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  Once it appears in my account it can be withdrawn or spent as normal.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 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?)

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!