How to Make Money on Amazon Mechanical Turk [Is It a Credible Opportunity?]

If you start Googling how to make money online, chances are that you’ll see something about Amazon Mechanical Turk pop up in your search results. So, what is Amazon Mechanical Turk?

Amazon Mechanical Turk, also known as Amazon MTurk is advertised as a "Marketplace for Work that Requires Human Intelligence". Just like Amazon allows consumers to access a wide variety of diverse products, Amazon MTurk allows companies to access a widely diverse in-demand workforce.

The platform is available 24/7, and boasts skills of a global workforce that can work whenever and wherever you need it. Companies also pay only for what they use, and features image and video processing, data verification and cleanup, information gathering, and data processing, among others.

It’s a great tool for business of all sizes, especially startups and smaller companies, but what about the workforce providing services? Can you actually make money using Amazon MTurk?

Making Money on Amazon Mechanical Turk

For those wondering, yes, you can actually make money using Amazon Mechanical Turk. Every day, workers on the platform help businesses complete tasks ranging from data processing to content moderation.

To sign up, you will need an Amazon account, which most of us have anyways! You’ll also need to set up your Amazon Payments information, which includes mailing address, tax information, Social Security Number, and payment settings.

After signing up, you will be able to search or browse the work, listed a Human Intelligence Tasks (HITs) and select what interests you. You will follow the instructions and then submit the work. If the work is approved by the requester, you will be paid. It seems pretty simple, but is there more to it?

One of the things workers are wondering is Amazon Mechanical Turk safe to use? The simple answer is YES. You can indeed make money using Amazon Mechanical Turk. There are actually over 500,000 people turking throughout the world right now, so you’re in good company. All of those people wouldn’t be utilizing Amazon MTurk if they weren’t getting paid at the end of the day.

Many of the jobs involve transcription work, but other posted jobs have included captioning videos, writing different length articles on various topics, and even proposing trivia questions. The great thing about Amazon MTurk is the wide variety of HITs available. There’s also always work available as the site operates 24/7.

Is MTurk a Viable Income Potential?

What people see as a downside to the platform, is the low paying jobs. It is occasionally referred to as a “digital sweatshop” because of the lower rates.

You probably won’t be able to quit your regular job by jumping on the Amazon Mechanical Turk bandwagon. However, if you keep at it and maintain a good rating you can start to see higher paying jobs that will boost your earnings.

In the best case scenario if you work a lot you can earn anywhere from $6 – $10 per hour but most people report much lower earnings. A lot of people doing this for fun and just to make extra cash. Below are some real comments from people using MTurk on Reddit

Here is a Video Showing Real Earnings on Mturk

Everything you earn will be put into your Amazon Payments accounts. You can either use the funds to get an Amazon Gift Card, or you can transfer them directly to your bank account. Backed by the Amazon brand, you can rest assured that the site is not a scam.

Is that the Income Potential You Were Looking For?

As you can see you can earn money with MTurk but it’s not going to make you rich and moreover you have to work really hard all the time in order to keep on earning. The good news MTurk is legitimate unlike many survey sites where you get a ton of scams and even lower compensation.

With my recommended program you will work hard to setup your business in the beginning but income potential is way higher than MTurk.

This website you are on now earns money even when I sleep since it’s a global platform and people from around the world visit it. MTurk is good for some extra income maybe during college days, but it’s certainly not a viable income you can rely on.

PROS

• There is always work available
• There is a wide variety of work available
• You can work right from home
• Free to sign up and start making money
• Flexibility in scheduling
• Backed by the Amazon brand

CONS

• Some of the jobs are lower paying
• It can take a while to make money
• If you work with bad Requesters your approval rating can lower
  

With the wide variety of tasks available on the site, Amazon Mechanical Turk could be a good fit for anyone who needs extra cash money. While there are some more technical HITs available, some involve data cleanup and taking surveys.

These are tasks that anyone can handle. If you’re willing to spend the time to get a high approval rating and love the flexibility of working from home, Amazon Mechanical Turk might be a great fit for you.

Tips and Tricks for Making More Money Using Amazon MTurk

While you won’t become a millionaire overnight using the platform, there are some things you can do to boost your earnings with Amazon Mechanical Turk.

Keeping a high approval rating is crucial on Amazon Mechanical Turk. If this rating dwindles, you will be hard pressed to make significant income. To keep your rating high, take caution in who you accept work from. Your approval rating depends primarily on the Requester you are accepting work from. You can utilize certain tools online to identify bad requesters who either don’t pay or give undeserved negative ratings.

You should also avoid accepting a large number of HITs at one time from someone you’ve never worked with before. Be sure that the person is a fair rater before taking on 100 of their HITs. Each HIT comes with its own rating. If they are an unfair requester, your approval rating could be significantly damaged.

Finally, try to avoid HITs that are opinion-based. Raters may give poor reviews is if you don’t answer surveys questions with the answer they are looking for. If you get any of these tasks, return them and move on to the next HIT.

Amazon Mechanical Turk is certainly not a scam, but it might not be worth the effort. The thing with this online money maker, is determining whether it’s worth your time. You can certainly earn money, but you’ll need to weight your opportunity costs to determine if there are better ways to spend your time.

If you are simply looking for the opportunity to earn some cash from home, then it might be a good option for you. However, if you are looking to make real income, here is my #1 Recommendation that will give you a stronger return on your time investment.