Make Money on Mechanical Turk - Advanced Tips

Here are some tips that can help you make money on Mechanical Turk that you may not know:

Grab HITs in advance. Mechanical Turk allows you to store up to 25 HITs in your queue that you can work on later. Of course, you can’t do this if the HITs don’t allow for enough time for you to get them all done, but many HITs give you far more time than necessary. You can find HITs that you’ve stored for later under the tab marked HITs Assigned To You.

Calculate the payout date of a HIT before you accept it. While requesters have up to 30 days to pay you for the work you’ve done, most pay much sooner than that. If you want to be sure that a HIT isn’t set to auto-accept 30 days out, you can use the following formula to figure out when to expect payment:

1. Open the HIT that you want to work on.
2. Right click your mouse within the HIT.
3. Select View Page Source.
4. Press CNTL and the F key at the same time.
5. Enter hita in the find box.
6. Find the value to the right.
7. Divide that value by 86400.
8. The result will be the maximum number of days that the HIT can remain pending before you get paid. (requesters can pay sooner, though)

If you need to get your approval rating up, do a lot of quick, low-paying HITs. They may only pay a penny or two, but if you do enough of them, completing them can substantially increase your approval rating. The higher your approval rating, the more HITs you are eligible to complete.

Drop a comment or ask a question if you like, and check back soon for other advanced tips to help you make money on Mechanical Turk.

Because every little bit helps,

Carole Tee