since I've been getting a load of PMs about how to work on Mturk, I decided to make a basic guide and FAQ thread on it.


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Whats the purpose of Mturk?



Mturk is a website designed for two purposes:



To get your work quickly done,
To earn money for people who want their work to be done.



Here is what the main page looks like after you make an account, its called the "Dashboard":





What kind of jobs (HITs) does it offer?



There are various organizations currently signed up as a "Requester" there. Some of these are Ebay, Bestbuy, Dolores Labs, Casting Words. They offer various types of HITs (Human Intelligence Tasks, or jobs for simplicity). Some of these jobs are "Data Organization" by Ebay/Bestbuy, where you will have to arrange objects according to their section like Processor in Electronics, Clothes in Accessories. Dolores Jobs offer similar jobs but in a huge quantity unlike Ebay/Bestbuy. Casting Words and ClariTrans will usually provide you with an audio file which you'll need to listen to and write exactly what you listen, including coughs and hiccups.



How will I get paid?



You can not get paid...unless you live in the USA...
...but, the amount you earn can be transferred to your Amazon.com account (.COM ONLY!), and you can use that money to buy items from there. 



You can transfer your money by going into Mturk > Account Settings > Transfer your earnings to your U.S. bank account or to your Amazon.com gift certificate balance.






How can I make a Worker Account?



i) Click on Sign in as a Worker, in the upper right corner.
ii) Enter your Email Address and Password, and highlight the "I am a new user".
iii) There, Mturk will ask for confirmation of details. Press continue when you have filled in the boxes correctly.
iv) On this page, Mturk will ask you to read its terms of conditions, and select your nation. You will have to fill in the details of your residence, phone number, Zip Code. Don't worry, when ordering from Amazon.com, you can ship your items to multiple addresses if the items supports shipment to those countries.
v) Congrats, you have just created your account. Go to your Email account to activate it.




How can I accept and work on a HIT?



You can search for a HIT in the search box, and when a HIT pops up, you can click "View a HIT in this Category".





You can accept this hit by clicking the big orange "Accept" button on the next page. Remember, that you should complete the HIT before timer runs out, otherwise it will get "Returned" (not rejected )




How can I order?



That does not depend on Mturk. It depends on Amazon.com, and from which company you are buying from on Amazon.com. If you buy a product, for example, a Graphics Card from Circuit City, selling on Amazon.com, then chances are that you cannot even ship the product to USA's neighbor - Canada. It can only be shipped to America. But certain items, for example the Graphics Card I just ordered from the seller Amazon, could be shipped to Canada for a $20 shipping fee. Nowadays, through some addons, products can even be shipped to Pakistan!



Here is how:



Addons:



If you have Firefox, download this addon: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/does-amazon-ship-to/



Now:
Check whether a product can be shipped to Pakistan or not. A decent product is http://www.amazon.com/Belkin-Standar...A1DWYG6O7VLP9W



Amer Marketplace ships this item (check this out through the addon I posted above).
The rates for shipping are $30 per shipment (meaning if you ship 10 items through this store, only $30 will apply).



1) Open the product from Amer Marketplace and Click on add to cart.
2) Click on proceed to checkout.
3) Sign-in with your Mturk account (make sure you have transferred money from Mturk to Amazon accounts). 
4) Write your Pakistani address (or if you have already written your address), then click on "Ship to this address".
5) Select Standard delivery (for lower rates, takes around 15-20 days to arrive).
6) Click place order.
7) Make sure everything is alright. If price of items exceeds your balance, then you won't be able to click on Place Order.



Can I get an easy HIT to do with great yield?



Yes you can! With just the search "Urdu" in Mturk's search engine, I came up with this epic "English to Urdu Translation" HIT paying $0.70 (was paying $1.50 a week ago :s) for translating 10 small English sentences into pure Urdu (can be done through Google's Alpha Urdu translator).






Therefore, the better your search experience is, the better HITs you'll find.



What happens if I mess up a HIT?



Your account deals a heavy blow - your account rating (or Approval rate) decreases. Your Rejected rate increases, and increasing amount of HITs can become unavailable to you as Requesters seek out the best of the workers. Therefore, after finishing a HIT, go through it once again, and then press the submit button.



Is there any chance of ripoffs/frauds?



Yes there is a low chance of you getting ripped off. Usually HITs requiring you to "Comment on a Blog", "Sign-up for something" and HITs like "Come quick easy HIT great pay", and Surveys with more than $1 pay are sometimes fake. 
You'll gain experience whether a HIT is fake or not by working on them.



Example of some HITs that suck:





How to identify a FAKE HIT:



If you get your usual orange "Submit" button grayed out, and have another custom "Submit" button in place of it, THAT SHOWS YOU A LINK TO ANOTHER PAGE (compulsary, otherwise legit!), then its a scam, and you should report that HIT immediately to get that particular requester banned after a background search.



Here, a picture tells a thousand words:





As you can see, hovering the mouse over the custom "Submit" button showed a link on the left bottom corner of the Chrome window. If it shows a link on a "Submit" button, then you know its fake. If it does not show a link when you hover your mouse over the custom "Submit" button, then its 100% legitimate.
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Helpful links:




Helpful terms:



Dashboard: The main Mturk page.
HIT: Human Intelligence Task, or the usual jobs with fancy names 
Qualifications: You need to ask qualifications before working on specific HITs.
Accept: If you click this, you become an active worker of that HIT.
Return: If you click this after accepting a HIT, you return it without any loss, and another member can take over from you.
Reject: You get a "Negative Trader Score" in Mturk terms  Must not get less than 90% Rejected rate, otherwise BANHAMMER 



Posted by UmeR: The TIME METHOD.



You can find the time it will take for a HIT to be accepted automatically by looking at the link of the HIT. Example:


/mturk/accept?hitId=xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx&prevHi tSubmitted=false&prevRequester=HAVI+Digital&reques terId=A30ABAM7HRB9SV&prevReward=USD0.20&prevTimefr ame=7+days&hitAutoAppDelayInSeconds=604800&groupId=25MSIHPCGJ2DLZMO0EOH6JPRXI828A&iterato rHi tsLeft=&iteratorSearchSpec=&signature=KXJD%2BotZNh 9n4wFJndhXBxHKDvw%3D&%2Faccept.x=45&%2Faccept.y=7


The "HITAUTOAPPDELAYINSECONDS" shows how much time it will take, in seconds, to get an HIT accepted automatically. 604800 seconds mean 7 days. So if a HIT is not accepted for 7 days, it will automatically get accepted after the 7th day and payment would be given then.