Make Money on Amazon Without Selling!

When I was about 17 or 18, I had a part-time job while in college but I was not making much at all.

So I started looking for some side gigs where I can make some money online.

After searching for a while I stumbled upon Amazon Mechanical Turk (MTurk) and in my time working with Amazon Mechanical Turk I made over $500!

I learned how to make money on Amazon without selling anything!

And…

I was not consistent at all, I was on and off and didn’t work much like some other people. On Reddit, some people who work for MTurk report making thousands a year!

I will teach you how to make money on Amazon Mechanical Turk in this MTurk money guide!

Okay, so what exactly is Amazon Mechanical Turk?

Table Of Contents

What Is MTurk

Amazon Mechanical Turk is a crowd-sourcing platform where you complete little tasks and get money for it.

Most jobs are very simple and usually consist of surveys, transcriptions, and questionnaires.

Also, most of these jobs pay under a dollar but they are usually very quick to complete so you can finish a lot of them in a short amount of time.

MTurk is a great side gig where you can work for a few hours a day and get thousands of dollars a year! Click To Tweet

Let’s get into the rules of MTurk, how to use it and some Amazon Mechanical Turk tips you can use to make more money!

Important Points to Know

You must be 18 years or older to participate in Amazon Mechanical Turk
All income from Amazon Mechanical Turk must be reported at tax time.
When you create your MTurk account you will be in a “probation” period for 10 – 30 days. More information on this, as well as other FAQ’s, can be found here.
Completing more jobs will make you a more desirable worker, opening doors for more jobs. Keep working to complete important job milestones (500, 1000, 2500, and 5000).

Getting Started

Go to the MTurk site here.

Select get started with Amazon Mechanical Turk and select create a worker account.

Once signed in you should see a page like this:

Amazon will need to review your request and will send you an email once they approve your account.

Once Amazon approves your account and you sign in, you will see the MTurk homepage:

Here you will see all the different “jobs” available (Amazon calls them HITs).

You will also see:

The requester.
The title of the HIT.
The number of HITs available for that one task.
The amount you get for completing the HIT.

Completing Jobs (HITs)

I recommend doing surveys mostly. They are worth the most for your time.

Search “survey” in the search bar

Click on any desired HIT and click on preview first, not “Accept and Work”.

By clicking preview, you can go back if you don’t want to do the HIT, or click accept if you want to start the HIT.

Once you accept the HIT, you will usually have to click on an external link to get to the survey and the survey will start.

You will see that there is a bar on the top right of the screenshot that you will not have initially, I will explain shortly.

Now complete the survey, but be careful because there will most likely be a few questions scattered throughout the survey to make sure you pay attention and don’t randomly click through the survey.

Once the survey is complete, you will usually get a code that you will have to copy and paste back on the MTurk page.

Make sure you copy and paste the code given to you NOT your MTurk ID.

Now once you have done that, you have completed your first HIT!

Complete more HITs and you are able to make money on Amazon without selling!

Getting Paid and Account Info

It usually takes a day or two, sometimes longer, to receive your payment from your completed HITs.

Click on the Dashboard menu on the toolbar and you will go to your account section.

Here you will see your account details, the amount you have in your account, how many HITs are approved, your approval rate, pending HITs, your rejection rate and your different earning stats.

It is very important to keep your approval rate high and your rejection rate low, you can do this by completing the HITs correctly.

This ties back into those “pay attention” survey questions, if you get these wrong then the requester will most likely reject your HIT.

Make sure your rejection rate is as small as possible, realistically it will happen a few times and that’s okay.

Once you get paid you can then transfer your money to your Amazon Payments account.

It may take a day or two for the funds to transfer.

You can link your bank account to your Amazon Payments account and withdraw the funds to your bank account.

Note that the minimum withdrawal is $1.

There you go! You just learned how to make money on Amazon without selling anything.

Amazon Mechanical Turk Tips

Now, remember when you saw that bar on the right of that picture?

Well, let’s get to it.

There are a few MTurk scripts you can use to make your MTurk experience better and easier.

First, install the Tampermonkey extension, or the Greasemonkey extension for Firefox if Tampermonkey doesn’t work.

Great, now install the Turkopticon script and select install, this will open a new tab and then click install. The process will be quick.

Now head over to your MTurk HIT page and you will see something different, you will see a little arrow to the right of all the HITs.

When you hover over the arrow you will see the ratings for that job requester (rated by other MTurkers).

You will now be able to see who are the best requesters to accept HITs from, pretty neat!

Another script, I recommend getting is the HIT scraper script.

Install the script just like you did with the Turkopticon.

Now, go here and you will see an interesting looking page.

Make sure you’re logged in to MTurk to take advantage of this page.

These are the options I use on this page:

Auto refresh delay – this automatically refreshes the page to search for new HITs based on the filters you set, I usually set it around 15 – 30 seconds.
The min reward – this is the minimum amount of money you will work for, I usually set this to around 15 – 20 cents.
The min TO – this is the minimum rating for the requester (remember the arrow next to the HIT on the MTurk website) I usually put a 2.5 out of 5.

Play around with these until you find what is right for you.

Okay, we’re almost at the end and you can start working!

Just one more tip I would like to share before I wrap this up.

This tip has to do with this picture you have seen earlier, with the bar at the top right:

This is the MTurk ID Copy/Paste script.

Install this script just like the others.

This script loads that little window you see in the picture with your MTurk ID.

Now, why would you want this?

Well, remember when you accept a HIT you will constantly have to input your MTurk ID into the HIT to start it.

I know what you’re saying, you can either remember your MTurk ID (good luck) or you can keep your MTurk ID in your clipboard.

But…

This most likely won’t happen because you will copy that confirmation code after you complete the HIT.

So it might not seem like a big deal to have this now but trust me when you are cranking out HITs like there’s no tomorrow and this can save you a second or two per HIT, it will feel like a lot.

Just copy your MTurk ID and paste it when the HIT asks for it.

That’s all to it, this is how I was able to make money on Amazon without selling anything!

Use these scripts in this MTurk money guide to save you some time and maximize your earnings with MTurk!

Conclusion

Make Money on Amazon without selling with Mechanical Turk — Photo by NeONBRAND on Unsplash

Now you know how to make money on Mechanical Turk!

Amazon Mechanical Turk is a great way to make money on Amazon without selling a thing, just do simple tasks whenever you would like!

Also with the Amazon Mechanical Turk tips offered in this article, you will make your MTurk experience easier to make more money.

Work when you want, where you want with Amazon Mechanical Turk. All you need is an internet connection and you are ready to go!

I don’t recommend working for MTurk as a single source of income because a rough calculation will show you that your hourly pay on MTurk is close to minimum wage.

But…

MTurk is a great side gig to earn some extra cash throughout the year. Click To Tweet

Now get to work! The more HITs you do, the better you get and the more “jobs” open up to you.

Refer to the Amazon Mechanical Turk FAQ page for further information.

You are on your way to making hundreds to thousands of dollars a year!

Also, check out my Ebates post where I show you how you can make money shopping on Amazon as well as other stores!

If you are looking for other ways to make some extra money then check out Swagbucks where you can make money doing simple tasks.

Do you use MTurk? Have any Amazon Mechanical Turk tips to share? Drop them in the comments below!

Are you ready to take control of your money? Check out these awesome money resources which will help you to make and save $1,000’s!

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