12 Amazon MTurk Tips & Tricks You Can Use to Earn More Money

1. Don’t do hits with very low pays.

The rule of thumb is about 10 cents a minute.

Of course, it’s for you to decide how much your time is worth.

At the end of the day, you want to use your time to make some extra money not slave away for pennies.

2. Check ratings

Before you accept any hit, be sure to check the ratings of the requester. Turkers are vocal and if a requester is unfair or scams workers, they rate him/her low.

Use that to save yourself from getting scammed.

Get your approved hit numbers up quickly

Almost all requesters with worthwhile tasks hire workers who have at least 100 or so hits done.

It’s like a badge of trust.

The more hits you do, the more confident requesters will be that you will actually take their hits seriously and do a good job.

3. Keep up with r/mturk

r/mturk is a subreddit that is a hub for Turkers.

You can learn a lot of stuff from other people who are also using MTurk to make money.

Ask questions.

Read guides.

Read old threads for tips and experiences of others.

It’s an excellent way to quickly learn the ins and outs of MTurk so you can make more money and keep yourself from being scammed.

4. Participate in MTurk related forums

MTurk forums are indeed very useful.

Joining or reading these forums will provide so much information including what other workers have experienced, the kind of hits that pay more, which “requesters” to avoid, which ones to work with, etc.

You can ask questions, read other people’s questions and answers, and overall get a feel for how everything works.

Here are the 2 main forums:

1. Turker Nation Subreddit
2. MTurk Forum

5. Turkopticon toolbar is your friend

The Turkopticon toolbar lets you view how past Mechanical Turk workers have evaluated a specific requester.

I’ll let them explain what it is and does:

Turkopticon helps the people in the ‘crowd’ of crowdsourcing watch out for each other—because nobody else seems to be.

Almost half of the Mechanical Turk workers who wrote their Bill of Rights demanded protection from employers who take their work without paying. Turkopticon lets you REPORT and AVOID shady employers.

It’s an awesome add-on that can help you help yourself and other workers by rating requesters and reporting the ones that don’t pay.

6. Find good paying Hits faster

Use the search options to narrow down your search.

For example, if you’re searching for survey hits that pay 50 cents or more, you can type in “survey” in the search bar, then set the value to 50 cents.

You can then organize the results of the search according to the newest or freshest hits first.

This will definitely save you time which is important as there are hundreds and thousands of hits available at any given moment.

You’re there to make some money in your spare time, not to waste your time trying to find hits.

7. Value your time

Ignore hits that pay 1 cent.

It’s just not worth it.

Sure, a 1 cent hit may take less time to do, but it still takes time.

And when you compare the amount of time you spend doing the hit and the amount of money you earn, it just doesn’t look good.

The two cent hits are not that profitable either.

I personally only do low paying hits if the only requirement is clicking on something or copying and pasting a word or phrase.

8. Understand the requirements before you accept a Hit

If you want to make money here long term, you have to establish yourself as a good worker.

You do that by doing what’s required for each hit.

And to be able to do that correctly, you have to first understand what it is that the requester wants.

Read the requirements first.

Make sure you understand everything and that you can actually deliver before jumping in and accepting it.

Accepting every task that comes your way and doing ’em half-ass, is the fastest way to ensure a bad experience on MTurk.

9. Don’t give out personal info

Unfortunately, there are a lot of scammers on MTurk and despite Amazon constantly weeding them out, they keep getting in.

Protect yourself.

Don’t give out sensitive info.

A requester whose hits you’re working on doesn’t need to know your bank account number, social security number, or even phone number.

10. Use common sense

You know the good old saying, “If it looks too good to be true, it probably is”?

Keep that in mind when accepting tasks.

Listen, I know we all want to make more money, but if somebody is offering $50 for a hit that takes 5 minutes and others are paying $10 for the same kind of hit, trust your gut and ignore it.

11. Link your bank account to amazon for faster payments

Wanna get paid faster?

Link your bank account to your Amazon account.

Within your Amazon.com account, you can see your earnings from MTurk if you click on the “Amazon Payment” tab.

There you have two options:

1. You can either link your bank account to your Amazon account and transfer money to your bank account.
2. Or you can convert your earnings to Amazon gift cards and use them to buy stuff on Amazon.

12. Don’t give up

Most people who find MTurk initially, get excited and spend a few hours on it for a few days. A few days later, they haven’t made that much money, they give up.

This is like any other opportunity.

You have to stick with it and learn the ins and outs of it.

It takes time to establish yourself as a good worker.

There will come a time when you don’t even have to look and apply for hits anymore.

Requesters will actually invite you to their tasks because they know you’ll do a good job.

The Bottom Line

Although there are many Amazon Mechanical Turk alternatives out there, MTurk still remains as one of the best and most popular crowdsourcing sites.

And by using these MTurk tips and tricks you can not only earn a little more money but you can also avoid the scams.