When you begin using Mechanical Turk, it may seem as if the workforce is there to cause you trouble. However, there is a large community of serious Turkers who can produce high-quality, personalized work for you if you treat them well.
First, pay appropriately for each task. A worker doing your jobs steadily for an hour should always make at least minimum wage. If it is possible to make more, you are already on the way to recruiting a loyal group of workers. Always keep the difficulty of your task in mind. If you are seeking highly specialized skills, those workers are limited and require a higher pay.
Second, do not give your workers the experience of unexpected rejections. Begin by making sure that every task you post has clear instructions so that the Turk community can tell exactly what you need. Continue by accepting the vast majority of work unless someone is actively cheating; if a worker is producing poor material with seemingly good intentions, then give feedback before rejecting. Rejections hurt a Turker’s ability to accept future tasks and rejecting submissions for unclear reasons or without prior notice is the best way to alienate good workers on Mechanical Turk. A requester with a steady reputation of unfair rejections is likely to attract only poor quality Turkers.
Third, communicate personally and regularly with the workforce. Just like in your office, people have questions about the work they are completing. It is well worth your time to answer clarifying questions. Canned, pre-written comments get old quickly, but both timely and friendly replies to emails and daily thoughtful interaction on forums like Turker Nation can earn you the kind of reputation that brings the top tier of the Turking workforce to your work.
Fourth, review feedback and update instructions and the HIT layout as requested. If you have attracted the top tier of workers, they are probably veterans Turkers. They know ways to make the layout more efficient and will point out any unclear instructions. If you take these feedback and act upon it, you will have greater success with future workers.