Time For a Revamp!

A new year has started and I am working on revamping this website to give it a new look and feel, hopefully making it even more useful and informative for those people who are earning online.

I started this blog back in 2011 when I was new to the world of earning online.  I thought it would be great to write about my experiences of working on sites like Amazon Mechanical Turk and share my knowledge and experiences with others. I have learnt a lot of things on the way, some of which I’ve shared, but there is lots more that I want to post.

Consequently, I am going to broaden the scope of the site and cover some of my experiences with earning methods such as affiliate advertising, as well as covering MTurk and alternatives such as Bubblews, which I’ve been playing around with a lot recently.

I have earned more than $40,000 online over the past couple of years, it’s not enough to live off full time, but it is a more than reasonable part-time income.  Part of that money came from sites like MTurk, but I’ve also done well  from websites like Hubpages and Squidoo, as well as through creating my own sites, mainly creating sites using the blogging site: Wordpress.org and then hosting them with my favorite website host: HostGator.

I have discovered and used a lot of resources over the past three years and I want to share my discoveries with others – posting some of my mistakes and bad experiences, as well as the good ones.

Despite me semi-neglecting this site, it still gets an awful lot of traffic, and I’m hoping that with a new look and feel and some fresh material, it will reclaim, or even exceed its previous glories!

I am looking forward to this new project!

Watch this space!

Disclosure:  Please note that some of the links below are affiliate links – that means that I earn a small commission if someone uses them to sign up or buy something. Using an affiliate link does not cost or cause detriment to you in any way, however.  Also note that I don’t recommend anything unless I have experience of it and have found it helpful in achieving earnings targets.  I greatly appreciate the support of everyone who uses my affiliate links.

Total processing time for MTurk payments from HIT to bank account

I get quite a few comments from people asking about the processing time for MTurk payments.  Usually they are new to Amazon Mechanical Turk and panic when they don’t get their money straightaway.  I have to say that although MTurk is one of the quickest ways of earning money online, in that you don’t have to reach a high threshold level of earnings or wait for a monthly payout date, you still don’t get your money instantly.

I thought I would give you a personal timeline of how the earnings system works, starting with me completing the HIT for the MTurk requester, through to the money becoming available in my bank account.  It is written from my own experience, but bear in mind that I live in the USA and the system might work a little differently if you are in another country.

STEP 1

HIT is completed for an MTurk requester.  It then sits in the HIT Status section of my dashboard page waiting for the requester to approve or reject it.  This is often the longest part of the process and it can take anywhere from being almost instantaneous to up to a month.  In reality most hits are accepted or rejected within hours or days – it’s difficult to predict however and depends entirely on the MTurk requester.

STEP 2

Even after a HIT has been accepted it doesn’t get credited to me straight away.  In my experience, it is normally credited to my current balance (found in Account Settings) within 24 hours of acceptance though (and very often sooner than that).

STEP 3

Once the money has been credited to my Current Balance, it can be spent online at the Amazon store.  If I want to transfer it to my bank account, however, I need to reach a minimum of $10 earnings credit to do that.  You will also need to link your Amazon MTurk account to your bank account - it is some time since I did this, but I seem to remember that it took a day of two before my account was set up.  You transfer money by clicking on the “Withdraw or transfer your earnings” link in the “Your Earnings” section of the Account Settings page.  Once you transfer the money, it typically takes a couple of days to appear in my bank account.  Transferring it at the weekend will take even longer.  Once it appears in my account it can be withdrawn or spent as normal.

As you can see from the steps above, you don’t get money instantly.  You have to wait up to a month to get the HIT approved (although usually it is done within a few days).  You have to wait up to 24 hours to get the money credited to your current balance after approval.  It can then take several days to transfer it your bank account.

Sticking to surveys and diminishing returns

I’ve been sticking to doing online surveys for money on Amazon Mechanical Turk recently.  After working a lot on MTurk in the run up to Xmas to get some extra money for the festive season, I’ve just been working fairly intermittently in the last few months for a bit of extra pocket money to spend on small Amazon products, such as computer accessories.

Diminishing returns

I think that generally speaking, it is best to see MTurk earnings as pocket money, rather than trying to earn it as any sort of wage.  It might be different if you are in a developing country, but here in the US, the money that you can earn (with the occasional exception) is generally just too small to make a great deal of difference.  This wasn’t necessarily true in the past, but I think it’s fair to say that MTurk payments have overall been driven down over time.

Online surveys

Surveys are a good example of this phenomenon.  When I started doing the online surveys for money on MTurk over a year and a half ago, it was common to see 15 or 20 minutes surveys that paid, $1.50, $2, $2.50, or more.  Now the equivalent survey generally pays at most a sum more like 50c,75c, or, if you’re lucky, a dollar.  (My stats are anecdotal, but I’m pretty sure that the lower earnings aren’t just my imagination!)

Globalization

The worst falls in earnings come with the general, more mechanical tasks, however, that are open to anyone in the world to do.  These tasks pay less than 10% of what they did a couple of years ago in some cases.  Don’t get me wrong, I certainly don’t begrudge fellow turkers from the Indian Subcontinent earning an honest buck, but MTurk is definitely an example of how globalization can sometimes have a negative effect on workers’ wages.

MTurk online surveys: 3 peeves of mine

I’ve been working on Amazon MTurk a lot recently in the run up to Christmas - it’s a good way of saving for gifts, especially when I know that what I plan to buy is sold on Amazon.  But some of the problems with the Mechanical Turk online surveys have been annoying me. 

Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy doing surveys.  They seem like less hassle than some of the other tasks sometimes, the pay varies and is maybe going down gradually over time, but often still isn’t bad in MTurk terms.  The requesters are also generally pretty reliable, especially if the MTurk requester is a university academic or student, so I worry less about not getting paid, or there being some sort of scam going on.

But recently when I search for surveys, there have been more and more scams that are calling themselves surveys appearing (you know the sort, they always offer you an "easy money for 5 minutes work" and say they're going to pay you $20!).  I mean signing up for a credit report can in no way be considered a survey!  Neither can “test my website by entering all your personal details and pressing submit”!  I guess I had considered online surveys to be a haven from the worst scams, but now I’m realizing that I was probably being over-optimistic.

Another really annoying thing that happens to me sometimes with surveys is that I approve the hit, open another window then do and the survey – but when I go back to the original window it tells me that I’ve run out of time.  Basically, the requester has given an absurdly short amount of time to do the survey and I have not noticed.  It’s happened to me before and I think it’s actually the same requester who keeps doing it (I hope it’s not deliberate, but who knows?!)

Which brings me onto my third and final gripe, which never ceases to annoy me.  Why is it that MTurk requesters can block specific turkers, but the turker can’t block a requester that they don’t like?  I am maybe being cynical, but I think it tells you where the turker features in the Amazon scheme of things – down at the bottom of the pile!

Anyway, enough moaning.  I can’t say for sure if I will blog again before Christmas.  If I don’t, have a happy festive season, turkers, and a prosperous new year!

My favorite MTurk requester

My favorite Mechanical Turk requester was Content Galore.  For a period of time they were paying $1.80 for 150 word encyclopedia style articles on MTurk.  They would give you a name or a theme, such as “Burt Reynolds” or “Orlando, Florida”, you went away and did some basic research (looked it up in Wikipedia or another reputable source), wrote a summary of the information in your own words and submitted it.  The articles were checked by other turkers and pretty much always accepted (at least in the experiences of my wife and I).

It was a great way of making money from home.  Although there was the odd sparse period here and there, generally there was plenty of work to do.  Content Galore were quick payers too – you would usually have your work accepted within a couple of hours, often almost instantly.  The HITs would take me just over 10 minutes to complete, meaning that I could earn 20 dollars or more in just a couple of hours or so, which is pretty good by general MTurk standards.  My wife could complete them even faster than me, often doing them in half the time that I could!  Content Galore were great and I came to rely upon them, usually ignoring other MTurk HITs during that period.

But then something went wrong.  My favorite MTurk requester disappeared for a long time, which wasn’t entirely unusual for them, but when they returned, something had changed.  My wife noticed it first, she did three HITs for them straightaway, but to her shock had all three of them rejected!  The pattern was repeated, with Content Galore disappearing again and returning, only to reject the HITs of my wife and I.  It was bizarre, as we followed all the instructions and had done countless HITs for them previously without a single rejection.  It resulted in our HIT approval ratings getting damaged and our time being wasted with no money in return.

The rumor was that unscrupulous turkers had been trying to cheat the system, including submitting work that had been spun (generated by special software, which turns out work that reads well to a computer but looks terrible to a native English speaker).  Content Galore had responded by introducing their own software to check work in an attempt to spot the spinners and cheaters – but the software was overzealous and rejecting work from honest turkers as well as the cheats.

Content Galore disappeared and reappeared again and again.  Every time that they returned, my wife or I would try doing a ‘test HIT’ to see if Content Galore had resolved their problems, but each time we did, the test HIT was rejected.  My wife had one HIT rejected on the grounds that she had completed it faster than was humanly possible.  Well, I was with her at the time and can vouch that she did the HIT according to all the instructions and produced a great piece of work, which was researched, read well and had been spell checked too, so I don’t know what was going on.

So nowadays, if I happen to come across a Content Galore HIT, I will ignore it.  But working for them was good while it lasted.

Writing an MTurk blog: A look at the best ones

Sustaining an MTurk blog isn’t always easy.  Like most turkers, I suspect, my enthusiasm for MTurk ebbs and flows.  There are periods where I do a lot of turking, periods where I do just a little each day, and periods where I do no turking at all.  The reasons for this are varied.  Sometimes there are HITs on MTurk that I enjoy and pay reasonably well, so I spend more time on MTurk to exploit them.  Sometimes I am forced to spend more time on MTurk purely because I need some extra money.  Other times, I have other things happening in my life and I haven’t the time, need, or motivation to be on MTurk.

I have been looking at other blogs recently, principally ones that are written by turkers and aimed at other MTurk workers - there aren’t actually that many active ones around, it seems.  The official Amazon MTurk blog, for instance, tends to focus more on the needs of requesters and programmers, than the requirements of turkers.

Judging by some of the other MTurk blogs out there that I have managed to find, many turkers start out with the notion that they can make enough regular money off MTurk to sustain themselves for a long period of time.  Then they gradually become disillusioned if this doesn’t happen and some get angry with being poorly treated, or at the quality of some of the HITs.  Some of the most entertaining and informative writing comes from disillusioned turkers, although their blogs are often short-lived.

“Mechanical Turk Blog” was clearly motivated to write an MTurk blog in order to highlight what he saw as the scams and injustices of MTurk, of which there are many.  I think it is a continual source of disappointment to all of us that Amazon can appear unwilling, or unable, to police the posted HITs better when they are clearly aimed at gathering workers’ contact details for spamming purposes, or worse still, are aimed at collecting personal info to be used for identity theft.  These sort of HITs appear regularly on MTurk, sometimes masquerading as a “survey” or a “website test”.  Other times, turkers are being asked to perform tasks that are of questionable ethics, and/or legality.

Having made his point, “Mechanical Turk Blog” now seems to have melted back into cyberspace.

Turk Lurker’s blog has some entertaining and informative reads in it!  He has a dry sense of humor, referring to Mechanical Turk as the “Slave Yard” and giving his blog the url: “MTurkey”.  Strange that his posts suddenly stop in 2007 and then suddenly reappear in 2011, but these things happen, I guess – maybe his wife had a baby or something?

Eric Cranston wrote an interesting turker blog, but unfortunately it petered out in 2007 after 2 years of posts.

There are many blogs by people on how to make money from home which refer to MTurk in passing, but it they generally just write a single article and they often don’t give you much more information or insight than a general introduction to MTurk for beginners.

Anybody know of any more interesting MTurk blogs?

8 Websites that pay you

I thought it might be useful to write a list of websites that pay you, along with my assessment for how lucrative I have found them in terms of online earnings.  These are all websites that I use, or have used, to make money online.  I give a very brief explanation with a link to a much more detailed review, followed by my online earnings rating – the online earnings rating is subjective, of course, as it is quite possible that someone else might sign up to a site and have a completely different experience to my own.

Crowdsourcing Sites

In the crowdsourcing sites, you make money by performing simple tasks on your computer for online employers in return for small payments.  Tasks might include things such as copying text from scanned business cards, completing online surveys, writing short blog articles, tweeting adverts, writing descriptions of photos or videos.

Amazon MTurk (Mechanical Turk) – The site that this blog is named after and a great site if you want to make money online quickly.  There are times when I find it frustrating, however.  Despite the (occasional) problems, this site is probably one of the better websites that pay you.  Full review: Top 10 Amazon Mechanical Turk Tips and Tricks  Online earnings rating: 8/10

Microworkers – Similar to Amazon MTurk but a much smaller outfit, which gives it some advantages as well as disadvantages.  A lot of spammy jobs on there, so I tend to pick off one or two good ones each day and therefore find that making money money online is slower than with Amazon MTurk.  Still worth doing though.  Full review: The Pros and Cons of Making Money Online with Microworkers  Online earnings rating: 7/10

Social networking websites that pay you

These sites pay you for online social activity.  This might include things like: starting discussions, uploading photos, commenting on people’s profiles, bookmarking links to websites or posts.

myLot – I had a lot of hopes for myLot when I first started it, but overall I have been a little disappointed by it.  It seems difficult to make more than pennies each day, in my experience, although I must say that the ‘work’ that you do is hardly taxing.  Maybe I just don’t use it enough, as there are people on there who say they earn a dollar a day or more just for chatting.  Full review: How To Make Money Online With MyLot  Online earnings rating: 4/10

RedGage  - I have known about RedGage for a long time, but only started using it recently.  I personally prefer it to myLot, although both sites can irritate me a little at times (myLot because of the full page ads and RedGage because it can be a little glitchy at times).  The great thing about RedGage, however, is that you continue to make money online even when you do nothing after you have uploaded enough stuff.  It’s never going to make you a millionaire, but the community on there are friendly.  Full review: Can I earn money online with RedGage?  Online earnings rating: 6/10

Onine reward clubs

These sites pay you for doing things like completing online surveys, reading emails, watching videos, playing computer games, shopping online.

Swagbucks – A popular website with a strong following.  You collect a virtual currency called swagbucks, which you can then exchange for products online, PayPal money, or Amazon giftcards.  Full review: Swagbucks tips and tricks  Online earnings rating: 7/10

Inbox Dollars – Similar to Swagbucks in many ways, but a smaller outfit.  I actually prefer Inbox Dollars to Swagbucks, but make sure that you don’t give them your main email address as they send you lots of emails, which can be annoying.  Full review: Review of Inbox Dollars  Online earnings rating: 7/10

Writing sites

These sites are more involved than the others, as you have to write informative articles and have a good command of the English language.  This means investing a lot of time and energy, often doing research as well as writing.  Earnings are slow at first.  They gradually build, but it can take months before the dollars begin coming in.  HubPages and Squidoo make their money through Google adverts and companies like Amazon, and give the writers a share.

HubPages  You write informative articles on a topic you know.  Good community.  Has been through some tough times after getting hammered by Google, but now seems to be on the way back up, at least for may writers.  There are some big earners on there, although most writers earn well under $15 per month.  Use my referral link to.  Online earnings rating: 7/10  Sign up to HubPages with my referral link.

Squidoo  Similar to HubPages in essence, but the payout system is a little different.  I didn’t have much success with Squidoo and gave up on it, but others swear by it as an earner.  Online earnings rating: 5/10  Use my referral link to sign up to Squidoo.

UPDATE (February 2014)

I would avoid MyLot altogether as they are no longer and earning site.  Redgage is no longer much good either.

Bubblews is a good site, however, if you just want some (relatively) quick and easy money.

Recovering from a bad HIT Approval Rate

As any experienced turker will tell you, recovering from a bad HIT approval rate can be a frustrating experience.  It seems to take forever to come back from the damage that just one or two MTurk HIT rejections can do and all the time your HIT approval rate is damaged, your ability to make money online is compromised.

If you are new to turking and aren’t aware, Amazon Mechanical Turk calculates your HIT approval rate by comparing how many of your MTurk HITS have been rejected by requesters for HITs submitted against how many have been accepted.  The resulting percentages are called your HIT rejection rate and your HIT approval rate.  (All these figures can be seen on the Dashboard part of your Mechanical Turk account.)

The problem is that many of the requesters insist on a HIT approval rate of 95% or better as a qualification requirement and if you don’t meet the qualification standard, they don’t allow you do their HITs.  These MTurk HITS are very often some of the best paid ones and so getting a bad HIT approval rate can really damage your ability to make money online.

As I have mentioned before, when I started out with Mechanical Turk, I didn’t appreciate the problems that having a bad HIT approval rate might bring, so I just tried out lots of different HITs without really caring too much whether some of them got rejected or not.  This came back to haunt me and I learnt my lesson accordingly.

More recently, however, I have seen my HIT approval rate drop again through no fault of my own.  This was apparently because, as I found out from turkers at TurkopticonToolbar, a requester who had been reliable in the past suddenly started using new (faulty) software which was wrongly automatically rejecting HITs that were actually completely fine.  I did complain about it, of course, but it was to no avail, as usually happens!  (See 10 reasons why I hate Mechanical Turk)

Anyway, I’ve spent my time recently working my socks off on getting my HIT approval rating back up to 95%.  It isn’t fun.  As well as my choice of HITs being reduced, each time I do a new HIT I am worried about getting another rejection and getting pushed back down again (once bitten, twice shy!). 

I’m not sure if I mentioned it in my comparison of MTurk and Microworkers: ­MTurk or Microworkers, which is best?,  but Microworkers are more generous with when it comes to recovering from a bad HIT approval rate.  With Microworkers your rate will recover naturally with time, even if you don’t do anything - so long as you don’t keep picking up rejections you will be okay.

In conclusion, my advice would be to not let your MTurk HIT approval rate fall below 95% if you can possibly help it.  If it does happen, I would focus on getting it back up by doing ‘safe’ HITs, that’s to say HITs being offered by MTurk requesters that you trust, as you can’t afford to get any more rejections.  Be prepared for a long haul, though - because the HIT approval rate is a proportional figure, you will need many new HIT approvals to make up for just a few rejections.

The Turkopticon Toolbar and Making Money with Mechanical Turk (MTurk)

I have raved about the Turkopticon Toolbar more than once in passing in my posts about Amazon MTurk (Mechanical Turk) but I love this device so much, I wanted to dedicate an entire blog post to it.  It really is the most wonderful aid for Mechanical Turk workers (also known as turkers) and a must for everyone trying to make money with Mechanical Turk.  As well as the Turkopticon Toolbar itself, there is also an online community of turkers associated with it, who can provide an invaluable source of information for anyone who is trying to make money online using MTurk.

How much does it cost?

The Turkopticon Toolbar costs nothing to download and install, that’s right, it’s free! 

How do I install it?*

There are two versions, one for Firefox and one for Google Chrome.  Provided you get the right version, installation is simple.  There is no version for Internet Explorer, but if you use MTurk regularly to make money online, then I would recommend that you download Firefox, just for the Turkopticon Toolbar, you can always just carry on using Internet Explorer for everyday use and click on Firefox when you use Mechanical Turk.

How does the Turkopticon Toolbar work?

Basically, Turkopticon is letting you know how other turkers have got on before with specific MTurk HIT requesters.  It does this by placing little button arrows next to the requesters when you are on the Amazon MTurk HITs page.  By clicking on the arrow, you see how previous turkers have rated that MTurk requester.  They are graded according to how quickly they pay, how fair they are at assessing HITs etc.  Turkers also write reviews in some cases.

Source:

http://turkopticon.differenceengines.com/

This means that with the Turkopticon Toolbar you can avoid the worst MTurk requesters by looking at the reviews before you do a HIT.  You can also write a review after you complete a HIT and get paid and let other turkers know how you got on with that MTurk requester.

Are there any problems associated with the Turkopticon Toolbar?

I personally have not encountered any.  The program is also very small, so I’ve not noticed it slowing my browser in any noticeable way.

I know this probably sounds like a glowing endorsement, but as far as the Turkopticon Toolbar goes, I struggle to think of any negatives.  It really is a must if you want to make money with Mechanical Turk.

Oh, I nearly forgot to give you the download link, you can get the toolbar HERE!

*UPDATE: At the time of writing, the Turkopticon Toolbar isn’t working with Firefox 5, so I have gone back to Firefox 4 in order to use it!  I’ve had similar problems with other Firefox add-ons too recently, the root cause being that Firefox rushed out version 5 only a few months after they brought out version 4 and the add-on developers haven’t had enough time to react.  Hopefully this issue will be resolved soon.  FURTHER UPDATE: THIS MATTER IS NOW RESOLVED!

Microworkers scam: are accusations about payment problems justified?

I recently received a comment from someone on one of my make money online articles complaining about Microworkers payment problems and not being able to get his Microworkers earnings transferred over to his PayPal account.  He was upset and said he couldn’t understand why Microworkers insisted on mailing a PIN number out to him, which he’d not received, and he also implied (at least this was my interpretation) that the whole thing was a Microworkers scam.

As this was not the first time that I have seen complaints made against Microworkers about payment problems online, I thought it merited me writing a blog post.  I figured that I could also give you my own experience of what happened when I asked to transfer my Microworkers earnings from Microworkers to a PayPal account for the first time.  Before that though, I will go through the complaints about payment problems one at a time and provide some possible explanations.

Why do Microworkers send out PIN numbers by mail?

You would have to ask them that.  Although, often though it is done by companies for tax purposes, when they are attempting to show the IRS that they know who they are paying and sending out PIN numbers is a way of verifying someone’s address. 

Is it in Microworkers interest to scam people?

I personally don’t believe that it is.  They are a small company with a relatively small online workforce, certainly when compared to a giant like Amazon and their Mechanical Turk (MTurk), their main make money online rival.  I can’t see why they would want to alienate workers or get a bad reputation just for the sake of a few dollars.  (I have been critical in the past that Microworkers seem too lenient when it comes to some dodgy tasks being advertised on their website, but that is not the same as saying that Microworkers themselves are not legit!)

My own experiences of transferring my earnings from Microworkers to PayPal

Here's what happened with me back when I first requested a Microworkers payment of earnings to my PayPal account online.  I made a request to transfer $10 from my Microworkers earnings to my PayPal account and noted the date that I’d done this.  Within a few days, a message appeared in my Microwokers Account saying that the PIN number had been sent out.  I waited.  After a week had gone by, I began to get a little nervous.  After 10 days of waiting, I began to wonder if there really was a Microworkers scam.  After two weeks, however, I did receive my PIN number and guess what, the letter with the PIN number in it had come all the way from Slovenia (I live in the USA), so I guess that is a big part of the reason why it took so long!

Anyway I entered the PIN on the Microworkers website, which was accepted.  I then had to wait 4 more days while my Microworkers earnings were “pending withdrawal”, according to the Microworkers website.  All in all the process took just under three weeks from me initiating the payment to receiving it in my PayPal account.

So my advice would be to anyone who is seeking to access their Microworkers earnings for the first time, if my case is anything to go by, you will get your money, but don’t expect it to happen quickly!

Using Amazon MTurk to make money online with online surveys

One way that I make money online with Amazon Mechanical Turk (MTurk) is by completing some of the online surveys that you get on there.  There are pros and cons to doing Amazon MTurk surveys.  In some ways, you are better off signing up to a company that specializes in online surveys, rather than MTurk, if you want to make money online with online surveys, as they often pay much better.  Inbox Dollars is probably better than MTurk for online surveys too, in many ways, as they tend to pay more also.  But hey, this is primarily an MTurk blog and I do them on MTurk, so here are my thoughts on using Amazon MTurk to make money online with online surveys.


How do you find surveys on Amazon MTurk?

I normally just type "surveys" in the search box for hits and check the "for which you are qualified" box (my hit rejection rate fell below 95% again recently!).

Who pays you to do the online surveys on Amazon MTurk?

Anyone can pay people to do an online survey on Amazon MTurk.  But usually the online surveys are provided by a mixture of consumer research groups working on behalf of companies, plus individuals who are studying something at a college or university - either academic staff such as professors, or students working for a degree.

Pay rates and time

The online surveys that you see on Amazon MTurk have pay rates that are completely variable and erratic in my experience.  Sometimes you will get paid maybe $2 a time to do easy surveys that take only 5 minutes.  Other times you will be given 25 cents for doing a very difficult online survey that takes you over half an hour to complete.  There is no rhyme nor reason to it and it is not always possible to discover from the instructions how difficult, or how long the survey will take you before you start out.

Things to watch out for in Amazon MTurk Online Surveys

Some surveys have initial questions that you have to answer correctly before you can undertake the survey proper.  These are annoying if you’re trying to make money online, because if you get anything on the initial section wrong, it’s often a waste of time as you don’t get to do the main survey and therefore don’t get paid.

Often there is a trick question put in the survey somewhere to check if you are actually reading the questions properly and paying attention.  Try not to rush through them too much, or you will miss it.

Always make sure that you take your time and pay lots of attention at the end.  Usually you get given some sort of code to prove that you have completed the online survey and if you miss that, you won’t get paid!

Amazon MTurk surveys are generally reliable for paying up, but often late

Generally speaking, I have had a good record of getting paid with Amazon MTurk online surveys, that’s to say, not getting unfairly rejected.  They often aren’t the quickest payers though.  Sometimes they pay quickly, but I have also known them to take weeks.  On the whole, I would say they were relatively slow payers.

Get your browser right

Some surveys like you to have specific browsers and software installed on your computer in order to do the online survey.  I tend to use Mozilla Firefox generally, but I would always make sure that whatever browser you use, you have others installed too, certainly the big three: Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome, and Internet Explorer, then you have extra options if you run into technical difficulties, or the requester demands that you use a certain browser.  I would also make sure that you have your Flash player up to date, as some online surveys play you videos and audio to watch and listen to.

PS If you use Mozilla Firefox, or Google Chrome, then you can also use the fabulous Turkopticon toolbar, which is one of the greatest tools for mechnical turkers ever invented!

Bizarre experiences with Amazon MTurk Online Surveys

I think one of the oddest surveys that I’ve done when trying to make money online, was one where they kept playing me the same piece of classical music over and over again and asking me what I thought of it.  I like classical music, but this survey went on and on in a repetitive fashion for a long, long time, and it almost drove me around the twist!

MTurk Requester Payment Problems

Earning money online can be frustrating sometimes.  Most turkers who have worked on Amazon Mechanical Turk for any length of time has experienced MTurk requester payment problems.  There are times when you know why you have not been paid sometimes, for instance, you had a computer glitch, or an interuption happened, like you were phoned up, and you ran out of time to finish doing the MTurk hit.  Another time, you might have been unsure what you were supposed to be doing on the hit and so not surprised when your work was rejected by the MTurk requester.

Late Payments

It is frustrating when you complete a job and then you are checking your account every day expecting to see your earnings and nothing happens.  In my experience, most MTurk requesters pay up within a couple of days.  Some pay quicker than that, within a matter of hours sometimes.  The annoying thing is where is takes over a week before you receive your MTurk payment.  You can email the MTurk requester in this situation, but be aware that Amazon allows them up to 30 days to either pay or reject your work.  That is way too, long in my opinion, and Microworkers have got a better idea by giving MTurk employers a one week cut off period to resolve outstanding jobs.

Non-payment by MTurk requester because of hits rejected

Occasionally you can get hits rejected by an MTurk requester and it seems unfair.  As well as losing the money you felt you earned, getting hits rejected can also damage your hit rejection rate and effect which hits you are able to do in future.  So even if the amounts of money involved are small, it can still be annoying and upsetting.

If there were technical problems at the time of doing the hit, then you should report the hit as broken using the link in the bottom right.  If you believe that the requester is breaching the Amazon Mechanical Turk policies, then you should click the “Violates the Amazon Mechanical Turk policies” link which is also at the bottom right.  

Sometimes you have no idea why you have had your hits rejected.  In this case it is best to contact the MTurk requester.  I would advise that the tone you adopt with them is polite but firm.  You should explain that you followed all the instructions and ask why your work was rejected.  In many cases the matter can be resolved this way and you will get your money (or they will explain to you your mistake).  Sometimes the MTurk requester will use stalling tactics and you have to write more than once before they pay up.  Note though, that an MTurk requester cannot themselves reverse a rejection decision without the help of Amazon.

If you still have no joy, then your options for complaint as an MTurk worker are very limited (one gripe of turkers is that MTurk requesters can ban certain MTurk workers, but not the other way around).  Though you can, of course, warn other MTurk workers about the bad requester and discuss your experiences either on Turkopticon, or on one of the MTurk forums.

Amazon MTurk vs Inbox Dollars, which is best?

Amazon Mturk vs Inbox Dollars, which is best?

Having written a review of Inbox Dollars previously, I thought it might be interesting to use my MTurk blog to compare InboxDollars and Amazon Mechanical Turk directly from a worker’s perspective and discuss which is best, rather like I did with Mturk or Microworkers,which is best? giving the relative advantages of using each website as a method for making money online.  So here is my MTurk vs Inbox Dollars comparison.

MTurk Advantages

There is no minimum threshold to reach before you are paid with Amazon MTurk, unlike with Inbox Dollars where you have to get $30 before you can receive anything (or $40 if you do not want to pay any charges).

 You don’t get lots of emails clogging up your inbox from MTurk like you do with Inbox Dollars.

If you find a good MTurk requester with lots of hits, you can learn how to do that task and stick with it for a long time, often building up decent earnings.

There is more work and a much wider variety of tasks that you can do on Amazon MTurk.

If you want to buy products from Amazon, then MTurk is great as you can earn and buy very quickly.

Inbox Dollars Advantages

There seems to be more overseeing of the jobs in Inbox Dollars, meaning that there are far less jobs on there that appear to be scams.  You are certainly safer from fraud anyway, though you can still get scammed, methinks.

There are no jobs that pay completely rip off prices, like in Amazon MTurk. 

There are is a regular supply of surveys in Inbox Dollars to do and these are good for bolstering income.  The number of surveys on MTurk can be erratic and the money you receive for taking the time to do them varies considerably.

You can earn money for shopping online with Inbox Dollars which is not an option with Amazon Mechanical Turk.

You aren’t dealing with lots and lots of different requesters like in Amazon MTurk, which can be a pain.

You are usually paid relatively quickly with Inbox Dollars, whereas you can never be quite sure when you will get your money with Amazon MTurk

General Summary of Amazon MTurk vs Inbox Dollars, which is best?

Overall, I use Inbox Dollars on a regular basis to build up earnings over time, whereas I tend to do Amazon MTurk in spurts, depending often on which MTurk requesters are posting hits at the time.  Inbox Dollars is more reliable in some ways, in that you tend to get paid at a more consistent rate and within a consistent time frame.  MTurk has a greater volume of jobs and a bigger variety, however.

Amazon MTurk alternatives: websites like MTurk

One question that I see asked a lot online and am always interested in myself is what Amazon MTurk alternatives are there on the web?  It is always good to have other options to fall back on, or other methods of earning online to use in addition to Amazon Mechanical Turk.  As far as I am aware, there are no websites like MTurk that resemble it in every way, but there are places that have some of the Amazon MTurk features and where you can make money online.

Microworkers has the most obvious similarities of all the MTurk alternatives.  The website has a different layout, there are less jobs on off than MTurk, you get your earnings paid into a PayPal account rather than through Amazon, they use some different terms for things such as jobs instead of hits, but the essentials are pretty much the same: you do online tasks and you are paid money in return.  Out of all the websites like MTurk it is the most similar.  I have written numerous articles, comparisons and reviews of Microworkers, such as Microworkers Tips, The Pros and Cons of Making Money with Microworkers, MTurk or Microworkers, which is best?.

Inbox Dollars advertises itself as an online rewards club.  Many of the tasks are the same sort of thing that can be found on Amazon Mturk: watching videos, completing surveys, applying for things.  They pay you by check, so you receive real money, but you have to cross a $30 threshold.  That isn’t too difficult as they give you a $5 start, which is useful.  I have also written a full Review of Inbox Dollars which you are welcome to read.

Shorttask.com has been recommended to me.  I have not had time to join and take a detailed enough look around it in order to write a review, but on the surface it looks fairly similar to Microworkers.

The other two websites that I’ve used regularly are Swagbucks, another online rewards club not too dissimilar to Inbox Dollars and Mylot, which is a form of social network site in the same vein as Facebook, except you get paid for commenting and posting photos etc.

There are websites that focus entirely on surveys.  Out of these, Pine Cone Research is possibly rated the most highly.  They are always full and you need a referral from someone who is already a member to join, however.  My wife is a member.  They pay at least $3 per survey which is good.  Often you have an initial survey that pays $3, then they send you a product in the post, for example, a new fizzy drink.  You try the product then do a second $3 survey telling them what you thought of the drink.

Another option is one of the Paid To Click sites (PTC), where you click on things like website adverts for money, but I haven’t really looked into them, in all honesty, as the earnings seem low to me and they don’t appeal to me personally.  There are lots of them around, however.

UPDATE (February 2014)

If I was writing this article now, I would definitely say that Bubblews was the best alternative, certainly if you just want to earn some (relatively) quick and easy money.  You write short (minimum 400 characters) articles with freedom to choose your topic and interact with other writers, rather like you would do in Facebook, and earn for this.  The payment threshold was raised to $50 recently which means that it can take a week to get a payout, but it's easy and it's fun. 

How much money do you earn online with Amazon MTurk?

How much money do you earn online with Amazon MTurk?  This is good question and a relevant one for someone who is weighing up various ideas to make money online.  In my experience Amazon Mechanical Turk is actually a relatively straightforward option for making money online, as it is free to sign up to and once you have got used to the set up of the site, you can easily find out details of what each Amazon MTurk hit (task) entails and how much money that you will earn for its completion before you click to accept it. 

If you want actual earnings figures for MTurk then I will give you an idea of how I work and how much I earn in return for completing MTurk hits.  I tend to work in stints of two to three hours per day on MTurk.  Where possible, I do hits for MTurk requesters that I have worked for before, as then I know that there is a good chance that I will be paid and I also have a rough idea when.  For those two or three hours work, I would normally expect to come away with somewhere between and $8 and $18.  There may well be MTurk workers out there who do much better than that, if so, please feel free to comment.  I think the most that I have made is $27 in a half day but that is not typical for me.

On my bad days, a lot of my time is wasted on trying to find suitable MTurk hits.  On the good days, I find hits straight away and get straight on with it.  I don’t use any programs to cheat, though I am aware that there is software out there that some people have experimented with, such as software for generating reviews, blog posts, written articles etc.   

There are people who say that they have stumbled on reasonably well paid tasks that they can complete a lot of very quickly and they’ve come away with earnings of  $200+ for a day’s work, but that has never happened to me.  I would also remind people to be wary of the very high paying hits, as many of them are scams, designed to get you to hand over personal information.

I am relatively cautious when it comes to choosing jobs, but my wife is more experimental and that means her MTurk earnings tend to be more variable.  You can sometimes find lucrative MTurk hits by looking around and trying things.  But one risk of doing a lot of completely new MTurk hits all at once is that sometimes the requester will reject all your hits, either because you didn’t understand the instructions properly and did the tasks wrong, or because you have been unlucky and got one of the dishonest Turk requesters.  This can damage your rejection stats and effect your future work, as well as waste your time.

MTurk Forums

There are two main MTurk forums, Turker Nation and MTurk Forum (links can be found below).  Both serve their purpose well and there is no reason why you cannot join both of them, if you wish.  You can communicate with the MTurk community and keep up to date with what is happening.  For instance, you can sometimes find out useful info such as which MTurk requesters have a bad reputation.  You can also use them just to socialize and have fun.  Both these MTurk forums are ‘unofficial’ in that they are not run or administrated by Amazon, and they are run very much from an MTurk worker perspective.

MTurk forums are generally a fantastic source of information for beginners and experienced MTurk workers alike.  I never cease to learn from them and they are awesome free resources.  People new to MTurk (aka known as Mechanical Turk or Mech Turk) might find them especially useful.  To join, you just need to register for free, get yourself a username and a password, read the rules and away you go!

(I believe that Amazon do have an official forum but it is for MTurk software developers, not MTurk workers.)

Turker Nation

The Turker Nation Mturk forum can be found at http://turkernation.com  It is efficiently administrated by the firm but fair, Spamgirl.  It’s always pretty vibrant there in my experience and there is a tremendous wealth of Mech Turk news, information and opinion in the discussion threads.

MTurk Forum

The appropriately named(!) MTurk Forum can be found at http://www.mturkforum.com  The site has a simple and easy layout, but it is not usually quite as lively as Turker Nation in my experience.  It serves its purpose well, however, with plenty of discussion threads.  I don’t know who the administrator of MTurk Forum is, unfortunately.  (Please feel free to introduce yourself if you’re out there?)

Finding MTurk good hits

Finding MTurk good hits can be a very frustrating business.   The main difficulty is that there are usually many thousands of MTurk hits posted and it can take forever sifting through them.  If you are not careful, you end up spending half your time browsing for good hits, which is time that you could have spent earning.  Browsing time = wasted earning time, in my opinion!

One of the difficulties of searching for good hits on MTurk is that the search facilities are pretty basic.  There is no ‘Advanced Search’ option.  You can only search using critiera such as how much the hit pays and what words are included in the title of a hit, which means there’s a lot of guesswork involved.  You can’t search for specific requesters (though it’s true that you can click on their name once you’ve found one of their hits to see all the rest of them).  You can’t save your searches if you want to do a similar search later on.

Another problem is that once you’ve found a source of good hits, they can either dry up, or your requester disappears, often quite suddenly.  You are then left wondering whether the requester is going to return in a few hours, a few days, or never again.  If you are like me, you can waste time searching for them over and over again!

Solutions?

There aren’t any easy solutions to either problem.  Of course, it would probably be useful if MTurk split hits into categories rather like Microworkers does.  It would also be useful to have more advanced search options and the ability to save searches, so that you can use them again.  This is in the hands of Amazon MTurk, however.

With regard to keeping abreast generally on what’s happening, there are ways of communicating with the MTurk worker community that I’ve mentioned before – namely, the two main forums, Turker Nation and MTurk Forum.  Also the Turkopticon Toolbar has many comments on specific requesters that MTurk workers have written, such as how reliable they are and how communicative they are.

Not all MTurk workers are willing to give specific details of their favorite requesters and good hits, however, for fear of creating increased competition!

Is Amazon MTurk slave labor?

This article was prompted by a friend who told me that she’d tried Amazon Mechanical Turk (MTurk) after reading one of my articles.  She had done a number of hits but eventually decided that the MTurk payments were way too low and that Amazon MTurk was essentially a form of slave labor.

It is an issue that I’ve wrestled with myself, during my darker moments as an MTurk worker.  MTurk requesters effectively sidestep most labor legislation when they use MTurk,  meaning that MTurk workers, unlike people working in the “real” world, have virtually no rights.  Employers get a good deal out of MTurk potentially, as their overheads are minimal and they can effectively hire and fire at will.  Workers, on the other hand, are vulnerable to being ripped off.

Some of the MTurk requesters also offer payment rates that are effectively absurd.  Sometimes if you are like me, you look at the hit and think that they are paying you 1 cent for each task, which is already poor money, but then you read on and there are 10 of these tasks per hit.  That means that you are being offered 0.1 cent for each task.  Even if you can complete two tasks per minute, that’s still an hourly payment rate of just 12 cents!

Okay, I will shut up moaning.  But the issue is still a serious one.  At the end of the day, I use my MTurk payments to supplement other income that’s coming in and spend the money on essentially frivolous stuff such as nice coffee and audio equipment.  I feel concerned about people who are in a dire financial situation and reliant on MTurk to pay for some of their essential, day to day needs.

MTurk is fine in that context, as casual work that supplements other income, but I’d hate to see a world where all work was like MTurk and everyone was forced to scrape a living from day to day with virtually no rights or job security - a kind of weird cross between Victorian England and internet technology.  In short, I think that MTurk is great as an online earning option (which can also be fun sometimes!) but not if it’s your only effective choice!

MTurk or Microworkers, which is best?

With MTurk and Microworkers effectively competing with each other for the same pool of workers and employers, I thought it might be interesting to compare the two companies from a worker’s perspective, and ask the question: “MTurk or Microworkers, which is best?”

MTurk Advantages

1       Definitely more jobs/hits available on Mturk

2       No minimum earnings level to reach before payments begin.

3       MTurk has more jobs with multiple hits, rather than one offs than Microworkers in my opinon.

4       The Amazon store sells a large variety of products to choose from.

5       Amazon are a large company which are unlikely to fold and they also have a reputation to look after.

6       You can work on Amazon Mechanical Turk for as long as you wish and the pool of hits keeps replenishing itself.

7       There are lots of surveys to do on MTurk and they often pay reasonably well.

8       MTurk is big enough to have its own community, which can be found at the Turker Nation forum, MTurk Forum and the Turkopticon Toolbar feedback.

9       You can occasionally make a reasonable amount of money in one day on MTurk if you find good hits and put some effort in.

Microworkers Advantages

1       The lower number of jobs on Microworkers actually makes the site more manageable and easier to navigate.

2       The look and design of Microworkers is more attractive and functional, methinks.

3       They let you know what percentage of workers were successful previously on a job, which helps you to decide whether to take it or not.

4       Certain jobs like Youtube likes and voting in competitions seem to pay better on Microworkers than on Amazon Turk, that’s my experience anyway.

5       PayPal is good way to be paid with lots of options for spending your money etc.

6       Microworkers is fine for supplementing other income sources and gradually building up some extra money.

Summary

Unfortunately both the Amazon MTurk and Microworkers websites have plenty of scammy, spammy, requesters/employers on them, in my experience.  Although this doesn’t stop me working on them, it would be nice to see this sort of thing clamped down on more.

I personally tend to use both MTurk and Microworkers, but in slightly different ways.  MTurk I sometimes work on for extended periods, maybe a few hours, especially when there are hits and requesters that I particularly like.  Microworkers, on the other hand, I tend to use for maybe 15-30 minutes/day and just do a few tasks, with the intention of making a dollar/day towards the ten dollar payout minimum.