Amazon MTurk Review – Easy Free Money? (Not for All)

Amazon MTurk (also known as Amazon Mechanical Turk) is a platform you can join for free and supposedly earn money by doing simple online tasks.

But is Amazon Mturk legit or a site to avoid?

I have tested hundreds of different free ways to make money online and let me just reveal right away that it is legit and you can potentially earn by joining. But that does not necessarily mean it is the right opportunity for YOU.

This MTurk review will give you an inside look. You will learn all the details about the opportunities by doing Amazon MTurk surveys and other tasks it offers. This way, you will know exactly what it offers and what to expect, and then you can easily decide if this is the right opportunity for you or if you should go for alternatives instead.

What is Amazon MTurk, and what does the platform offer?

MTurk is a part of Amazon. MTurk is short for Amazon Mechanical Turk. I am sure you know Amazon, and when a company like that backs a platform, it adds a lot to its credibility and it is worth looking into the opportunities.

So let me just make it clear right away that Amazon Mturk is a legit platform, and it is a place where you can potentially earn a bit of cash. But this does not necessarily mean it is a good option for you. To find out about this, we need to take a closer look at what it offers.

MTurk is basically a marketplace for small tasks that need to be done online but that cannot be done by a computer. The tasks need human intelligence – that is why a task is called a HIT (Human Intelligence Task).

What kind of HITs can you find?

One of the great things about MTurk is that you can find hundreds of tasks. There is no specific way to explain what a HIT is because it can be so many things.

It all depends on what the people hiring through MTurk need on any given day. Examples can be finding contact information on a website, looking through a website for inappropriate content, extracting info from pictures, transcribing data, and much more.

In many ways, it is similar to Appen tasks. One difference is, however, that MTurk also regularly has paid surveys available.

However, the majority of the tasks you can find on MTurk are data entry types of jobs. As mentioned above, you can find a lot of tasks like this.

But the surveys are a bit more unknown way to earn on MTurk, and if you have read any of my other articles here at PaidFromSurveys.com, you will know I think paid surveys are a great way to make some extra money.

Therefore, let´s go more into how good this option is on MTurk.

How many surveys can you find on MTurk?

You can find quite a lot of paid surveys on MTurk. When you first log in to your account, you will just see a long list of all the available HITs. You can, of course, look through these and see if there are other tasks you find interesting, but there is also a way to quickly find the surveys.

There is a search bar at the top of the screen (see image below). Use this, write “survey,” and click enter.

Notice that I write survey in singular – if you write “surveys” instead, you will have fewer opportunities come up. The reason for this is that the search results are based on the name or description of the tasks. Most of them are just called something with survey.

I have tried to search with both – an example of the day of writing this article is that one using “survey” in the search bar, 374 results came up. Not all of them were relevant, but many of them were.

When searching for “surveys” only 2 results came up. So a good tip to remember if you want to use the search function.

Even though there are a lot of surveys available, be aware that you will not be able to qualify for all of them. Many of them have very specific demands for the participants regarding where they live, etc. So it can take some patience to find the ones you qualify for.

Recommended: Click to See the Best Survey Sites in Your Country

How much money can you make on MTurk?

So now you know that there are quite a lot of surveys and other tasks you can find on MTurk, but how much do you get paid to do these tasks, and are they even worth doing?

That depends. Most tasks on Amazon MTurk do not pay very well, in my opinion – that both go for surveys and other tasks. But it depends.

In general, most of the surveys I have seen will pay between $ 0.05 and $0.50. I have also seen surveys that pay more, and the longer they take, the more you will usually also get paid.

I would say that compared to the top survey sites, MTurk does not pay very well for surveys. Another aspect that, in my opinion, is a reason it is not as great as many other survey sites is that there are no extra chances of winning extra prizes, bonus earnings, or free contests.

Another thing you have to be aware of is that even though there are many tasks, you CAN NOT participate in as many as you want every day. There is a limit to how many HITs you can do a day.

The explanation is that it is to ensure high quality and avoid cheat by using robots or similar.

Increase your earnings by becoming a Master Worker

As you can probably understand from the above, I am not impressed with the earning possibilities on MTurk.

There is, however, a way that can help you to be offered better tasks. That is, by becoming what is called a Mechanical Turk Master Worker.

This is a status you can achieve by consistently taking HITs and doing them well. You will then eventually be able to qualify for becoming a Master Worker and be offered tasks that require master qualifications.

You cannot apply to become a Master Worker. You just have to continue taking tasks and doing them with high quality. It can, therefore, take some patience, but it can be a way to get more out of MTurk.

How do you get paid?

How you get paid is important on any survey site or microtask site. In my opinion, the options on MTurk are great for people living in the US and India but not so great for everyone else.

If you live in the US, you can transfer your earnings to your Amazon Payments account and then from here to your bank account, or you can use them for gift cards for Amazon.com. For India, you can get your earnings transferred to your bank account or Amazon.com gift card.

For everyone else, the only option is to get gift cards for Amazon.com. Gift cards can be great, but as it is to Amazon.com, it is not such a great reward for certain countries.

It can complicate it with extra taxes because it will be sent from another part of the world and can take a long time. So it is a shame that there are no other options. I guess that can be seen as a sign that workers from India or the US are the ones preferred on the platform.

However, you can, of course, use Amazon.com gift cards to buy products/services that do not require shipping (like ebooks), and that way it will become more useful in other countries also.

You also have to know that after you have joined, you cannot request a payout for the first 10 days you are a member. After that, you can request a payout maximum once a day.

Who can join?

In theory, anyone can join MTurk. But you have to apply to become a member. Once you register, you will not automatically become a member as on most other survey and GPT (get-paid-to) sites.

Your application will be looked at, and it will take a few days before you will know if you have been accepted.

The problem is that there is no information about how it is decided who will be accepted and who will not. On most other sites, you will be told as soon as you try to register if you can or not. Usually, it will be decided by the country you live in.

I think it is fine that MTurk has a more thorough check, but it seems strange that you cannot be told in advance who they are looking for as members.

And if you get rejected, you will just be told that you have been rejected but that they cannot disclose why. I know this as I have tried to be rejected, and you can see the email I received below:

Not a very satisfactory answer or reason, right? My best guess is that it has to do with the location and country or because they had too many members at the time I got this rejection, but I can, of course, not know for sure.

So, unfortunately, there is no sure way of knowing whether you will be able to join or not – you just have to apply and wait and see if you are interested.

Can you get support?

There are a lot of answers in the FAQ section on MTurk, but there is also contact info if you should need further help. I have not needed help on the site myself, so I cannot say how long it will take to get an answer. But considering the company behind the platform, I am sure it will not take too long.

Final verdict – Reliable but takes patience!

Amazon MTurk has both pluses and minuses. It is definitely a legit platform, but that does not necessarily mean it will be a good use of your time.

So let´s finish this review by summing up the pros and cons so you can get a better overview before deciding if it is for you or not.

Pros:

• Has a reliable company behind it
• Big amount of tasks and surveys

Cons:

• Relatively low rewards for most tasks and surveys
• Only good payout methods for certain countries
• Limitations on how many tasks you can do per day
• No information about who can join or not

No doubt that Amazon Mechanical Turk is a reliable platform. It is also great that it has a lot of available tasks and surveys. In my opinion, the minuses are, however, also pretty big. Especially if you do not live in the US or India and therefore only have one way to get your earnings.

I also think it is a huge minus; you cannot know what your chances are of getting accepted before you try to join, and you have to wait several days to find out. If you can live with these minuses, MTurk can be an interesting site to take surveys or do micro online tasks.

But also know that if you do not like the sound of it, or if you will be rejected, there are plenty of other good sites to take surveys and tasks.

Many of them will even pay more and have better opportunities, in my experience.

If you have any experiences with Amazon MTurk yourself you would like to share, or if you have any comments or questions, I would love to hear from you below.