Using Amazon MechanicalTurk if location != US?

Question

Amazon Mechanical Turk is a mass-micro outsourcing API, where you can get lots\'s of small simple tasks (e.g.\"Is there a shop in this image\") done relatively cheaply (e.g. 0.1

Answer 1

The problem you have is that to actually be able to add funds to your account, you need to have a US billing address. If you can get round that issue, then it all works fine.

Answer 2

Since Amazon doesn't let outside US access yet, you'll need to either:

• Wait for Amazon to open it up to outside US, might be a long wait.
• Get a good friend in the US to open a PO Box for you then use an online US bank to create an account. If you don't start a corporation or other legal business, they will need to provide their US drivers license to Amazon too.
• Use a 3rd party provider like HIT-Builder who will let you post on Mechanical Turk using their US Amazon account.

Answer 3

You may want to take a look at TurkPrime labs which offers this as a service to non-US based researchers.

Answer 4

I think they recently changed their rules - I am based in Australia, and as recently as 6 months ago I was unable to use Mechanical Turk. That recently changed and now I am able to post jobs on the service.