More Amazon Mechanical Turk Tips

I wrote my first lot of MTurk tips for Turkers a couple of months back and received positive feedback, however I thought it would be good to do a follow up and include some of the stuff I didn’t include the first time around.  So here are some more Amazon Mechanical Turk tips for you.  They are aimed at MTurk workers, people who earn money online, and are meant to supplement my previous tips.  Depending on your level of experience with MTurk, some of them might seem pretty obvious, but I hope you can glean something of use from them.  I have actually learnt quite a bit by putting them together as it has made me think about my approach to Mech Turk and reminded me of some of the mistakes that I made early on when I didn’t know any better!  Anyway, here are my More Amazon Mechanical Turk tips.

1. It is easy to skip the qualification tests sometimes, but they can be useful.  Sometimes they open up a whole vein of good MTurk hits.  Sometimes you don’t even have to do anything other than click a button to qualify (presumably they are trying to weed out bots?)

2.  Sometimes it is worth doing lots of low paying MTurk hits just to increase your hit approval rate.  You will also sometimes need to rescue your hit approval rate when it when your hit approval rate has fallen.

3.  Your hit approval rate can be important as it determines which hits you can and can’t do.  I myself didn’t realize this at first and managed to mess up early on in my turking career and it took me what seemed like ages to recover! 

4.  Opinion varies on which browser is best, but I personally would use Firefox or Chrome.  Some of the Amazon Turk hits demand that you don’t use Internet Explorer or that you use Internet Exporer with a Chrome frame.  I have Internet Explorer, Firefox, and Chrome all installed, just in case!

5.  If an Amazon MTurk requester rejects you and you think that they wrong to do so, contact them directly and ask them what the problem was.  Be polite but firm.  It is surprising how many non-payers will pay up after being contacted.

6.  Maintaining good communications with the good MTurk requesters never does you any harm and if you can build up a trusting relationship you can sometimes be offered more opportunities to earn money online outside of MTurk by the good MTurk requesters.

Swagbucks tips and tricks

Message from Paul: This post is a guest blog by my wife, who is a big fan of Swagbucks.  When she is not blogging about Swagbucks, she can be found over at her Green/frugal living blog: Born a-green.  So anyway, without further ado, here are her Swagbucks tips and tricks.

Background

Swagbucks is a rewards program that gives you virtual currency for doing everyday tasks, like checking in on the website, installing their toolbar, doing web searches, taking surveys, filling out profiles, watching videos and shopping online.   Swagbucks are credited to your online account.  When you have a certain level of Swagbucks in your account you can redeem them in the online store.  Two of my favorite ways to redeem my bucks are to purchase either the $5 Amazon gift card (for 450 Swagbucks) or the $5 PayPal cash to my account (for 700 Swagbucks).

Some tips for collecting Swagbucks: 

They do a daily Groupon deal that often awards you Swagbucks.  I love to do a Groupon, so this is a match made in heaven for me.  I did the Barnes & Nobles Groupon a week or so ago and got a $20 card for $10, but since I went through Swagbucks I got 315 Swagbucks in my account on top of it.  That’s most of the way to a $5 Amazon gift card, and all I did was buy something I was going to purchase anyhow!

Don’t buy something purely to get Swagbucks, only buy it if you want it and get the Swagbucks as a bonus.  Remember, Swagbucks are virtual currency.  It’s not a rebate in the cash money sense.  

The Swagbucks Logo

Use the Swagbucks tool bar.  You can get 1 Swagbuck just for logging into the toolbar each day.  You can get another 1 Swagbuck for checking out the surveys page, or the offers page, or voting in the Daily Poll.  You can get anywhere from 0-50 Swagbucks for a web search, depending on the Search Results.  As you can see, it makes sense to install the toolbar.

Add Swagbucks on Facebook, Twitter and also use their widget on your blog.  You’ll get more opportunities for Swagbucks that way, including bonus codes for ‘Swag Hunts’.

Conclusion

I definitely would recommend you try Swagbucks.   This month so far I have $35 in Amazon gift cards uploading to my Amazon account, as a result of all my Swagbucking.   The money sure comes in handy when I want to get someone a gift, or even if I just want a treat for myself!