I've never been a huge fan, either! It's never worked in my favour and I've never known anyone to get anything out of them. It's weird you should say you always thought it was just a ploy to get people to spend their points, because that's exactly the same conclusion I eventually came to. I remember when I started doing YouGov, I would always put my points towards the sweepstakes, but never ever won. I carried on like that for a while until one day I woke up and smelt the coffee LOL I felt like such a mug when I finally had that lightbulb moment!
Oh, sure. He definitely knows what he's doing. He's been earning from Clixsense for ages. I was pulling my hair out just trying to get past the first 100 approved tasks. I might be a bit more patient these days though, so I should give it another whirl. I think I read on Reddit that there are pages that will tell you about the highest paying MTurk tasks (and which ones to avoid as well). I'll have to give it another look. I'd love to actually just sit down and work, instead of hopping all over. Since I have limited time, being more focused would also be more efficient. Maybe MTurk will be a good option for that, at least for part of the day (since I'll probably still hit a few of my regular earning sites anyway).
I would agree with you, but I have just found out that Mturk does not pay international turkers, so I am absolutely furious and very upset that I have wasted many hours over the last couple of days doing the hits. Absolutely pointless. They only let you spend your money via US Amazon, which hardly ships any items to the UK, and when they do the fees are ridiculously expensive. Absolute waste of time.
OMG @DreekLass, I'm really sorry to hear that! I thought the UK and Canada were ok to work on MTurk and eligible to receive payment via Amazon?! I too would be fuming, because I'm not always looking to spend the money I make online on Amazon. I also hate how everything seems to be about Amazon.com, why can't they at least let people spend their gift vouchers on their respective Amazon sites?! So what are you planning to do now, are you going to carry on with MTurk?
Oh, no! You've got to be kidding! I thought sure that UK was included for regular payments. Why the heck didn't they tell you that when you signed up?? I would be livid too. That seems quite underhanded to me. I'm sorry this happened to you. I expect much better from Amazon. Could you perhaps buy an Amazon gift card with your earnings and sell it off or use it to shop on one of their other sites? I don't know, just trying to come up with a way to help so that you haven't completely wasted your time. I find the whole thing very disheartening. I don't understand why you can't shop on their other sites using your payments in the first place. No one wants to pay a fortune for shipping. That's one of the first money saving tips learned when shopping online... avoid high shipping costs.
Thank you. For the last two days I have done more or less nothing but look for ways to liquify the money earned with mturk into actual cash that I can spend, and it has been dead end after dead end. I was initially going to buy gift cards with the mturk earned gift card balance... only to learn that gift cards - physical and ecode ones - cannot be purchased at all with gift card credit/balance. My only option is to buy American physical items and find a way to sell them. They have a site called Amazon Global that ships a small number of items internationally. I could buy electronics such as smartphones from there, but the price paid for them, when converted into the money that I will receive for them from shops that buy used electronics - even though mine will be mint condition - is a loss. Say I buy a smartphone from Global that ships to me, and it is $172, and then I sell it to one of the UK shops that purchases used goods, I would only get £95 for it. Which is a big loss when $172 in Great British Pounds is £135. It just sucks all around.
That is really frustrating to hear. As someone who benefits from being in a country where it is pretty easy to turn it into spendable cash, I feel bad for those who cannot do this. It is one of the better sites out there when it comes to making some side money, and to hear that some people cannot reap the rewards makes me feel bad. I hope that you find a way, and I would think that there is something out there.
That proper sucks, DreekLass! I bet you're in a bit of a dilemma about whether to stay or go, which is such a shame because it seems to have been working very nicely for you. Have you been in touch with the admin to make absolutely certain there's no way around it? I'm only asking because I've heard some international members saying they've been paid. Although having said that, I've observed some people are not beyond telling a few porkies to make themselves look good.
There is definitely no way around it. It has been like this for ten years, for international workers. Nothing is going to change now, unfortunately. They have a very nifty sneaky system under them, does Amazon. They have people work for mturk, and then make them spend their earnings WITH Amazon, so they get the money in the end anyway. The bitcoin method, or selling/shipping US items to US addresses is the only option that we had. But then I heard that they can ban your account for shipping your items to US addresses, when you stated in your Mturk application form that you were from the UK, or Italiy, or any other parts of the world that is not the US.
@DreekLass....oh, you've absolutely got it sussed, girl!! Wow, they really do have it all sorted out for themselves, the sneaky so and so's; all the money just goes back into their coffers, absolutely no sweat about it! Meantime, the international workers as usual, get the raw deal It's a very difficult one. I'm not sure what I'd do if I were eligible to join, because like everyone else, I'd rather have money sent to my Paypal account. It's a lot easier and gives you full control of your money, money that you've bled and toiled for no less!
I know right? It's not like I can have the money transfered to my US contact's bank either, because it would be viewed a her income, for which she would most likely have to pay taxes on. The whole thing is a mess. The only viable method is to buy a smartphone from them, and dropship it to a buyer on Ebay. There will be loss, but it is better than having the money sit there doing nothing.
@DreekLass......It's such a shame your friend would possibly end up having to pay tax on the money if you sent it to her account, because that could probably work, although it wouldn't be the ideal long term solution. I'm not a huge fan of sending money to someone else's account and vice versa. You know how money is, it can break up friendships and relationships in general. After you've exhausted what you've made so far, have you had any thoughts about what you're going to do with MTurk, going forward?
I found a way to make some money via a book selling app. I have been looking around at various sites, and stumbled uponLog In that has good reviews. I have professional books, text books, self help books, and also some on a variety of other subjects, that I am looking to clear out. I would of course always prefer to make some money, then my second choice way of downsizing is to simply give items away or donate them. This may be only for those within the continental USA, or at least the entire USA. What I liked, in addition to paying at least as much as I would get a Half-PriceBooks, after transporting the heavy items across town, is that shipping is free for me, and I can get a free pick up via the USPS. I have two packages waiting to be picked up, and should make about $40 on the books, assuming they pay what they said they would. Payment is via check or PayPal.
Well, they emailed me back on the matter - Mturk did - and that isn't possible anyway, which I knew it wouldn't be. But you've got to ask, right? I have thought the same thing. I mean, there could have been a situation where I needed the money from her account, and she wasn't transferring it, and that could and would cause tension. I really want to continue working with them, as it is easy money. It adds up very fast. Very easy to make ten dollars upwards a day with it. It's just converting that into cash that is the pain in the butt.
@DreekLass...oh yes, you can only ask! At least they did respond, even if it was just to confirm your fears. Sod's Law, isn't it; with online work so thin on the ground at the moment, you finally find something that really works and there's some annoying catch to take the spark off it! We can only hope that they look into that and change it in the future, because it's just silly. It doesn't work in the members' favour at all. But you have to give it to me them, it's a very clever tactic!
The whole thing is an absolute nightmare. I need some new headphones, so I thought I might as well use my Mturk money and have them shipped here in the UK. They have no in between prices and I want decent headphones. Anyway, when I finally found a pair that seemed to have good reviews, the I saw that the shipping was twenty something dollars, on top of the sixty something dollars for the actual headphones, and I just could not bring myself to place the order. If only I could find people who regularly buy from Amazon, who would let me buy their items for them with my gift card balance with 10% off, and then they could Paypal me the 90%. That way they would save, and I could get my money.
Since my last post, I received my payment for the books, DVDs and CDs that I sold. I still have some more to go through, but after working with three different companies, I have ruled one out. I do not like Decluttr at all. They seem to use a bait and switch tactic, where up front, they say they'll accept pretty much all of your items for low amounts each, with a few at a higher, decent rate. Each site has a minimum dollar amount and/or number of items in order to offer free shipping, and sometimes the amounts the sites set for the same exact item can vary widely, so it can be difficult trying to decide which site or sites to use. I ended up using the three different companies because I was trying to maximize my profit. Decluttr ended up not paying me for a lot of the items, and that included all of the ones they'd made higher offers for. If I had known that up front, I would have sold those items to one of the other companies, and made more money. The final result from the other two sites was much closer to what they'd stated up front, so in the future, I'll probably use BookMonster again, and I will definitely use SellBackYourBook again. There was a small discrepancy between what BookMonster quoted and ultimately paid, but some of that was because I didn't pay enough attention to their rules. SellBackYourBook paid just about what they quoted up front, so I was very happy with them. Both BookMonster and SellBackYourBook (and their DVD/CD site) pay via PayPal.
I signed up for quite a few websites, both surveys, and video watching, but they pay extremely low and it comes increasingly boring for me. I tried the Swagbucks, but my account is intact for months. I lost interest in many similar websites, because they are very slow, including InboxDollars too. I heard that the Hubpages are nice to write, but you can lose all your articles and earnings just because somebody flags you out of any reason. Now, for the sake of myself and my time I only participate in few forums and some blogs, but I stopped doing everything else.
My main line for earning online money was Postloop. But it's just sad that it has closed shop. However, it is replaced by Contentgather which is a blog type where you submit an article which they will put up for sale. It looks promising although I cannot say that it is a good substitute for Postloop. With Postloop, I could earn $5 in a day when I have the time.
I agree, I enjoyed making money, learning new things, and also interacting with nice people during my time with Postloop. I think there's definitely a place in the market for Content Gather, but I'd love to see them incorporate a feature similar to Postloop, where short posts could lead to earning money. I just cashed out from Paidviewpoint again, and although it took a while to get to the cashing out threshold of $15, once I elected to cash out, I received the money quickly.
