The Top 5 Things I Learned From my First Month on mTurk

So, I’m a student.

Not only this, but I’m a student who doesn’t really want a 9–5 job.

Not only this, but I’m a student who doesn’t really want a 9–5 job, who is in the middle of a pandemic.

These three factors have led me to rely quite a bit on unique streams of income, from survey sites to the (rare) freelancing gig. My time doing these, all while being very active on the various beer money subreddits inevitably led me to one place: Amazon’s mTurk

What is it?

For those who may be unfamiliar with the site; mTurk is a crowdsourcing website where businesses or individuals can hire the masses to perform tasks on their behalf, in reward for little bits of pay.

These tasks can range massively, from transcription and picture labeling down to surveys and focus groups.

I originally signed up for the site in 2018, however, due to it appearing quite intimidating, I never really worked on it until September 2020. In this time I’d say I worked an average of an hour a day and managed to make just over $50 for my troubles.

So, what did I learn?

#1: MTurk is Wildly Competitive

Boy, I am not joking. Though there are constantly enough tasks (called ‘HITs’) to go around, the higher-paying and interesting work can be gone before you even get the chance to start.

For somebody very new, this was very scary to me and meant I was usually left to do very low-paying work, which wasn’t all that interesting the majority of the time.

Some mTurkers spend hours upon hours refreshing the site to catch the best paying HITs and make good money doing so. However, to somebody completely new like myself, it can be extremely daunting to begin figuring how to keep up with the pros; which brings me to my second point.

#2: Workers are not keen on sharing secrets

As I said, the mTurk workplace is fiercely competitive. There are hundreds of thousands of workers on the platform, yet arguably few can pick up ‘turking’ as their sole source of income. Those who do, do not share.

I’m a very active member of the mTurk subreddit, in which tips are handed out like candy, and discussions about the best tasks of the day are ongoing. However, these tips are rarely anything beyond how to make your first few dollars, and it seems like after this you’re virtually on your own.

The reason for this? Those in the mTurk magic circle have their ways of performing as well as they do, and handing out this knowledge simply opens up a competition they are already winning.

Whilst I do understand this philosophy — after all, they have worked their way to the top; I do have a soft spot for helping the underdogs, hence why I’m making this list.

#3: The Race to 1000 HITs

When you start working on the platform, there is very little available, and even less that pays well. The majority of HITs require qualifications based on skill and demographic, however, a big one to keep an eye on is HITs.

People offering work can filter their tasks, often wanting those with a high number of accepted HITs, to get good quality work.

Unfortunately for me, I started with 0 HITs, and the majority of the work was for those with over 1000.

Whilst this seemed like a mountain at first, I managed to average 200 HITs most days, mainly by doing very short and easy tasks. In my opinion, grinding out those low-paying but quick tasks can boost you up to the number of HITs you need to unlock those better jobs, so it’s really worth doing.

#4 Scripts can be your Friend

I’ll admit, at first I was very averse to scripts. Though it is a daily discussion in mTurk related forums, I naively assumed ‘If I’m good enough to do this, I don’t need to rely on programs to help me.’

Honestly, I wasn’t wrong… For a while.

I got up to my first 500 hits quite happily without the help of scripts, simply by grinding through boring but quick tasks.

Once I did start to unlock the better tasks though, I realized; as I mentioned, that the workers on the platform are hugely competitive. Even though I was qualified to do the work, somebody else would snatch it up before I got a chance to start, and it quickly became apparent that I’d never been able to keep up with those that were running scripts.

And if you can’t beat them? Join them!

Personally, I only use mTurk Suite at the minute, simply because I’m not particularly confident, however, there seems to be an endless amount of scripts you can run to aid you, especially if you’re pretty nifty with coding yourself.

My script allows me to perform much better, and most importantly, it helps me catch HITs.

The chrome extension automatically refreshes the site at intervals of your choice, and it can catch decent HITs for you to work on before they get pinched by another worker. From here, they just sit in your to-do tab until you work on them.

Though I’m still fairly new to the script game, this has helped me immensely with working for more than a penny a task, as well as get experience in more advanced areas that I was prone to missing out on.

#5 Penny Tasks and Batches are your Friend

This is my final, and most important piece of advice for those just starting with the platform.

It can be the most frustrating thing, seeing nothing but thousands of HITs for tasks that only pay a penny or two each; but the truth is — it adds up, and fast.

The penny tasks are usually things I do whilst watching TV — they’re fairly mindless most of the time and require little effort and time, often taking little more than 10–15 seconds each.

As a result of this, I can really grind through batches quite fast and make some decent pennies, despite what initially seems like a very low reward.

For example a HIT I’m quite fond of pays $0.03 per task, but they tend to be uploaded a hundred or so at a time. These tasks in particular take mere seconds to do, so going through the whole hundred takes very little time and brainpower. By the end, I found myself earning what would be close to $20 an hour.

By finding low-paying tasks that are fairly quick and simple to complete, your income can soon stack up, so it’s important to keep that in mind next time you’re disheartened by the one-cent offers.

So there you have it; these are by far the most important things I learned during my first month on mTurk. Like I said, I rarely put in more than an hour a day, so the opportunities are endless if you are willing to put the time and work in.