Technology is a gift and a curse. It's made our lives easier, but it's probably made us lazier because machines do so much for us. The curse is that it's taken away certain jobs from human beings. But fortunately there are still certain things computers cannot do just yet. That is why Amazon Mechanical Turk was built to help people like you and I to get paid to do things computers can't.
You've obviously heard that you can make money off the site and that's probably why you are going through Amazon Mechanical Turk reviews. If you're wondering if it's worth your time, then read along and find out!
What is Amazon Mechanical Turk?
Amazon Mechanical Turk found at www.mturk.com is a crowdsourcing marketplace for freelancers where individuals or businesses post jobs (known as HITS) that only humans can do and computers are currently unable to do. Freelancers will then pick these jobs and complete them for money.
We'll discuss more about HITS a bit later in this review. Amazon Mechanical Turk is owned and run by online shopping website Amazon.com and was launched in November 2, 2005.
How Does Amazon Mechanical Turk Work?
When individuals and businesses have work that require actual human intelligence and can be performed via the internet, they post the jobs aka HITS (Human Intelligence Tasks) on Amazon Mechanical Turk. The folks that post these jobs are known as Requesters.
The folks that actually do the jobs are called workers. Every worker has access to a dashboard where they can see a list of available HITs. How much you earn per hits is also listed in this dashboard near each hit. Usually there are thousands of HITs. So there is plenty of work for everyone to do. But some of these hits are unavailable to workers unless you request for approval from the client.
Every HIT comes with specific instructions that must be followed to qualify for payment. Once you complete the HIT you'll submit it for approval. If the client approves your work they will pay up and the money reflects in your Amazon payment account right there on your dashboard. If they don't, you won't be paid.
What Are Amazon Mechanical Turk HITs?
As I mentioned earlier, HITs are tasks posted by businesses or individuals (requesters) that require real people (workers) to get it done. HITs could be the following:
- Transcribing/Typing a video or audio
- Writing movie reviews
- Commenting on blogs
- Completing surveys
- Watching videos
- Much more
How Do I Join Amazon Mechanical Turk?
When you are ready to sign up as a worker, all you need is an Amazon account. If you don't have one you can sign up right away using your name, email addresses and a password. Once you fill out your age and country of residence, they will email you within three days when your registration is accepted. It's totally free to work with Amazon Mechanical Turk!
How Much Money Can I Make With Amazon Mechanical Turk?
Well, I am nothing close to a prophet, but I can tell you that most HITS don't pay much. The readily available tasks pay a penny or three. Yes, you read that correctly. For example, I found a job titled ”find the correct LinkedIn profile of an attorney” and the job paid one penny. So let that marinate in your mind. That said, there are so many HITs available that in theory it can add up if you don't mind spending your time in this way.
But I think most people would like to be paid more for their time, so sites like SurveyJunkie.com, Swagbucks.com and Fusioncash.com may be a better option to make some extra cash. And if you're looking to make a full time or part time income working from home, then you may want to check out My Top Work At Home Recommendation.
How Does Amazon Mechanical Turk Pay You?
You can cash out at any time the amount you've earned. If you are getting paid for the first time, the money will be held for 10 days ”for security reasons”. This is probably to confirm that it's actually you receiving the money. From then on they'll pay you after one calendar day. But here's the catch. Only US residents can transfer money to their bank accounts.
Indian citizens can also cash out to a bank account provided the option is available at the time. Otherwise, it's all Amazon gift cards. If you are a worker from any other country you only get Amazon Gift Cards.
What We Like About Amazon Mechanical Turk
They pay you immediately
One good thing I like about Amazon Mechanical Turk is that you can withdraw your money no matter the amount once everything checks out. There are no minimum thresholds you have to meet. Need a few dollars to kick-start your online revenue stream? Just sign up!
No Special Background or Skills Required
Most of these tasks are pretty simple which is probably why they don't pay that much. So it doesn't require any high level of education or skills to work at Amazon Mechanical Turk. This is perfect for anyone that wants to make some cash without much of a learning curve.
Positive BBB
This is for you who can't touch an online work at home opportunity with a 10 foot pole without first confirming the company's status with the Better Business Bureau. Well, MTurk is owned by Amazon, so by extension, MTurk's BBB rating is a B+.
Amazon Mechanical Turk Complaints
Well, it's time to get to the part of the review that you've all been waiting for. If you're anything like me there are already things you read above that you probably don't like. But we discovered other complaints against Amazon Mechanical Turk you may want to know about. You decide if it's a deal breaker or not.
You'll work for pennies
So this is probably the biggest issue for most people. The reality is that most of the HITS available will pay you pennies for your time. You would have to do a lot of hits that may be very time consuming to make any real money! If that's a deal breaker for you, then you may want to check out sites like SurveyJunkie.com, Swagbucks.com or Fusioncash.com. Better yet, you can check out My Top Work At Home Recommendation if you are serious about making real money online.
Shady Non-paying clients
Some workers have run into requesters that will unfairly reject hits with little to no explanation. So you end up wasting hours of your time and the requester is probably getting free labor. You can contact the requester to ask why you were rejected, but there is no guarantee they will respond.
Limited Payment Options
As mentioned earlier you only have two ways to get your money; direct deposit and amazon gift cards. It would be great if they offered a PayPal and check option as well.
Is Amazon Mechanical Turk Safe?
To be fair, Amazon Mechanical Turk has been around for a while. It's a legit way of making some extra money online. However, how much you earn will depend on how much time you spend completing hits, there are no two ways around that, partner.
You better have a lot of time on your hands to make this worth while, since you'll be paid pennies. But it's something that can be started right away and doesn't require a lot of skills.
At the end of the day, I'm a big believer in multiple streams of income. So I won't knock your hustle if you decide that it's still worth giving Amazon Mechanical Turk a try. Sometimes some money is better than no money at all. But you can also try out sites like SurveyJunkie.com, Swagbucks.com and Fusioncash.com as an additional way to extra money that may pay you more for your time. And if you're serious about making a full time or part time income, then you definitely want to check out My Best Work At Home Recommendation. You have many options either way.
Well, there you have it. Is Amazon Mechanical Turk worth your time? You can chime in your thoughts about this or any other work at home gig in the comments section below!
Until next time
Eddy ”With a Y”
Amazon Turk used to be a great way to earn some solid money. Now its full of bogus requesters who only want to get free information and reject work on purpose so that they do not have to pay.
They also use prequal surveys that can be several pages long before you even get to the actual survey. So you can waste time filling out prequals only to be told that you dont even qualify to take the survey after you have wasted valuable time filling out all of your information. Then the requesters still use the information you already provided. Thus they are getting info for free.
In addition, some of them are requesting personal information including log ins and on other private info on some of the surveys.
I have had requesters who don’t provide the needed information that you need to complete and submit the surveys for pay. When you email them they never respond.
Others you complete the surveys and never get paid and never hear from the requesters again they just vanish into thin air.
As I said and I am sure alot of old timers will agree it used to be a great place to make money, but with the recent influx of requesters it has turned into a nightmare and a total waste of time. I cannot recommend it and would suggest to find another way to make money online.
Thanks for sharing your experience and thoughts about mechanical turk. I remember the glory days of mechanical turk but maybe it’s changed for the worst based on what you said.
I have been turking for about a week and have made about $150 (for the record, I’m a new user). If you are diligent with it, you can actually make a decent amount of money doing this. I mostly make my money doing surveys and avoid the penny jobs. There are plug in’s available to weed out these so-called “shady” non-payers. Some of the requesters can take up to a week and clearly state that prior to consenting to starting any work. Many of the jobs posted are limited based on the amount of work that you do initially, and you cant’ cash out on your earnings until after your 10 day probation period. Those who are persistent and patient stand to make some money doing things such as transcriptions. Since your review, you are now able to deposit your money into your bank account, which can take up to 2-3 business days. Unfortunately, this is limited to people who don’t reside in the US.
That’s great Marsha. It sounds like you’re taking full advantage of this way to make money and doing well! Thanks for sharing your tips and experience.
M. Turk is a complete waste of time, don’t waste yours here.
Hey John, It may be for some people. But there are others that are able to make money with it. It all depends on your needs and time.
Great review Eddy. You probably saved a whole bunch of people a lot of time. Getting paid a few pennies for your time just ain’t worth it. Totally agree with you on this one.
Like they say time is money. Looks like you got it going on. Your straight up and you give an honest review.
Thanks Ken. I try not to judge since everyone has different cost of living and tolerance for what they will do to pay the bills. That said it’s important for folks to know what they can expect with sites like this. Some folks do very well with it. But for others it may be a waste of time. To each their own either way. Thanks for the kind words.
These were awesome information to me .I will try and see if am able to make extra cash.
You’re welcome Richard.
Hi Eddy thank you for this review on Amazon Mechanical turk.2 or 3 years back I have seen positive reviews on this before. So I wanted to try on this program but they refuse to accept me as this is not available to my country. I am not sure whether AMT program is available to India or not. It doesn’t matter as you said since it is paying for penny I am also not interested for AMT. After that I have taken up affiliate marketing through content creation.
Yeah it’s not available anywhere. I’m glad to hear you’ve moved on to blogging which in the long run will make you way more money.
Hi,
This post is very informative and is very thorough. It helps a lot of people looking for alternative income source. I agree that Amazon’s Mechanical Turk is legit and is paying its members fairly. I hope that they will raise their pay a bit so to compensate time doing mini tasks. Thanks a lot for sharing, Eddy.
You’re welcome.
Hi Eddy, thank you for your review. those reviews are really very much helpful for newbies like me, who want to work from home. your site has a number of useful articles to learn more.
Well, thanks for the kind words Akiyash! I appreciate them.
It has been awhile since I saw a new review on MTurk. It works, it’s just the “working for pennies” part that people have a hard time getting past.
If you can ever work long enough and do a good enough job, you can get to higher paying hits, but you better have a back up income stream in the meantime!
Great comprehensive and up to date review. Thanks!
Hey Faith,
I agree. For some people they can’t get pass the lower income. And I get it, it may not be worth it for everyone. But there are some people that do eventually build up to a nice consistent income with this company. So it all depends on people’s patience and needs.
hello
That is a detailed review it covers mostly everything i would want to know about this amazon turk, one thing though i do not like the fact that they do not pay in cash since i believe if you work in the modern day that we live in you should be the one to choose what you want to get payed in
thanks
Hi, you’re welcome. They do pay in cash. It’s via direct deposit. It would be nice if they offered paypal possibly a check option.
Well I recently lost my full time job and getting broke so I’m looking into ways to earn some cash, whether part time or full time. To me, Amazon Mechanical Turk will not be worth my time. Pennies do add up but the amount it adds up to won’t be able to pay the bills and buy food.
So I’ll skip on this one. Thanks for the review though, I love it, it was thorough and truthful, I did not have a problem with your review. At least I can cross Amazon Mechanical Turk off my list. I need to make some cash right away, sufficient cash, what would you recommend? at least something that pays out $30 per day?
I’m sorry to hear about your job. Yeah if you need something that is going to pay some real bills this may not be the option for you. I don’t really know any quick cash options that will make you a lot of money consistently. Everything does require a lot of time and patience. If you need something more immediate then these little opportunities or building your own business, then you may want to look into a work at home job.
Thank you for this review, Eddy (with a y)! I have tried out a number of different types of “work at home” jobs, and like you, my favorite of all is creating my own sites and providing helpful content to visitors.
I have a question about Amazon Mechanical Turk – there are some “get paid per job” sites out there that boost the ranking of the workers as time goes on, and as the number of jobs they do increases. Do you know if AMT does that?
You’re welcome Tonya. That’s a great question. I don’t think that is the case here. But you can always contact amazon mturk to confirm.
OK, thanks again Eddy! I will check it out – I think it might be a fun diversion at least on some breaks. =)
You’re welcome Tonya!