This is a review previously posted in 2012 that I have decided to update. The review will only go over as how the site currently operates (as of June 2013) and all changes and updates that I have made over the last year will be incorporated into this review.

What it is: Amazon Mechanical Turk (or MTurk for short) is a site where people complete short tasks (known at HITs or Human Intelligence Tasks) for money. The HITs cover a vast range of topics including doing Google searches, labeling, tagging or flagging photos, translating words, taking surveys or transcribing audio.

Who can join: Amazon MTurk doesn’t have country limitations so people from all around the world can apply. There also isn’t a minimum age where people could apply but be warned that there aren’t a lot of HITs available for users under the age of 18 (There are also some HIT restrictions for certain countries, mainly India and China, but those restrictions are always outlined in the HIT description).

What you need to apply: All you need to sign up for this site is an e-mail address, and a bank account (optional). I should note here that if you already have any kind of Amazon account then your logins should work without needing to create a separate account.

How much you can make: There truly is no limit to how much you can make with Amazon MTurk but there are 2 different ways in which you can get paid. If you only want to convert your earnings to be used for an Amazon gift card then the payout is only $1. If you’re more interested in just getting cash then the payout level is also $1 which is transferred to your bank account within 24 hours of initiating the withdrawal.

Ways to get the payout faster: There aren’t any real catches to getting the money faster. This site is pretty cut and dry so all you need to do is just do more HITs because there is no referral program with this site. There are a few things you need to pay attention to when doing HITs such as…

1. Avoiding high paying HITs that offer little work- If you see someone offering like $4 for a 15 minute survey or an offer for $7 to create a profile on a site chances are those are scams and should be reported (On a related note, you don’t have to feel bad if you don’t want to do a survey that offers 35 cents for 45 minutes of your time. That's personally too long for me and there are other surveys that pay more for less time).

2. Rushing through HITs just to get them done- It is super important to read the instructions and follow what is asked of you. HITs can and will get rejected if they aren’t done the right way and a lower HIT approval percentage means you will be locked out of more HITs.

3. Not ignoring the qualification tests- It is not necessary to try to take every qualification test but it is important to at least look through them so you can increase the number of HITs that are available to you (You aren’t paid to take qualification tests).

4. Not being deterred by HITs that only have 1 task available- For some HITs there are hundreds or thousands of HIT’s available that you can complete at any given time but for other HITs (mainly surveys) there will be only one available. Don’t put off by HITs that only have one task available because generally it is a survey that is open to many different users as opposed to a group of different tasks placed in the same category that only requires one person to complete.

If you're interested then sign up to Amazon Mechanical Turk here.