Are Microtask Sites Such as Minute Workers or Amazon’s Mechanical Turk Worth the Time?

Performing quick and simple tasks to earn money is one way people earn money from home. Sites such as Minute Workers and Amazon’s Mechanical Turk connect people who want quick jobs done cheaply with people willing to do the work. Most of the jobs are quite simple, and you get a bit of pay for doing them. The question to consider is whether these are legitimate sites and whether the work is worth doing.

Amazon’s Mechanical Turk is quite obviously legitimate. I don’t believe Amazon would mess around with their solid reputation. It has been available for several years.

The only problem with Mechanical Turk is the potential for extremely low pay. At the time I went to the jobs page, there were tasks, known as Hits, ranging from $0.01 to $0.70. That’s not a lot, especially since many hits were $0.10 or less. Even assuming you could complete 3 of these acceptably per minute for an hour, that’s $1.80 an hour for the penny jobs. You really have to be careful to choose jobs that pay enough to be worth your time, and that may not be easy.

Minute Workers is similar, although it’s nice to see them have a minimum of $0.10 per task stated on the home page. Even for something which can be done quickly that’s not a lot, but it’s certainly an improvement on $0.01.

You can see people post about their earnings on the forum, which is encouraging. You also get a penny per post you make on the forum, so participation is strongly encouraged. I also like that they share why payment was denied in a subforum for that purpose.

That said, it’s still not a lot of money earned by most people over the course of a month. You can cash out as low as $2.00. On the forum when I was there, one person had cashed out $91, which is unusually high from what the comments on the thread said. If that’s for a full month, that isn’t a lot of money for those of us in the United States. Better in some other countries with lower costs of living, of course.

You should also beware of the side effects of any tasks you take on. Having you sign up for a mailing list is not too uncommon a task with some of these sites, which can become annoying. Some people want you to download files, which I saw in the forums some people had troubles with, and I’m always cautious about the chance for malware. On any of these sites you should pay attention and make sure the tasks you do aren’t going to give you problems down the line. Most especially, if the task is to sign up for something that will cost you money if you don’t cancel in time, make sure you get that cancellation in.

What this means overall is that you really have to think carefully before joining a microtask site, no matter how regularly they pay. Not only do you have to do the work for any tasks you do, you have to submit proof that it has been done, and hope that the employer will rate you well so that you keep a good rating and continue to qualify for work. For me, the low earnings simply wouldn’t be worth the time. I’d rather take my chance on working on something of my own that may earn me nothing or may earn me far more over time. It’s iffy at times, but it’s mine.