A couple of months ago I started Amazon's MTURK program where people can earn money online doing artificial artificial intelligence tasks (known as HITS). So far, it's been a great experience. I have earned over $500 in just about 9 weeks and through my online forums/groups, I have seen that people can make way more money than this as well (today someone said they had been turking for 5 weeks and made 1k--but this is stellar and I don't think most people typically make that much money so fast). At any rate, it pays pretty quickly and there are a variety of tasks that you can do.
A lot of people are wondering if it is legit and how you get paid so I thought I would share a little about the payment process (If you are interested in learning more about MTURK and how you can make money quickly online through it, you can check out my other MTURK posts)
Payment Options
If you sign up for Amazon's MTURK program, you will be presented with the choice to get the money transferred to a bank account or Amazon gift card. How the process works is that you can transfer your funds to 1) Amazon Payments and then 2) to your bank account or an Amazon gift card.
So in the picture above, there is an amount in the "earnings available" section. This is the amount of money that can currently be transferred to Amazon Payments. When you do HITs, you have to wait for them to get approved. The time for approval can be anywhere from automatically to a few minutes, to a few days to 30 days. Most HITs are approved within minutes to a few days. I have not run into a requestor yet that took anywhere near 30 days. The longest that it can take is 30 days and each requestor has to put an auto-approval time and after that time elapses, the HIT gets automatically approved unless the requestor rejects it. As I understand, requestors must fund their accounts first and set an auto-approval so unless your HIT gets rejected,you are guaranteed to get paid after a certain period of time.
The picture below shows some of the status messages you may see (in addition to one for rejection which will show up in red).
Once the HIT shows "paid" I believe this is when it transfers over to "earnings available to transfer."
But there are other options if you don't have a bank account and you don't want an Amazon gift card!!!!
You can also have your money deposited onto prepaid cards! (certain ones)
The ones that I am familiar with or have heard others' experience with are:
- Walmart Money Card (www.walmartmoneycard.com)
- Bluebird
- PayPal PREPAID debit card (not the standard gray PayPal debit card)
I have experience transferring to the first two cards, WalmartMoneyCard and Bluebird.
How Do You Transfer to These Debit Cards?
First set up your card (as a bank account. At Bluebird.com and Walmartmoneycard.com, you look for direct deposit options (this is not technically considered direct deposit as they define direct deposit as paycheck, government benefits, tax refunds. But the deposits from MTURK still work because you use routing and account numbers which are available on the sites.
For Bluebird, go to Pay & Transfer >> Direct Deposit. On that page you will see your account number and routing information. At Walmartmoneycard.com go to "Add & Send Money." On the "Add Money" tab, scroll down, click on the "direct deposit" sub tab and scroll down to see your routing number and account number.
With your routing number and account numbers, you then go to Amazon Payments (https://payments.amazon.com) and click on "Edit my account settings " >> "Add a bank account" and enter your routing and account numbers. It will then try to instantly verify your bank accounts (which will fail) and it will tell you that you can verify your account by receiving two small deposits into your account from Amazon. So select that option. Within a few days or so, Amazon will deposit two small amounts (each under a dollar) so go to Bluebird or Walmartmoneycard.com and keep checking until you see the small deposits. Once you do, note the two amounts and head back to Amazon Payments and go to "Edit my account savings" >> "Manage bank accounts. Once there, you will see a button under the account you added that says something like verify deposits. Click on that and enter the two deposit amounts. You should get a message that says your account is verified (if you entered the amounts correctly) and you are set! You can now transfer money from Amazon payments to that particular card.
How Long Does the Verification Process of a Card Take
It works exactly like bank verification and just depends. It says it takes 5-7 days, but in my experience with these two cards, it was about a day or two.
How Long Does it Take to Get Paid Once You Transfer Money
So you first transfer from MTURK to Amazon payments (that takes at most several hours generally). You can only make 1 MTURK to Amazon payments transfer per day. Then you will transfer to your bank or card. The minimum amount that you can transfer is $1.00. This really depends upon your bank or card company. When I transfer during the weekdays, I usually get it in the bank the next day. Recently I transferred on a Sunday and still got it on Monday, so I was surprised.
I recently tried transferring money to Bluebird and WalmartMoneyCard. I can't say for sure when it came in but I noticed it the next day for both of them and I am pretty sure that my Bluebird came in the same day because the post date in my transaction summary was the same day that I initiated the transfer. I have heard people say that they got their money on both of these cards within six or so hours of transferring.
I have also heard that people have success transferring to PayPal's PREPAID debit card, not the standard gray debit card. With the prepaid card, you will pay a monthly fee. I know that Bluebird is free. You have to pay a monthly fee for the Walmart MoneyCard.
One thing I like about the Bluebird card is that there are no fees to load a card. And you can go to a Walmart store and load your card at the money center or even at the machines there. Also, you can set up a set aside account to save money in and you have to actually transfer the money back over to the main account to use it.
