Not many may know about it, but you can ship Amazon purchases to Philippines for free (well, sort of). I will tell you about something that, I think, not many Pinoys know about.

Nothing in this world is really free, right? So, in order to get free shipping in Amazon, you have to work for it! Enter Amazon Mechanical Turk!

WHAT’S THAT AGAIN?

AMT or MTURK, is a crowdsourcing site for freelancers who wish to earn some change for easy tasks that could not be done by a machine. These tasks are what they call HITs (Human Intelligence Tasks). Some of the work there include answering surveys, article writing and data entry.

*disclaimer: I am not affiliated or in any way receiving benefit from writing about this. I just want to share this new ‘hobby’ to everybody.

There is an assortment of tasks that pays from $0.01 up to more than $10. Each hit will take you from a few minutes to an hour to complete, depending on its difficulty. All you need is an Amazon account to sign up.

SO HOW DO I GET FREE SHIPPING?

After getting a number of tasks completed and  approved, you will see your MTURK balance increase. The balance will be collected in your Amazon Payments account. For Pinoy mturk workers and other international workers, cashout will be in the form of Amazon Payments balance for a minimum of only $1. The money is converted instantly. Other sites like these require at least $10 to cash out.

US workers (those with a US address) are the only ones who can request work. They can also cash out to their bank accounts or request gift certificates. Talk about discrimination! Indian workers have the option to cash out via check. I wonder if it will be available here, too.

You can use your easy earned gift certificates on your Amazon purchases (where else?). Pool your money so next time you’ll ship Amazon purchases to Philippines for free!