When the COVID-19 outbreak first started, many people found themselves working part-time. Some even found themselves out of jobs.
Working online from home became the answer to the money shortage for many people around the world.
Earning a few dollars on the side by working short-term jobs is something anyone can do.
Unlike full-time freelancing, these jobs don’t require any specific knowledge, experience, or technical abilities. That makes micro-jobs perfect for people simply looking for supplemental income.
The only problem is where to find these jobs.
Millions of people now use MTurk to make additional money. Amazon Mechanical Turk is a platform that allows people to finish micro tasks and earn small amounts of money instantly.
Never heard about it? That why we’re here.
This post will help you understand:
- What Amazon Mechanical Turk is and how it works.
- How to make supplemental income with micro jobs.
- What some of the best MTruk alternatives out there are.
Let’s dive right into it.
What Is Mechanical Turk?
While AI is becoming more and more advanced every year, there’s still a huge need for regular workers out there.
For the people in need of human workers, Amazon has created a marketplace.
Amazon Mechanical Turk makes it easier for companies to outsource their small, time-consuming tasks and find workers who can do them remotely.
On the other hand, it allows people who need money fast to earn it in just a few short minutes. What kind of jobs are featured on the MTruk market?
You can find everything from simple data validation and market research to more subjective tasks like content editing, forum moderation, survey participation, and everything between.
On MTruk, every task a user performs is categorized as a “HIT.”
When you complete your HIT, you get paid by the client.
In the new age, companies no longer need to spend money looking for workers who will have to perform a specific duty.
They can simply go to a marketplace like MTruk, find people to finish the task they need and pay them once the ordeal is done.
Are you still confused by this? Are you still wondering what micro jobs are?
The following types of work can be classified as micro jobs:
- Re-typing information and copy/pasting information from one doc to another
- Watching, liking, and sharing videos on platforms like YouTube and Vimeo
- Following various accounts on Twitter, retweeting and liking their tweets
- Creating new accounts on platforms like Gmail. Outlook, and Yahoo
- Using other people’s accounts to play games and record high scores
How to Make Money Doing Micro Jobs?
One thing you need to realize about micro jobs is that they don’t pay a lot.
That means, in order to earn a healthy sum of money, you need to perform a number of these jobs on a daily basis.
Luckily, most micro jobs only require a few minutes to complete.
In most cases, you can complete a task in half an hour or less.
They also give you a lot of flexibility. You can simply finish a couple of jobs in the morning, go out for lunch, meet up with your friends, and go back to your job in the evening.
That’s why so many people choose to work on MTurk in the first place.
The flexibility allows them to have a lot of free time or even to have a full-time job. You just need to say whether you want to accept HITs 6 or 6 hours a week.
We have also created a guide on how to make $50 a day on mTurk. Reading that one is an absolute must!
Here are some of the most popular ways of earning money on MTurk:
Short Transcriptions
Many people need to have their recordings transcribed. Podcasters, YouTubers, and even lawyers often post micro jobs to have their voice recordings transcribed in a short amount of time. Depending on the length of the recording, this task can be finished in 10 to 90 minutes.
Doing Surveys
Another popular way of earning money is by filling out surveys. This is a great way for companies to do their market research and colleges to do independent studies. Surveys pay pretty modestly, but you can finish a lot of them in one day.
Product Descriptions
While this might require some writing skills, you don’t have a degree in literature to write a simple product description.
Instead of paying expensive copywriters, some small companies opt to pay MTruk workers to write their product descriptions.
Top 10 Alternatives to MTurk
In addition to Amazon MTurk, there are dozens of other micro job platforms out there. If you didn’t have any luck on MTruk or if you want to try out a few options, maybe you want to look at these. Here are the 10 best MTruk alternatives that can help you land your first micro job…
MTurk Alternative #1: Appen
You can’t talk about alternatives to MTurk without mentioning Appen.
Their motto is “find a job you love, solve problems, and help shape the future”.
The platform allows people from different countries to provide services to companies in multiple languages.
Some of the jobs offered on Appen include:
- Social media content evaluation
- Transcription and translation
- Data collection and surveying
Clients on Appen look for workers with various skill levels. The jobs they offer vary from standard surveys that can be completed in an hour or so to big projects that need weeks or even months to complete. Basically, the platform works as a mix of MTurk and Upwork.
MTurk Alternative #2: Spare5
Whether you’re a Mac or a PC user, you can find tech-based jobs on Spare5.
This MTurk alternative gives you an opportunity to do short web-based tasks and get paid.
All you need is a functioning computer, PayPal account, and some free time to start working on Spare5.
You can collect money from Spare5 once a week. Each Friday, the platform sends payments to its users automatically.
What are some of the tasks featured on Spare5?
They include:
- Describing content, tone, and meaning of visual content
- Annotating images on certain platforms
- Providing specific keywords to develop algorithms
In essence, the platform aims to help programmers get real human insight into audio, video, and image material, so they can improve their AI applications.
MTurk Alternative #3: AppJobber
If you want to make supplemental money on the go, you can simply use a platform that allows you to do jobs on your smartphone.
Enter AppJobber.
This crowd-sourcing platform is there to help companies collect data for a modest amount of money.
The platform offers specific, location-based micro jobs that can be done in a couple of minutes. Unlike many other platforms out there, AppJobber is somehow limited. For now, only people from the following countries can use AppJobber:
- Austria
- Denmark
- Finland
- France
- Germany
- Italy
- Norway
- Portugal
- United Kingdom
Another thing that makes AppJobber specific is the fact that some jobs require you to go out. For example, you may need to take pictures of certain products, price signs, or places to finish certain tasks.
MTurk Alternative #4: Clickworkers
People who have accounts Clickworkers are a part of a group of independent contractors who use their own equipment and work on their own schedule.
They just need a working personal computer and a standard web browser to complete tasks at a certain price rate.
Some of the tasks offered on the platform are actually a part of larger, complex projects. Typically, clients offer the following micro-jobs:
- Writing and translation (which can also be done on a platform like Writers Work)
- Product tagging and categorization
- Online market research
These tasks are often overseen by other people on the platform. This allows Clickworkers to have an efficient, self-sustaining system that works perfectly, even though the workers are not located on the same continent.
MTurk Alternative #5: Gigwalk
As an alternative to MTruk, Gigwalk works perfectly. It can help you work off an extra paycheck by doing small tasks during the weekends.
You can work from home or from a coffee shop near your house. The app is extremely easy to use.
All you need to do is familiarize yourself with the app interface, and you can perform all of the tasks from it.
You don’t even need to have an email account to register. You just need to link your Gigwalk account to the PayPal account so you can get paid and you’re done.
There’s a wide variety of jobs offered on Gigwalk. You can pick jobs that need 5 minutes to be finished or ones that require a few hours.
Depending on the amount of time and effort needed to finish it, you can make anywhere from $3 to $100 per job.
MTurk Alternative #6: RapidWorkers
Have you ever used MicroWorkers before? If you did, then you’ll be familiar with the interface of RapidWorkers.
Developed by the same company, UnikScripts, the two websites have the same professional-looking interface along with the same basic features.
Now, there are two kinds of people who frequent the website: there are RapidWorkers employees and workers.
The latter are the people who perform small tasks, others work for the company directly and oversee the micro-job workers.
If you want, after a few months, you can try out and work for the company directly. Most of the tasks on the website are rather small and take between 3 and 5 minutes to complete.
For each task, the company will pay $0.10 if the task is finished in a timely and acceptable manner.
MTurk Alternative #7: EasyShift
Do you want to be paid for going around, shopping, and eating around your town?
With EasyShift, you can charge certain companies for performing various tasks around the city.
Unlike many other apps, you can get paid in cash for performing these tasks. However, be aware of different apps who always promise cash instead of rewards. App like Social Rebel promises a ton of cash, but never lets you withdraw your money.
Here’s what EasyShift offers:
You can earn extra cash and pay your bills by performing small tasks.
Work any time you want and do whatever you want for the rest of the day.
Connect with other users on the EasyShift Forums for more job opportunities.
All you need is a smartphone and an app to work on EasyShift.
Use the app to look up tasks on the map, reserved a shift, and perform the task you were assigned to get paid. Tasks include taking pictures and answering questions.
MTurk Alternative #8: OneSpace
OneSpace is a perfect micro job platform for people who enjoy writing, proofreading, and editing.
If you’ve ever worked as a copywriter, this platform can help you earn money today. Small tasks include categorization, transcriptions, and editorial duties.
You can also write product descriptions for various websites. If you have more experience, you can actually earn more money.
Simply take a taste after you complete registration and see whether you can be a junior or a senior writer.
Depending on your qualifications, you’ll get a job. The amount of money depends on your qualification, so try to ace the test to the best of your abilities.
MTurk Alternative #9: PicoWorkers
Even though PicoWorkers is the newest website on the list, it’s still a legitimate platform that can earn you extra cash on the side.
The dashboard PicoWorkers uses is similar to RapidWorkers’ one. If you’ve been planning on using two websites, these two go great with each other.
The platform also works similarly to others: simply do small tasks and earn money from clients that have posted the tasks.
On the downside, it takes 10 days to withdraw money from the website. This might be too long for new users, but if you earn enough money, it will be worth it.
Also, the minimum withdrawal amount is $5, which is significantly lower than other crowdsourcing websites.
MTurk Alternative #10: Remotasks
In the last spot on the list, we have Remotasks. When compared to MTurk, this website offers quite different tasks.
Even though it’s just a few years old, it already has clients like Google, Uber, and Gusto under their belt, so you know the site is legit.
A lot of their tasks a driving-related, since they work with multiple companies that working on driverless vehicles.
Content moderation, image tagging, and annotation are some of the most-frequently found jobs on Remotasks.
Final Thoughts
If you want to start working micro jobs, these are the MTruk alternatives you should try out first.
And if you’re serious about this, you should definitely create multiple accounts, see which platforms suit you best, and then start working on them.
On the other hand, if you’re an employer looking for workers, you’ll be able to find people you’re looking for on these platforms.
Instead of spending hundreds of dollars on freelancers, you should use MTurk and its alternatives to find people ready to take on micro jobs right away.