Thursday, October 5, 2017

Mechanical Turk Basics

Mechanical Turk or M-Turk is the place where I earn the most consistent amount of money. I’ve read a lot of comments online stating that the website is a rip off, or not worth the time, but that’s absolutely not the experience I’ve had. I would say most of those people started an account, were inexperienced and gave up too early.

A little about Mechanical Turk. The name is a reference to The Turk. This was a chess playing machine of the 18th century. People could play against The Turk and most lost to the machine. Later, it was revealed that The Turk was not really a machine at all. There was a person, a skilled chess master, hiding in a compartment, controlling the dummy. Similarly, Mechanical Turk allows humans to help today’s computers and AI perform tasks.

If you already have an account with Amazon, you can use that same log in information to sign up for Mechanical Turk. Amazon is not always hiring new workers, so it is not a guarantee that your account will be accepted automatically. Most people hear back from Amazon within a few weeks. When/if your account is accepted, you will also have to sign up with Amazon Payments. To sign up for M-Turk go to www.mechanicalturk.com and click learn more about being a worker.

For this website there are two payment choices. One, you can have money added to your Amazon gift card balance. You can transfer money from your account whenever you want, but you are limited to once a day. After transferring your money to your Amazon gift card balance, it will show up in your account within 24 hours. The other option that I personally use, is to transfer earnings into my Amazon Payments account. I recommend transferring your money daily just because I have heard horror stories about other people having their M-Turk accounts closed by Amazon, and the workers losing any earnings they had accumulated. I’ve never had any problem like this and I make sure to follow the terms of service, but I still don’t take chances. Anything in Amazon Payments or on your Amazon gift card balance will be safe. Anyway, once my Amazon Payments balance reaches at least $20, I transfer that money to my bank. If I make the transfer by at least 5 p.m., it will show up in my checking account balance the next business day. Some other workers, or turkers as they are commonly called, have their money transferred to Bluebird cards. So you don’t necessarily have to have a bank account to get paid like this.

Once your account is accepted and you are able to complete tasks, my main advice is this: don’t screw up! When you complete a task and submit it, the requester has the option to reject it. If your task is rejected you aren’t paid for it, and that hurts your approval rating. Many requesters will specify they only want people with a certain rating or higher to do their tasks.

For example, here is the qualifications for just one hit that’s up right now.



They want the turker to have at least 100 approved hits, an approval rate of at least 90%, and be located in the United States. When just starting out, a few rejections can really hurt your rating. Sometimes the rejections come because the work wasn’t completed correctly and other times it is because it’s a bad requester.

When you first begin, work will be limited. Once you get to 1000 approved hits, more work opens up. For the first ten days you can only complete 100 hits a day. There are two basic types of hits. The first type of hits are called batches. These are requesters that pay a small amount of money, sometimes just 0.01 for turkers to do a quick task. You can do these tasks over and over again. Sometimes it is typing information from a shopping receipt, audio transcription, determining if an item fits into a specific category, drawing bounding boxes around an image and many other tasks. If it is a big batch from a good requester and you can do the hits quickly, this is a good way to make money. I’ll go over how to determine if a requester is good in my next post.

The other hits are surveys. These are both market research and university studies. Most of my money comes from this type of hit. I look for any surveys that pay at least a dollar for ten minutes of my time. This averages out to $6 an hour, and even though it is under minimum wage I still consider it worth it. One reason is because there is a good chance I’ll complete the task in under 10 minutes. It’s important to always read the questions carefully and answer honestly because your data is being used in studies that students have spent months or even years working on. They do throw in attention checks too, and if you fail them you’ll be screened out with no compensation. However, as many studies as I’ve completed, I can speed right through the demographics section or basic questions that I’ve answered thousands of times. Even if it does take the entire 10 minutes, that’s fine. This is supplemental income that I’m earning while I sit on my couch in my pajamas, listening to music or watching a movie. I’m not spending gas money to drive to a second job, having to eat lunch out, or putting wear and tear on my vehicle. I’ll go weeks or sometimes months without working on M-Turk. There’s no obligation on my end, if I feel like working I work. If I don’t want to work, I’m not going to get fired. I just won’t earn any money that week. This would be really worthwhile for a stay at home parent. It would also be a good option for a college student without enough free time for a job, or a retiree who just wants a little extra income.

When I’m actively turking, I usually earn anywhere from $40 to $80 a week. That’s with me doing it in my spare time. I wouldn’t recommend using this as your main source of income, but it’s great to supplement an income. I can pay my bills with my job, but this allows me to have extra money for things that I want but don’t need. Right now I’m saving for the Nintendo Switch.

One thing I want to stress, you have to pay taxes on your money if you make over $600 in a year.  Last year I made a little over a thousand dollars and I reported it when I paid my taxes. I didn’t really get the hang of turking until well into last year. This year, I’ve passed my 2016 earnings.

When I first started, the hardest part about M-Turk was that I spent more time searching for hits than doing them. There are scripts that you can install and use to make turking so much easier. That’s what I’m going to cover in my next post. For now I just wanted to give a basic run down of what Mechanical Turk is all about and set some realistic expectations. 

Saturday, August 19, 2017

Swagbucks

The first website that I want to talk about is Swagbucks. This one is pretty popular so many readers may have heard of it before. SB is one of several websites where users earn points for performing tasks. Even though a lot of people know about it, it’s a good site and worth mentioning.
When performing tasks online, you earn SB. One hundred SB = 1 real dollar. They offer virtual gift cards from many online retailers; Amazon, eBay, Walmart, Target, etc. I always choose PayPal so I can put the money directly in my bank.

There is both good and bad with this website. Whenever I’m trying to earn money online, I want to get the maximum reward for the shortest period of time. I’ll start with the bad aspect of SB. Their surveys really are not worth it. My rule of thumb is this, if I spend 10 minutes on a survey, I want at least $1.00. Or in this case, 100 SB.  That averages out to $6.00 an hour. I realize that’s below minimum wage and I’m okay with that. I’ll actually devote more time to this subject when I cover the websites I go to for surveys. These are some of the surveys that are up right now:

Thirteen minutes should be at least 130 SB, 18 should be 180, and so on. I used to complete the surveys on SB and they frustrated me to no end. There were several times when I got 10+ minutes into a survey only to get a message that they appreciate my participation but I don’t qualify. This meant I didn’t even get the original reward I was offered. They will give you 1 SB if you get screened out, but that’s basically a penny for 10 minutes of my time. If you sign up, I would not recommend relying on the surveys. I do answer the daily poll though. It’s one question and you get 1 SB for answering.

Now onto the good points, and there are plenty of those. I use Swagbucks from my laptop and I also have the app on my phone. At various intervals I will get a notification on my phone that there is a new Swag code. These are codes that are good until a specified time. To find the code, I go to the official Swagbucks Facebook page and check the comment section of the top post. Then I copy and paste it into the app. You will get anywhere from 2-6 SB per code. Not much, but it takes me thirty seconds or less and it adds up over time. Another way I earn money from my phone is with the videos on Swagbucks. While I’m at work I will prop my phone up and let the videos play through. I can listen to them while I work. Ever so often I’ll have to click out of an ad to get the next video to play. That’s all the effort this takes.

They have a lot of videos on different subjects, so no matter your interest you can find videos that you like. You earn 2 SB after watching a certain number of videos. Sometimes the number you must watch will vary but usually stays around 4 or 5. It’s a simple way to earn with minimal effort.
When I’m at home, I earn SB with my laptop. I installed their search bar and they gave me 100 SB just for doing that. Now when I search for something, I’ll randomly win SB. Not for every search, but typically twice a day. The amount is different each time. I’ve won as little as 3 and as many as 100.

This is why I like SB, they reward you for doing the things you’re already going to do. Whenever I get ready to go shopping I check the site. They have printable coupons. This saves money, plus I earn 10 SB for each coupon I use. Last time I went shopping they had $1 off the brand of toilet paper I buy. Saving a dollar and earning SB is a win/win. The toilet paper was also eligible for a dollar rebate on another app that I will cover later, so I actually ended up getting it for $3 when it’s usually $5.
When I want to make a purchase online, I check the site for online codes. Sometimes they have some good discounts to different stores. Here are a few that are up right now. And this is just the first page, there are a lot of different options.

After checking for codes, I shop through their shop and save option. Swagbucks will pay you a certain number of SB for every real dollar you spend. Usually it is 1 SB, but I’ve seen it as high as 8 during the holiday season. Each store is different. For instance, in the picture you would earn 4 SB for every dollar spent at SkinStore.com, but only 2 SB at Eddie Bauer.

They just started a reward program where you can link your debit card. You earn SB for eating at certain restaurants when you pay with your linked card. I live in a rural area so I’m not sure how many of my local places will count for their program, but I got 100 SB just for adding my card. I’m sure not everyone will feel comfortable linking a card, but I’ve used them enough that I trust them.
Anytime I want to join a program, I also check their offer board.

Right now you can get 2000 SB for joining Hulu. That’s $20 and I’ve been thinking of joining anyway. The basic plan is around $8 a month. If I tried it and didn’t like it, I’ve spent $8 and I’ve made $12.

Obviously you shouldn’t buy things or join stuff just to get the SB, since that would defeat the purpose. But if you’re buying certain items anyway, it makes sense to check here. They also have other offers that don’t cost anything. There are always new opportunities on this website and these are just the ways I earn money. They have a lot of other ways, like playing games, downloading apps, etc.

This isn’t a way to get rich obviously, but it’s a way to gradually let income build up. I’ve bought many birthday and Christmas gifts with money earned through their site. If you haven’t signed up and want to, this is my referral link.

If you’d rather sign up without using the referral, here is the website.


Friday, August 11, 2017

Basic Tips for Making Money Online

There are some good ways to earn extra cash online. There are also a lot of scams! In this post I’m going to go over some basic tips to keep you from getting ripped off. These are things to keep in mind if you want to make money from home.
If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.
Don’t expect to get rich. You won’t make $600/hr for filling out a few surveys. I’ve noticed a lot of sketchy websites and Facebook advertisements lately. That’s one reason I started this blog. To help people find opportunities without getting tricked out of their money. That leads to the second tip.
Be skeptical of anyone who is trying to sell you the opportunity to make money.
This is something that takes many forms. One I’ve seen a lot are webinars you have to pay to attend. They’re usually selling a super-secret method of earning money and they’ll let you in on that secret for only $59.99. Another one is when a site wants you to pay to work for it. Ask yourself, would an employer in the real world require you to pay them in order to get a job? There are some decent places to make money, and you don’t have to pay anything. If someone requires you to pay a fee, there is a good chance it’s a scam.
Don’t put all your eggs in one basket.
When I first started making money online, I began with a content mill. For the longest time this was where I put all my effort, and that was fine as long as there was work. There were certain times when the work was extremely limited which meant I wasn’t making any money. Now I earn money on a number of different sites, so when work is low in one area, I check one of the other places. You never know when a company may close or just have a slow time of year, so it’s not good to rely on any one company too much.
Start a PayPal account.

Many of the websites I use to make money pay out via PayPal. I have my bank information linked to my PayPal, and I can transfer money straight into my checking account. If you aren’t comfortable doing this, you can apply for the PayPal business debit card or simply use your PayPal balance to make online purchases.