evaluating a Requester, they provide a very helpful forum with the title of
Requesters Hall of Fame/Shame

The Requester’s Hall of Fame/Shame contains posts from Mturk workers where they chronicle their experience with Requesters. This thread contains a wealth of experience from Mturk Workers as they tell the story of bad Requesters and, also, good Requesters -- and this is as good as bad report because knowing you can trust a Requester is important. The forum uses positive and negative graphic icons that quickly identify who is a good or bed Requester.

If you have any suspicions about a Requester, then I would readily suggest that you check this forum to see what other Workers are saying.

Also included in this thread are lists of spammer and scammers. These are folks who use Mturk to troll for customers or personal data. Although Amazon clearly states what jobs Requester can post as a HIT, Amazon does not police HITs and I rarely see Amazon boot anyone from Mturk.

Now, backing up some. I’ve had used the Hall of Fame/Shame in the past and found contradictory reports on a Requester. One poster will slam a Requester while another poster will say that things went well with the Requester. I would imagine that along with there being some bad requester, there are some bad workers. So ultimately, you will have to discern whether or not from the posts who you can trust. Obviously a slew of bad reports on a Requester should be heeded.

Turker Nation also offers from friendly forums along with their helpful information. They have a Turker Introduction forum for new Workers to introduce themselves. They include a Questions forums for Workers and Requesters to ask find answers or ask questions.

If you’re working for Mturk, then Turker Nation should be in your bookmarks/favorites. You’d be a fool to ignore a resource like this when doing work like this.

With Amazon Mechanical Turk, You’re on Your Own

Okay, like a lot of people, you’re trying to use Amazon’s Mechanical Turk (AMT) to make some money online. You are a diligent and steadfast worker, providing your Requesters with expedient and quality work. Your Acceptance rate is a sterling 100% and the pennies are building up in your Amazon account.

Here are a couple scenarios to knock your Acceptance rate down and lower your trust not only in the Amazon Mechanical Turk system, but in humanity.

---

Scenario #1
One day you see a bunch of juicy HITs with a decent reward and decide to jump on them. You open the HITS and read the instructions. They seem somewhat ambiguous and there might be some contradictory instructions. You decide to plow ahead anyway because the HITs look easy and the reward is good. You take a couple hours and you have a lot slew of these HITs completed and are awaiting approval from the Requester.

The next day you log on to Amazon Mechanical Turn and much to your dismay you see the wreckage that was once Acceptance rate and a lack of money in your account.

Scenario #2
You see a nice HIT that handsomely rewards the worker for a writing assignment. The Requester is new the AMT game, but the HITs has a great set of instructions.

Do this to this degree.

Finish this to match this criteria.

There’s some research to be done and you hit the books (or the wikipedia) and you are armed with all your necessary facts. You then set down to write. After an hour or so, you have a piece of art ready for submission and do one final check, then hit the Submit button.

The next day you get to experience the an unqualified rejection with no explanation. You write the Requester and get no response.

---

Well, in a normal workplace, you’d go right to management in effort to fight injustice, defend inequity, and protect humanity. And you hope to get paid.

Good luck with that, I say. I have approached Amazon in the past with a complaint regarding a poorly worded series of HITs that received a slew of rejections and they cited their standard policies:

“A Requester may reject your work if they believe the answer is wrong, the HIT was not completed correctly or that the instructions were not followed. If you believe that your work was rejected in error, you may decide to contact the Requester directly.”

Then they cited their policy on their role in Amazon Mechanical Turk process:

Amazon Mechanical Turk's Role:
Amazon Mechanical Turk provides a venue for third-party Requesters and third-party Providers to enter into and complete transactions. Amazon Mechanical Turk and its Affiliates are not involved in the transactions between Requesters and Providers. As a result, we have no control over the quality, safety or legality of the Services, the ability of Providers to provide the Services to Requesters' satisfaction, or the ability of Requesters to pay for Services. We are not responsible for the actions of any Requester or Provider. We do not conduct any screening or other verification with respect to Requesters or Providers, nor do we provide any recommendations. As a Requester or a Provider, you use the Site at your own risk.”

In other words, you are on your own.

If you know this, you then can take steps to protect yourself from being taken advantage of. I have an article where I discuss how to Avoid Rejection in the dog-eat-dog world of AMT. Check it out.

Low Impact Strategies for Amazon Mechanical Turk

So, you want to make some money online and you’ve decided to become apart of Amazon’s online version of a modern sweatshop? And you know what you’re in for? (Read previous posts to learn more.)

There are two ways to approach Amazon Mechanical Turk (Mturk):
1) You can look for low impact/low-cost HITs that require little or no thought and pump them out one right after the other in a near-mindless state of conscious (or as you watch TV which is may be the same thing)
2) You can look for more involved, higher cost HITs that require some concentration, time, research, and eventually effort -- like writing assignments.

This article will focus on the low-impact approach.

Okay. How can you do this work in a low impact way that doesn’t cause you to work up a sweat and allows you to continue watching your reality TV show with your laptop in, well, your lap?

First, determine if the HIT is actually a low impact HIT. This may take some concentration, so wait for a commercial, open the HIT, and read the instructions. And that means reading all the instructions. The devil is in the details and some of the low cost HITs that look low impact may not really be.

For instance, I just reviewed at a $.10 HIT which initially looked quite easy. Get an address and hours of operation. Easy, right?

No, not really because the Requester also wanted the Worker to provide a half dozen key words on top of something other information.

So, it’s important to read all the instructions before committing to doing a slew of mindless HITS. If you get an important detail of the instructions wrong and then complete a bunch of HITs wrong, you’re in line for a whole slew of rejections. Rejections are really bad for your AMT profile because a high rejection rate can lower the amount of HITS you can have access to. (I know this all too well as I let my rate dip below 95% which excluded a great deal of HITS from me.)

If you do find a low impact HIT and you understand the instructions thoroughly, then you can go to town and in an assembly line fashion, pump those HITS out, one right after the other and watch the pennies pile up. And that’s what happens, you make pennies, but a lot of pennies can add up.

You have to be very fast and efficient to make this approach work for you. If you get bogged down, then you will see your effort transition to low impact to drudgery with a very low rate of return.

My advice is to set a (low) hourly wage floor (say, $3.00/hr. -- this isn’t rocket science and you shouldn’t expect rocket science pay). This is the lowest rate you want to work at and then do a few of the HITS. Then do the calculation as to whether you can hit or exceed that hourly wage floor by doing dozens of these HITS in an hour.

There are many people out that make this approach work for them. It is a good way to get lots of HITs completed and make a few dollars. It’s not the way I approach Mturk, but I’ll talk about my approach at a later time.

Why Work for Amazon Mechanical Turk?

There are some people who call Amazon’s Mechanical Turk (Mturk) the online version of sweatshop when it comes to making money online. And I can’t put up too much of an argument against that statement. There are some ridiculously low-paying tasks on AMT. Many are terribly exploitative of the workers and a very few aren’t.

One site specific to Mturk put up this sarcastic fake advertisement on their site:
HELP WANTED:
$1.20 / hour
Risk of repetitive stress injury
No care for on-the-job injuries
No guaranteed minimum wage
No guarantee of payment

So, why should someone consider work on Mturk?

First you have to know what you’re getting into before you even start.

If you are a foreign worker outside the U.S., your standard and cost of living may be low and working on AMT can actually provide you with some real money. But, for the sake of this article, I’m going to assume you live in the U.S. or some other developed and industrial country.

So, to re-phrase, why should a U.S. citizen consider working for Mturk?

You need some extra money. You have a bill to pay and a few extra bucks can make a difference. You want to save up extra money for a family vacation. (And I’m not talking about flying to orient. I’m thinking a trip to the local amusement park.)

Or you want a book or that new electronic thingamajig that just came out.

I’ve done it. I wanted to upgrade my MP3 player and worked on few handfuls of HITS in November and December last year, waiting for Amazon to drop the price to entice Christmas shoppers, and low and behold, I had a new MP3 player in hand with no money out of my normal operating budget.

If you’re just sitting around watching TV anyway, why not turn that time into some money?

Right now, as I write these words, there are over 7000 individual HITS worth $.50 a piece for workers to write book reviews of 150 words (or more). Take the HIT on, do a quick Google search of the book, read a few reviews, and get creative.

There are also nearly a thousand $.10 HITS for someone to find the local address of a business along with it’s hours of operation. If you need or want a few extra pennies in your pocket, then why not put your wasted time to good work?

If you aren’t desperate for money or can turn your spare time into another way to make more money, then Mturk is not for you. But if you’re just sitting there with a few minutes a day and want some extra money, there are worse ways to spend your time.

In the past month, I spent probably, on average, 90 minutes a day working on HITS and have made over $200. You can, too. You either have to be near desperate or really want something off Amazon.

Amazon Mechanical Turk - Glossary

If you’re new to Amazon Mechanical Turk (AMT), then you’ll be faced with a new landscape. Just like any new piece of software or system, this new territory may seem unfamiliar. So, to help orient you this new world making (small amounts of) money online, here’s a glossary:

HIT - Human Intelligence Task; discrete small jobs to be completed
Dashboard - the entryway to AMT where can get a status on your work in AMT
Requester - the employers who offers the HITs
Rewards - this is an accounting of all your earnings on AMT
Submitted - completed HITs
Approved - these are HITS the Requester has approved
Rejected - these are HITS the Requester has approved and refuses to pay you
Pending - HITs completed, but not accepted or rejected yet
Returned - HITS you have returned after attempting
Abandoned - HITs that expired before you completed it or returned it
Qualification - some HITs require that Workers be pre-qualified prior them being worked on

CAPTCHA - (completely automated public turing test to computers and humans apart) term used with computer that requires human input to tell Computers and Humans Apart. Sometimes you have to enter a “CAPTCHA” word prior to accepting a HIT
Account Settings - where you control your profile and how you disburse your earnings
Amazon - The company behind all this system and the wildly successful online marketplace
The Turk or Mechanical Turk - a fake chess playing machine which was really a hoax that was on display in the late 18th century as an example of an automaton. There was a chess master inside a box beneath the chess board

Average Hours Put in by Workers on AMT

This is a hot off the presses item for readers, but I wanted to let you know that mTurk Forum has a poll in play where Amazon Mechanical Turk (Mturk) workers can respond with the average number of hours they work on AMT each day.

The initial numbers are quite interesting and sort of sad from my perspective. The two largest response groups were for 3 hours a day and Greater than 5 hours a day.

The stats went like this (as of 9/7/10):
Less than 1 hour ---> 4%
1 hour ---> 9%
2 hours ---> 16%
3 hours ---> 26%
4 hours ---> 13%
Greater than 5 hours ---> 27%

Prior to encountering this poll, I would have guessed that there would have been a wide spread in the numbers with some serious folks putting in some serious time to make money and then there would be hobbyists -- people who jump on, do some HITs and then jump off.

The vast majority of folks working on Mturk are putting in some serious time with more than 80% of them working for 2 or more hours a day.

For reasons of full disclosure, I would categorize myself as a hobbyist. If there is a set of HITs I like that I feel like I can make some money at, I’ll spend more time. This past weekend, I had some dead time and spent about 4 hours one day doing Mturk HITs.

What is Amazon's Mechanical Turk?

Amazon's Mechanical Turk was launched by Amazon in 2005 and is what is called a "crowdsourcing internet maketplace." Now what does that really mean? What it means is that this is a system put in place by Amazon where workers and providers of work can come together to get small and discrete tasks completed.

The system has three major components:

• Requesters
• Workers
• Tasks (HITs)

HITs (Human Intelligence Tasks) are at the core of the Amazon's Mechanical Turk system. These tasks can vary in complexity but most can be completed in a short duration of time. This system was created because there are some tasks computer can't accomplish efficiently. So, humans are used (in the best and worst sense of the word). HITs can be as simple as finding the correct phone number and zip code for a business to transcription to more complex tasks such as writing a 1,000 word article. HITs range in price from as low as no fee or $.01 to $20.00, but most hits are usually towards the lower range. HITS also have a set time to be completed. Most time limits are set with ample amounts of time to be completed.

For some HITs, requesters may require workers to qualify before taking on the HIT. This could be a qualification test or bases on the amount or rejections a work has while working on HITs. Generally, most requesters want workers who have a low rate of rejection.

Requesters are the people who need the work done. They use Amazon's Mechanical Turk to post these HITs. They also evaluate and approve or reject work.

Workers (called Providers) are the people who take the tasks on and complete them. Workers can select a single task or as many as they feel comfortable completing. Workers have the ability to search tasks by a number of methods including by monetary amount or by the number of HITS offered from a Requester.

This system is not a real way to make a living, but many people use it to augment their income and some do it just for fun. Earnings can either be transferred to a bank account or be spent on Amazon for merchandise.

After stating all of the above, I have to ask again; what is Amazon's Mechanical Turk?

Bottom line: It is a place where someone can earn a few pennies at a time doing some online odd jobs. No one will get rich working here, but if you have a few minutes that you can spend, you can earn some pocket money.

Welcome to Amazon Mechanical Turk Tips

Welcome to Amazon Mechanical Turk Tips. This is a blog to provide tips, insights, information and rants about Amazon Mechanical Turk (Mturk).

While there's a lot to talk about with Amazon Mechanical Turk, it's not so deep as to sustain on a daily basis for years and years. So, I envision this blog like a long mini-series or short run TV show with regular and periodic follow-up programming.

For the purpose of full disclosure, I will let you know that I have been a worker (Provider) for Amazon Mechanical Turk for about two years now. I should also say that I'm more of a hobbyist with AMT working on average about an hour a day.

In reviewing the blogs and resources out there discussing Mturk, I decided there was a place for one more place. I hope you enjoy what you read here and come back often.