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.