Amazon's Mechanical Turk (www.mturk.com) is a website that enables users to complete Human Intelligence Tasks (HITs) from any computer with internet connection. The HITs are posted by the requesters, who are often private companies or researchers at universities around the world. Signing up to become a worker is easy, especially if you already have an amazon.com web account and a US social security number. (I unfortunately do not know how the process might be different for foreign mturkers.)
Step 1: Sign up and Log in at
mturk.com
Step 2: Bookmark
Hits Worth Turking For
At this website you'll be able to find HITs that pay well. As a general guideline a HIT is considered 'worth turking for' if it pays at least $.10/minute.
Step 3: Understanding the HIT details
Reddit users will include estimated time it takes, how much it pays, and required qualifications. For beginners, many HITs require a minimum approved HITs on the account (50, 500, 1000, 5000 etc.), so you should try to get as many HITs completed in the first few days, even if they don't pay great.
For example, the most recent HIT below pays 20 cents, it took the user 1 minute 50 seconds, requires a 98% approval rate and more 100 HITs approved.
AC: means attention check. Some requesters will include trick questions to makes sure you're not randomly clicking.
MC: means Memory Check. Some HITs will ask you to recall information that was provided earlier. The best way to get these right is to learn how to do screenshots on your computer, so that you can reference the information when necessary. Note that most surveys won't let you navigate backwards!
Step 4: View HIT listed in the results
Mouse over the red icon will let you see the requester's ratings.
Step 5: View and Accept HIT
Click 'View a HIT in this group' to reach the HIT's page. Before clicking Accept, take a quick look at the description. Some requesters will describe specific requirements on this page, and in some cases they will give you a link to check if you're eligible.
Step 6: Complete the survey or related task.
Generally speaking, I have found Academic Surveys, with a few exceptions to be reliable both in terms of pay amount and approval times. In many cases requesters from universities also award bonuses. HITs usually have a few tasks and a demographics page (gender, age, income, ethnicity etc.) At the end of the survey, a confirmation code is typically provided. Select and copy this code before exiting the survey window. Paste the copied code in the HIT page so that you can get paid.
Step 7: Tools and Tips
Finally, here are a couple of suggestions that will make your turking activity more efficient:
I. Sign up for an account with https://turkopticon.ucsd.edu/ , so that you can review requesters.
II. Install web browser extensions: https://greasyfork.org/en/scripts/by-site/mturk.com
At this address you can download scripts such as Today's Pending Earnings, Turkopticon,Pending Hits etc. The turkopticon is probably the most important of these, as it will add a tiny arrow before the requester's name, to give a quick snapshot of his/her ratings. If there is too much red, avoid.
III. Remember to transfer the money to Amazon payments account (maximum of 1 transfer per day, minimum amount is 1$). From the amazon payments account, you can either do a direct deposit (takes 1 day to most banks) or add the balance to Amazon gift card account.
After a little over a year of part-time turking, below I am sharing a screenshot of my dashboard. I hope you found the above instructions helpful.
