Good Types of Mturk HITs to work

MTurk is a site that is affiliated with Amazon.com.   Here’s how MTurk works: Various businesses submit Human Intelligence Tasks (HITs) to the website, then workers pick and choose the micro-jobs they want to complete and submit for payment.

Many of the tasks don’t require special skills. There are thousands of HITs available to complete at any given moment. But the amount of time required to finish a task varies greatly and so does the pay.

Despite the low pay, people are drawn to MTurk because of its flexibility. Most other remote jobs require a set schedule that may not be convenient for stay-at-home parents, college students, busy retirees and people in between jobs.

MTurk doesn’t place any of those restrictions on its workers — you can accept HITs 10 minutes a week or 10 hours a week.

The money you earn can then be deposited in your bank account or applied to an Amazon gift card if you shop on Amazon.com.  These are some of my favorite Mturk tasks. I have been trying to earn some extra Christmas money.

Mturk Transcription  

Transcription hits  are offered by requesters such as Castingwords and Speechink, and can vary in price from as little as .40 cents for some of the shorter Castingwords hits on up to several dollars for some of the longer Speechink hits – however those hits usually require that you have a higher rating with SpeechInk

Mturk Keyword research

One of that I have been doing a lot of lately while doing my phone jobs is Keyword research from Crowdsource. They are asking you to open up a new browser window and do a search in google to get the most relevant search engine result.  Or you may be looking for a particular website and let them know the ranking.

Mturk Surveys 

I like doing these because they’re easy and can add up quickly. It can be difficult to find legitimate survey hits on Mturk, though there do seem to be more legitimate survey opportunities being posted. In general, if the survey HIT asks for information such as my address and/or phone number, I stay away from it.  Most survey HITS will tell  you how much time you should plan on spending on the survey, so be sure you have that much time to spend on the survey before accepting the HIT.

Short Article writing

There are many requesters  that post HITS asking for articles on different subjects.  The pay for these HITS, as well as the length of the articles, varies from one requester to the next.  Just like with transcription hits, be sure you follow the requester’s instructions about how long the article  needs to be, and if any keywords need to be mentioned a certain number of times.

MTurk probably isn’t going to be a primary source of income for most people, but it still could be a way to earn a few extra bucks during TV commercial breaks, pet sitting or maybe even during your lunch hour.

Just know that there’s a probationary period where you may not qualify for higher-paying HITs — be patient!