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.

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.