1. Many of the hits on Amazon MTurk are just rubbish. They either pay ridiculously well, because they are scams, or they are genuine jobs, but they’re paying you 10 cents/hour!
2. It’s difficult to know who the good Amazon MTurk requesters are and who are the bad on MTurk. You could spend hours working on there and then get ripped off. Not only do you lose the money, but you get a bad rejection rate too!
3. Amazon do not regulate the site enough. That means that there are rip-off artists and scammers operating openly on MTurk. Okay, the workers can flag bad requesters, but considering Amazon are making money from the site, you’d think they’d feel a bigger moral obligation to maintain it?
4. When you do find an Amazon MTurk requester who offers decent jobs, pays at okay rate, pays on time, and doesn’t rip you off – they suddenly disappear, just when you’re getting used to the regular money! You have no way of knowing if the requester will be back in a few hours, a few days, or never again!
5. There’s lots of MTurk hits and requesters, but navigating around the Amazon Turk site can be a pain in the backside. Why can’t you save your favorite requesters, or your favorite searches? Have your own little My MTurk part of the site? Wouldn’t that make it a lot easier for regular MTurk workers?
6. There’s no effective comeback against the MTurk requesters who rip people off. Okay, you can report them to Amazon. But that doesn’t stop them in their tracks or get you your wages. Eventually, I guess Amazon will ban them from the site, but by then they’ve made lots of money!
7. It can be complicated working out what money’s where. You have the total money earned section on your MTurk website dashboard, which is often not up to date because of late paying requesters. Then you have the Account section of Amazon, which is often not up to date because the money takes time to be paid over from MTurk. Then you have the money in your bank account which is always delayed by several days when it comes from the Amazon Account.
8. MTurk can be very addictive. There’s always a temptation to just do one more job. The next thing you know, it’s in the morning and you have to get up at 7! Or your wife is getting fierce because you haven’t spoken to her for 2 days!
9. You can lose all perspective with MTurk. Before you know it, you’re ranting and raving and your day/week has been completely ruined, all because a requester has failed to pay you some measly sum like 10 cents!
10. The number of jobs fluctuates wildly on Amazon MTurk. One day there’s 150, 000 jobs on there, the next day there’s only 45,000. Either there’s more jobs going than you can possibly handle, or there’s absolutely nothing on there that’s worth doing!
MTurk Links
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10 reasons why I love Amazon Mechanical Turk
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One of the best blog posts on MTurk. You have covered all the negative side of MTurk.
ReplyDelete@Malathy - Thanks for your kind words. MTurk can be extremely frustrating at times!
ReplyDeleteI'm glad I found this post. I just started working for them and wondered why most of the requesters hadn't paid me yet. With some of them it's been several days. Spent literally hours there yesterday and nothing has been approved yet at all. It has good points, but I'm just going to have to learn to distinguish the BS from the legit jobs.
ReplyDeleteSome requesters pay within hours, Laura. Others can take over a week. There isn't a max time on MTurk as far as I'm aware. (There's a max of a week on Microworkers, I think...)
ReplyDeleteUpdate: I think the max might be 30 days, which is, let's face it, forever!
ReplyDeletethe check payment is totally embarassing as it is not reaching the correct person on time
ReplyDelete@manash - I am not aware of MTurk paying by check, but they may do things differently in your part of the world, I guess! :-)
ReplyDeletemturk cuanto tarda en pagar llevo 8 dias esperando y nada
ReplyDeleteM turk for new worker frustrating as we spend hours to get a job and then paid like peanuts with several work pending for days...
ReplyDeleteGood amount work require qualification,which is hard to get.
Does anybody know why my account balance is only 4$ when I've been approved for 20? I just started doing HITs and I'm not sure if they just haven't paid amazon or what. They've been approved, not pending still.
ReplyDeleteGenerally, payments are the one thing that it is relatively easy to keep track of. They either accept or reject. If they accept, I've never not received a payment - eventually!
DeleteI hate that I can't permanently hide hits I'm not interested in. It just makes things so cluttered.
ReplyDeleteYes, there are virtually zero ways of customising searches, or saving them.
DeleteI am also suspicious when requesters pay decent and start rejecting.This requester requester, Aquarius Interactive rejected <5 hits, data rewording $.25, and now they have blocked me. I probably did at least $4 worth. I did two hits and later found out they were scammers and my rating dropped by almost 2%.
ReplyDeleteSorry to hear that, roddma!
ReplyDeleteHey in my earnings there are 10 dollars but in current balance there is nothing? what's this paul? can you tell me
DeleteHey in my earnings there are 10 dollars but in current balance there is nothing? what's this paul? can you tell me
ReplyDeleteI don't know, anon. It can take time for earnings money to appear in the balance section, but it's normally just 1 or 2 days in my experience.
DeleteYour money is held until you have been active on Mechanical Turk for 10 days.
DeleteAnd I saw somewhere the other day, I can't find it right now, you need to do like three hits for three days in a row to be paid.
I am new also, read the fine print. I passed my ten days the money is flowing. :)
You might be right on that, I never had any troubles getting paid, apart from some rejections that I didn't understand - but maybe I just met all the criteria?
DeleteThere's one offer for like 50 bucks where you have to give your social security and credit card number i believe, I got scared and left the offer, seems like a scam to me, and you are also not qualified for the good money offers, it's sad.
ReplyDeleteThat definitely sounds like a scam. Sometimes you just need a good HIT acceptance rate to qualify, although the translations are often the best payers often, it's true and most of us don't qualify. It's definitely got harder to make money on MTurk over the past couple of years.
Deletemy account is suspended without giving any warning? how can I withdraw my balance which is more than $125
ReplyDeleteI have rejection rate less than 1.5% and still I'm suspened. No warnings prior to my suspension. I.m having more than $120. Will they send my cheque. I live in India
ReplyDeleteHave you emailed them to ask for an explanation? I am just a normal turker, I have no special contacts or anything, so there isn't a great deal that I can do to help, unfortunately. But finding out why you were suspended would be a good starting point?
DeleteHi, nice post. I am a member of Amazon mechanical turk and generally i can say is not a scam. I had few instances when i was scammed by the requesters, but not many. Greatest drawback of Amazon Mturk is the low pay for HIT's. There are number of other ways to make money online i discovered in this free ebook: http://at5.us/freebook
ReplyDeleteNice blog and the details about it really interesting.
ReplyDeleteI liked your blog.
amazon category approval
For 3-4 bucks per hour or less. Just get a real job.
ReplyDelete