How To Find Scams on MTurk
By cluelle
@cluelle (132)
Canada
December 23, 2012 5:52pm CST
I just found this EHow article that explains much more succinctly than I can how to look out for scams on MTurk, but also WHY these things you see are scams. I'm not linked to this article in any way, so I hope the link is allowed as useful under the discussion regulations: www.ehow.com/how_5952609_identify-scams-amazon-mturk.html .
Hope you all find this useful.
1 response
@matersfish (6306)
• United States
24 Dec 12
These tips are helpful. I didn't have these tips when I started at MTurk, but I was also aware of different scams out there.
I've ran into only 1 scam so far. It was for a fairly long article, and the guy said "I can't accept this because it has poor grammer." (Yes, he spelled it "grammer" lol)
I know it didn't. He just scammed me. But that's okay. I'll take a lump every now and again.
All told, I've cleared around $7,500 in a year. I might work on the site about 2 times per week for about 2 hours per day. I worked for a steady month on it when I first started, doing a few hours a day, but now I just check out a HIT occasionally.
It's a quality site to make some extra bucks. People just have to watch for the scams.
@prospectboy (754)
• United States
24 Dec 12
Wow! That's a pretty staggering amount of money that you've made on there. Now that the year is coming to an end, I've made around $325.00 on Mturk this year. I've only been scammed on there a couple of times. However, I agree with you about it being a quality site for extra bucks. Which HITS do you normally do?
@matersfish (6306)
• United States
24 Dec 12
I make sure to only do writing jobs. A lot of them seem like too much work for not enough money, but if you can find a 400-word rewrite that's only paying $2, that's something that only takes 10 minutes to do. They mostly provide you with an article, and you just have to reword it. It's work that stacks up pretty quick.
Most of the other HITs I see, like those search engine results and transcription jobs, seem like they'll be quick, but they end up taking longer than actually writing a quick article for 10 or 20x the money.
@cluelle (132)
• Canada
24 Dec 12
I don't have a knack for article writing, but I will take those short, 150-word rewrites. You're not given a lot of material, but it takes four minutes to find an extra pertinent detail and create a blurb. It's kind of fun.
Otherwise, I actually really like transcription. If I only have a little time, I take the jobs that preview with crystal clear audio. Even for folks who don't get paid in cash by MTurk, it's great experience and training, because most independent clients and CastingWords will tell you what did wrong, usually great feedback. Have you had that sort of experience with article writing?
