Advice

Don't work for "majority-rules" requesters. Qualify for any HITs you can. Write to requesters if you don't know how to qualify. Sign up for TurkAlert. Take your rejections seriously - some of the best HITs are only open to those with 98% approval and higher. Don't rush for the 1k or 5k HIT milestones - take your time, learn how things work. Calculate the amount of time it takes to do a HIT, and figure out what you'll make hourly doing it, and don't sell yourself short. Anything less than $6/hr is a slap in the face (surveys excluded, though I wish they'd compensate a little more). Surveys are a great way to get your HIT count up and start making a decent amount each week.

 

funny how many of you guys say anything less than 6$/hr is a waste of time... But it seems to me that 95% of the HIT's pay less than 5$/hr. Also popularity of crowdflower, crowdsource, oscar smith (who pays 1$-2$ per hour at most) laughs at your statements. Just look at the top 10 requesters at Turkalert and tell me how much are they paying...

For my standards, I would be pleased to work for 2.5$/hr. Maybe his standards are also the same or lot less demanding. Maybe he lives in poor country where 1$/hr is good pay. Or you just saying that Mturk is so rich in well-paying HIT's that we should only accept top quality ones?

 

If people would realize their worth, and stop working for requesters that offer $2/hr, those requesters would have to increase their pay to get work done. Then new requesters wouldn't think that $2/hr is normal and would price their HITs accordingly. When you accept work that pays peanuts, you drive down the entire mTurk price point. If you prefer $2/hr over $6/hr, I guess that's your decision. Silly one, if you ask me, but we're all entitled to our own opinions, right?

Now, I'm not saying those requesters are 100% evil. For new workers, yes, they do allow them to get their HIT numbers up quickly. Yes, they approve everything right away. But there are plenty of 1c-2c-5c HITs that pay better (hell, $4-$5/hr isn't bad for newbies) - instead of wasting time doing work for peanuts, newbies would be better off reading forums (like this one) and doing surveys and requesting qualifications.

Again, this is strictly advice which means you are free to make your own decisions, but from my 2+ years Turking full time, these are the things that have allowed me to stay home with my kids every day, and these are things I wish someone would have told me on my first day.

 

I just Mturk while I am watching tv. I am learing what hits work on iPad and which ones do not. Its nice laying back in a chair waching TV and just clicking on naughty pics. Approving a transcript, who mail is from, and surveys. Oscar Smith's don't work on the iPad as you can't highlight.

I use the $$ for an new book from Amazon, or now I am grinding for a new laptop. It will take near a year -
but its all in my downtime. But I had my approval rate hit years ago (and I stopped for awhile) - and now grinding up. I am at 92.3% now.

 

I don't have any secrets, but I set a goal (dollar amount for the day) and work to reach that goal. Mturk money is just spare money for me, so if I'm making $2/hr while I'm sitting on the couch watching Bananas in Pajamas, that's fine with me. Of course, I do my best to make more than that.

If you're trying to make significant money doing this, then you'll want to pay much more attention to what your hourly rate is.

Finally, a lot of HIT's have memory checks or attention checks. Make sure you don't get a HIT rejected because you failed to follow instructions. If your approval percentage drops too low, you'll miss out on some of the better HITs and will need to do a bunch of crappy HITs to bring your rating back up.

OH .. and start a spreadsheet or something, and keep track of the HITs you do each day. That way, if you come across one of those "you can only do this once" HITs, you can easily look and see if you've done it before so you don't waste your time.

 

Funny.

Good advice already given. Check out the other sections of the forum for toys (scripts) to make turking easier. And hopefully you come back to the forum to see this. Still only one post a day later so dunno if you ever made it back.

Don't start doing something on mturk that you hate doing. There are so many options, who wants to do what we hate? That's what a brick and mortar job is for. Enjoy yourself and set goals. You'll find ways to meet them along the way. There is no get rich quick scheme. Have seen some members do quite well for themselves though.