Although in recent years many jobs have been taken over by virtual machines, as in the era of industrialization but digital, the field of work where human intervention is required is quite extensive.
One of the working methods that takes advantage of this need is the crowdsourcing, and one of the most popular job forums in this field is Amazon Mechanical Turk, a platform on which applicants post jobs in the form of tasks to be performed by human intelligence.
The performance of these tasks represents a monetary income for the person who performs it, making this method one of the most used to generate profits online. In the next few paragraphs, you will learn everything you need about Amazon Mechanical Turk, and how to perform in this forum to generate income online.
What is Amazon Mechanical Turk?
It is a forum that forms a crowdsourcing market, synthesized in a platform of tasks that require human intelligence. It works to commission simple jobs that require a level of intelligence, and that a machine could not do.
Applicants can enter jobs that only people can do, this form is abbreviated as HIT (Human Intelligence Tasks) and the workers, known as turks they can select the jobs and complete them in exchange for monetary compensation. You can find a wide variety of jobs to do, ranging from localization and transcription of information and audio editing, to information gathering tasks and machine learning.
How does Amazon crowdsourcing work?
To understand how crowdsourcing works on Amazon, It is necessary to start by understanding the concepts and general uses of crowdsourcing, in order to understand how it applies in a company like Amazon. crowd sourcing It is a method that seeks to delegate certain tasks to a group or community of qualified people., with the aim of covering a greater number of procedures in less time.
These jobs are done virtually., and it is this point that gives its strength to Amazon MT. This platform selects the tasks of content moderation, research and data transcription. In short, tasks more suitable for human intelligence. MTurk has the peculiarity of allow more than one user to submit an answer or solution to a HIT, and the response that has been sent by the largest number of users is selected.
From which countries can you work with Amazon Mechanical Turk?
One of the best qualities of Amazon MTurk, is the wide presence that the work platform has around the world, and it is that although the main work page is in English, it is possible to access it from more than 240 countries. Among these we can include all the countries of the American continent, from Canada to Argentina, in addition to all the countries of Europe and most regions of Asia and Africa
Is it necessary to invest to make money with Amazon Mechanical Turk?
No. Unlike some platforms where you have to pay a fee registration to be able to use its services, MTurk is a completely free registration forum, so you will not have to pay any type of membership.
What are the “human intelligence” tasks performed in Amazon MT?
The Human Intelligence Tasks (HIT) they are individual virtual tasks that represent an issue to be resolved. These tasks are designed so that one or more virtual workers can provide the best possible solutions. Unlike certain crowdsourcing pages, Amazon MT HITs are generated by requesters, who upload them to the work section of the platform to be resolved by “turkers” qualified
Learn how to make money on Amazon Mechanical Turk from scratch
Whether your goal is generate income through Amazon MTurk, Or simply find productive ways to spend time, the first thing you should do is create and configure your account on the platform.
Here is the step-by-step procedure to create your Amazon Mechanical Turk account and start generating income:
Register
We will take the first step taking into account that you do not have an Amazon account, so the first thing you should do is create your account from the MTurk page, as follows:
-
enter to website
www.mturk.com/.
- click in “Get started with Amazon Mechanical Turk.”
- Choose the option “Make Money” clicking on “Request a worker account”.
- Enter your Amazon user credentials. If you don’t have them, scroll down and click “Create your Amazon account”.
- enter your name, email and create a password. Then click on “Create your Amazon account”.
- Solve the puzzle to protect your account.
- Enter the code sent to your email.
- Enter your phone number and click “Add mobile phone number”.
- Write the code sent to your phone number, then click on “Create your Amazon account”.
- Fill in the following form with the requested data. Once done, click “Create account”.
There will be a waiting period in which your data will be reviewed and the possibility of your job application being accepted at Amazon MTurk. The duration of this review period can last a couple of days, at most. You should keep in mind that Amazon is fully entitled to reject your application request for no apparent reason. When this happens, all you can do is wait a few days to try to apply again.
Apply for a task
Yes MTurk he has accepted your application for a worker account, you can start accept hits. To accept the performance of a human intelligence task, all you have to do is access the task panel from the access provided by the page.
All this through the following procedure:
- click in “HITs” in the top bar of the page.
- In the job list you will see all the HITs available to perform although you will not be able to access all of them, because you probably don’t have the required qualifications.
- Tasks suitable for your level are highlighted and they will have the button available “Accept & Work”. Click this charm to apply for the assignment.
Note that, in principle, you will be in a trial period in which you will have to do at least one HIT a day. Also, you will be limited to 100 HITs per day and you must maintain a high approval rating, otherwise you risk having your account revoked by Amazon.
Set up your payments
When setting up payments for those who do not reside in the United States, it is necessary to highlight that Amazon MTurk, unlike other crowdsourcing sites, It is not related to any payment platform such as PayPal or Skrill.
Instead, earnings are paid in cash to “Turkers” residing within the US territory. For users who are outside of this country, their earnings are deposited into the account of amazon in form of gift cards, that you can spend in the online store of Amazon.
Increase your chances of being accepted
One of the disadvantages of this platform is that there is virtually no method to ensure acceptance. everything remains to Amazon criteria and seat availability that exist at the moment
With that being said, there are certain ways you can increase the chances of your MTurk job application being approved, and now we are going to list them for you:
- Have an Active Amazon account: MTurk strives to provide accounts to active users, thus avoiding bot accounts and SPAM. It helps to have an Amazon account with at least six months of consistent activity.
- Record purchases or orders on Amazon: By registering cheap Amazon item purchases, you become a verified account, which increases your chances of being accepted into MTurk.
- Residence in the United States: While this is a very specific requirement, accounts created within the United States have a better chance of being accepted on the MTurk platform.
Is it worth working at Amazon MT or are there better options?
The validity of a working method like Amazon MTurk It largely depends on the user’s perspective, and their expectations for the site. In other words, it depends on whether you are looking to live off of Amazon MT, or just looking for extra income. While this platform is very convenient for most of its users, it is not perfect. as it has certain drawbacks that, for some users, could be dissuasive from its use.
To begin with, the highest paid hits can be found mostly during regular office work hours, that is, Monday through Friday from 9:00 am to 5:00 pm in any time zone, so if you only have time to work nights or weekends, the jobs you will be able to find will be mostly low-paying work.
In addition to this, another of the drawbacks of MTurk arises when registering to start using the platform, and it is that during the evaluation period, Amazon may give itself the right to reject your request without the need to give reasons., so it might take a few tries before you can even sign up for the service.