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Review of Amazon's Mechanical Turk

Posted on November 6, 2007

Over the years I've had ideas for applications and websites that were stopped in their tracks once I figured out that a program cannot obtain the data needed, nor is it readily available. Amazon has taken a stab at resolving this, and many ideas that would have failed now have the opportunity to succeed. I've signed up for Amazon's Mechancial Turk site and participated in one of the Human Intelligence Tasks (HIT). Below is my experience.

My HIT

I chose a HIT based on nothing other than how easy it was to perform and complete. My mission was to find information on a type of wine from a winery, enter the information in an online form, press submit. I completed 7 of these HITs in 5 minutes and received $2.35, not bad huh? Each HIT took about 3 days to get reviewed, but my job was finished after 5 minutes. At that rate I was making $28.00/hour, which is more than likely triple the median income.

My initial thoughts

I immediately could see the potential for this site and imagined how powerful this site could become. Imagine having a yardsale listing site, where users were paid $0.01 for entering a yardsale. With participation your yardsale site could have 10,000 yardsales and it would only cost you $100.

How do you get paid?

After your HIT is reviewed and approved, the earned income is automatically deposited in your Amazon account. You then have the option of having the money trasferred to your account or held in your Amazon account to be used for future purchases.

How do they keep the site valid?

Each person's participation is tracked including how many HITS were accepted, abandoned, submitted, and approved. Your submitted:approved ratio seems to be the most useful.

What's the catch?

There's always a catch, so here it is. Amazon collects 2% of the monies paid out. The minimum percentage is 0.005%

Visit the site

http://www.mturk.com/mturk/welcome