Comments on: Amazon's Mechanical Turk lets you make $$$, sort of

Amazon's Mechanical Turk lets you earn money for doing small computer tasks like eyeballing highway photos and classifying Web sites, but with average rates ranging from a penny to 10 cents, you have to have a lot of time on your hands to make it worth yo

[canadaboy]

You're in the wrong nation

The economics of the Mechanical Turk are not designed for first world citizens to generate a living with. They are designed for wages in India and China with massive labour pool, growing access to the internet, and a labour price point where the few cents or four dollars would generate a reasonable percentage of a monthly income. But running this as hope from North America, little chance of feeling any strong return on effort. It honestly would be more economic to get a job at McDonald's.

[jamie.p.walsh]

ahhh, remember the days of paid-to-surf!!

I had about 8 PCs at the campus lab I worked at running bots to simulate click-throughs. Each of them had about 4 or 5 different paying engines. About a 3 months and $90 later, they each started running detection software to prevent this, and there went my empire.

[sanenazok]

Data entry jobs on Craigslist??

I know at least a handful of idiot/students who over the past decade got ripped off by work at home data entry jobs, including ones on Craigslist. Just read online:

http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/menus/consumer/invest/workhome.shtm

[doug leeds]

I'll waive the conflict of interest :)

A great story Elinor.
Here's a little background and update on my "shocking" offer.
For an upcoming conference, I need to submit a "video bio." I thought this was a great experiment to see if MT could work if the task paid enough to make it worth it for users. (I tried MT with similar results as you, lots of effort for pennies.)
The result....so far I've received 6 video uploads. Three were spam--videos having nothing to do with the assignment. (I think this is probably because according to MT rules, if the requester (me in this case) takes no action after 30 days then the submitter is automatically paid, so these folks must have been thinking it's an easy way to earn $10 bucks if I don't look at the submissions.)
As for the other three, two were ok. Very simple and not something I'd really use, but they followed the directions and I'll pay them the $10. The last one was pretty good actually and I'll probably end up using it for the conference.
So all around, a decent result. $30 (I don't pay for the ones I reject) bought me a pretty good video to use.

[dbenatar]

.75 to record your screen while browsing a website

You should have tried this one. For $.75 you make a sample screen recording for UserTesting.com and if it's good, you get $10 for each future recording you make - which takes about 20 minutes.

[ahknamin]

If you are trying to make a living on this, it isn't possible. Granted it is a good idea, but as soon as too many people start using this, it will be banned, Hands down.

Did you see it? One more time? You won't get faked out here! http://www.SelectWealthSystem.com/?t=wc

[firebugmichelle]

I have tried Amazon's Mechanical Turk for both earning a little extra money and for getting content writers for my own sites. Overall, I hope that it succeeds but doesn't get too much bigger than it is now.

For earning - I have probably spent a little over an hour reviewing offers and doing jobs. Earned $2.55. Not really worth my time, but if i find jobs in subjects that I am in interested enough in that I would be willing to participate for free - it's pretty cool.

For getting people to write content for my website. ... I think it worked out fairly well :) I offered $5 per accepted article. One was excellent and I will definately be using it. Two others were ok, and I went ahead and paid the people for their effort. Overall, I see it as a win-win situation because I got some great content for my website ffor about $15, and my writers earned an average of $8 per hour for the work they did.

[hperry11]

As a Mechanical Turk "requester" I love it, but not for the reason you might think. I use Mechanical Turk to find quality writers. I pay $.30 to $.50 to have a few tips written, and I approve and pay everyone who follow the directions. Those who came out on top with quality writing get a bonus.

Then, I invite only the few quality writers privately to do work for me and pay them a higher price. It works well for weeding out the quality from the junk (or not-so-bad-but-not-so-great). I've found some real gems using Mechanical Turk and will pay to keep quality. Mechanical Turk provides a great testing ground.

One other observation...

I've been surprised how many educated people use Mechanical Turk to earn money. The great majority of those that end up doing additional work for me have a bachelor's degree, and quite a few have a master's degree. Is this a sign of the times?

[dmanincali]

The commenters saying that you probably can't earn first world wages on mechanical turk are absolutely right. I do make quite a bit of money though during commercial breaks while watching TV hammering out a couple of the $2-$4 writing assignments. If you are a very fast typist and can come up with prose quickly you can make $20-$30 in an evening of commercial breaks. Not a fortune but I do like that this allows me to make frivolous purchases without needing to think twice about the money given that I make it so frivolously. I managed to make enough to buy my Kindle 2 in about a month.

[Joliedupre]

I make at least $10 a day from Amazon Turk. Not much, but it adds up. (I sent $100 to my bank account yesterday.) If you make your money online, this is just one of the ways to do it, along with other ways. I never have to wait long for payment, and because I'm educated, requesters love what I produce. The assumption that all Amazon Turk workers are uneducated people from third world countries is coming from people who don't know what they're talking about.

[Joliedupre]

I do want to add that those requesters who want the moon, but think they can have the moon for pennies, I promptly ignore. (For example - 400 words for 15 cents is ridiculous. ) Some may do it, but not this American writer.

[bigman1011]

Wow cant make a living turking huh. I dunno about everyone else but I make 600 bucks a month turkin. Its no lie ether. I work hard spend hours and hours and I know which tasks are the best to do and pay the best. Its not worth the pay compared to a fast food joint but this way I have no boss no taxes and can work when I want. My favorite hit is david smith you can make 20 bucks easy with him.