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How much money can you make on Mechanical Turk?

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Re: How much money can you make on Mechanical Turk?

#71

Post by goldemerald »

blintz wrote: post #42

How do people feel about the research ethics of this? Many academic studies involve the use of MTurk participants, but it seems as though they are not being paid close to a living or even fair wage ($2 an hour is abysmal!). Should universities require that studies using MTurk pay some minimum pro-rated hourly wage? That is, if a Stanford HCI study (which seem to use MTurk often) wants workers to fill out a 15-minute…

There is an ethic commitee (the IRB) at every university that reviews all academic research involving people. In order to conduct a user study, researchers are required to compensate participants fairly. The reason you can pay MTurkers "far less" is that a study may only take 5 minutes, and researchers typically pay $10/hour. People won't participate in a study unless the minimum payment is decent. I can't imagine many people would want to take the time out of their day to show up at a lab, work on a computer task for 10 minutes, and get paid $2.

Re: How much money can you make on Mechanical Turk?

#72

Post by mhh__ »

In my brief experience, bursts of actually quite a lot (My favourite being one where you got £1-£2 for "Does this sentence make sense" Yes/No) surrounded by almost nothing.

I've seen some people on Reddit who are effectively gaming it well enough to actually make consistent money, but that's clearly the exception not the rule.

Re: How much money can you make on Mechanical Turk?

#73

Post by PopePompus »

blintz wrote: post #42

How do people feel about the research ethics of this? Many academic studies involve the use of MTurk participants, but it seems as though they are not being paid close to a living or even fair wage ($2 an hour is abysmal!). Should universities require that studies using MTurk pay some minimum pro-rated hourly wage? That is, if a Stanford HCI study (which seem to use MTurk often) wants workers to fill out a 15-minute…

The treatment of adjunct professors in the US tells you all you need to know about University ethics.

Re: How much money can you make on Mechanical Turk?

#74

Post by phalangion »

cies wrote: post #69
oflordal wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you think it is fun, having a hobby (mturk) that is a small net positive can save you a lot of money compared to having a hobby which is a net loss (most hobbies).

> If you think it is fun [...] (mturk) If this was generally perceived as fun, then Amazon would charge money for you to "play" mturk. The fact mturk work pays tells me that mturk is pretty much nobody's hobby.

The "fun" may be to earn a little extra money doing menial tasks. Just the other day there was a discussion here about EVE online and how much menial management is needed in the game to set up for a small amount of fun PvP combat time. What's the difference between that and doing some mindless menial tasks for a couple extra bucks to go out on the weekend?

Re: How much money can you make on Mechanical Turk?

#75

Post by PaulHoule »

Every time I have looked at Turk lately the HITs I've seen have been awful.

For instance there used to be a lot of HITs that involves transcribing printed receipts.

I wouldn't mind doing this so much if the receipts weren't smudged and creased or otherwise illegible, but I think these people have an OCR that can handle the easy ones and you're left with a residuum of hard cases which sometimes can't be transcribed at all, or for which you'll probably make enough mistakes to get in trouble. I find that mentally fatiguing on top of the extra time.

Re: How much money can you make on Mechanical Turk?

#76

Post by phalangion »

blintz wrote: post #42

How do people feel about the research ethics of this? Many academic studies involve the use of MTurk participants, but it seems as though they are not being paid close to a living or even fair wage ($2 an hour is abysmal!). Should universities require that studies using MTurk pay some minimum pro-rated hourly wage? That is, if a Stanford HCI study (which seem to use MTurk often) wants workers to fill out a 15-minute…

I'm currently paying MTurkers $2 for a study that takes 10-15 minutes. That works out to $8-$12 per hour. I would never be able to recruit people to participate locally for just $2, but I can on MTurk because mine is one of many tasks they can complete in an hour.

Re: How much money can you make on Mechanical Turk?

#77

Post by segmondy »

cies wrote: post #69
oflordal wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you think it is fun, having a hobby (mturk) that is a small net positive can save you a lot of money compared to having a hobby which is a net loss (most hobbies).

> If you think it is fun [...] (mturk) If this was generally perceived as fun, then Amazon would charge money for you to "play" mturk. The fact mturk work pays tells me that mturk is pretty much nobody's hobby.

Programming is fun for programmers, we don't get charged to play with computers. :)

Re: How much money can you make on Mechanical Turk?

#78

Post by xienze »

stubish wrote: post #50
blintz wrote: post #42

How do people feel about the research ethics of this? Many academic studies involve the use of MTurk participants, but it seems as though they are not being paid close to a living or even fair wage ($2 an hour is abysmal!). Should universities require that studies using MTurk pay some minimum pro-rated hourly wage? That is, if a Stanford HCI study (which seem to use MTurk often) wants workers to fill out a 15-minute…

I wonder if they actually get meaningful results from MTurk participants; you are getting a very skewed and unnatural demographic, and I don't see how any results based on feedback from MTurk participants can be applied to any normal population. Much more so than the traditional study group of students-who-need-to-pay-rent. I don't see an ethical problem in how much you pay participants (after all, how much it pays o…

> I wonder if they actually get meaningful results from MTurk participants

I bet they do. One thing not really touched on in the article is that one of the task qualifiers is “acceptance rate”, i.e., how many of your task submissions were accepted by the person that created the tasks. And that number is usually 99.9% acceptance (of _all_ results you’ve ever submitted) or higher. There is a very strong incentive to not get any kind of rejected submission, because it can quickly tank your MTurk profile and shut off lots of opportunities.

Re: How much money can you make on Mechanical Turk?

#79

Post by cies »

phalangion wrote: post #74
cies wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you think it is fun [...] (mturk) If this was generally perceived as fun, then Amazon would charge money for you to "play" mturk. The fact mturk work pays tells me that mturk is pretty much nobody's hobby.

The "fun" may be to earn a little extra money doing menial tasks. Just the other day there was a discussion here about EVE online and how much menial management is needed in the game to set up for a small amount of fun PvP combat time. What's the difference between that and doing some mindless menial tasks for a couple extra bucks to go out on the weekend?

> The "fun" may be to earn a little extra money doing menial tasks.

That the pay is fun (or enables fun) does not make the work fun. Here mturk was named a potential "hobby", that's just ridiculous to me.

> Just the other day there was a discussion here about EVE online and how much menial management is needed in the game to set up for a small amount of fun PvP combat time. What's the difference between that and doing some mindless menial tasks for a couple extra bucks to go out on the weekend?

You could argue that EVE setup is "work" required to enable some "fun" play. I don't think anyone would consider EVE setup (just the setup) as a hobby.

Re: How much money can you make on Mechanical Turk?

#80

Post by cies »

segmondy wrote: post #77
cies wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you think it is fun [...] (mturk) If this was generally perceived as fun, then Amazon would charge money for you to "play" mturk. The fact mturk work pays tells me that mturk is pretty much nobody's hobby.

Programming is fun for programmers, we don't get charged to play with computers. :)

> Programming is fun for programmers

Bull. If this was true trey would line up to join our company and I could charge them at the door for working with us.

Some programming is fun. Sure. Many part of my work are fun. But I'd rather do other things with my life if money was not an issue.

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