I used to obsess over the highest score I could get on a facebook mahjong game. Then I discovered Mechanical Turk while reading a blog about saving money. Now, instead of wasting time playing mahjong, I look over the HITs available on Mturk and see if anything looks interesting. If something does look good, I sign up. It doesn’t take too much time for the money to start adding up. I also figure that I spend time commenting on blogs, that I might as well write some reviews on MTurk. It’s become a game to me. I like to see how much people are willing to pay for what kind of work. I like to see how many words I can type in a short amount of time. I like seeing how fast I can look something up on the internet. I love seeing a HIT that has many hits available and pays well. Especially when I know there are many people working on that hit at the same time and the number of HITS available are dwindling really fast. I try to get in as many as I can. I like doing surveys, too. It’s fun to see what people out there are researching. I’ve learned about a lot of interesting parts of the internet and have been able to share my opinion on some topics I care about through MTurk.

Marguerite Duras once said something like: a woman’s life is defined by fantasy and sadness. If there is anything I have learn this summer it is that. I live in the downstairs room in my girlfriends grandmother house for the summer between college quarters. I pass my time writing, reading and I should admit watching TV, hanging out with my girlfriend when she is not working. I’m quite and like to keep to myself in my downstairs hideout. Everyday, mostly when my girlfriend is at work, a storm moves upstairs. My girlfriends grandmother is a fire of a woman, living in a constant fantasy about the world around her. She oscillates between two juxtaposed states both of which is only as deep as the moment she is in. She tells me the weirdest stories about people living in the center of the earth, about some vitamin miracle cure or how she can’t get the remote to work. Not like a crazy person, not wild and out of control, but with a conviction and enlightenment. In these moments she believes she understands a deep truth about the world. In her fantasy she is a part of a singularity, a oneness, which moves through all of us. In others moments, in her very human moments, I see she is very sad and alone. She realizes her actions have all but chased away her two child, who she had once abandoned. Her husband has died who she believe would life for ever. She knows she is only a human being which will died unhappy and unsatisfied. That all her believe are more like wishes than truths. But isn’t that true of all of us.

It prickles her palms and fingers but she doesn’t mind. Her hand flows over the harsh dry shrubs like she is caressing a lovers body. Her body moves in the same fashion, almost floating along the narrow dirt track, her bare feet leaving no trace of her passing. The birds know though. They fall silent as she passes. They couldn’t tell by just watching her, but they somehow know all the same. Something significant is happening here. Her thin white night gown, flails far too slowly in the breeze. As though time travels at a different pace around her. Slow and sad, yet beautiful. Her heart is broken, yet she is at peace. She will be with her lover soon. The scrub begins to thin and the dirt track starts changing to rock. The smell of the sea breeze washes over her. Goose bumps appear so suddenly, it is as though they were always there. She nears the edge and can hear the rumble of her blue grave. It will take her she thinks. It will swallow her whole and whisk her back into the arms of her man. She bumps a small pebble with her feet and watches it fall so far. She looks out at the horizon and smiles. The horizon smiles back at her, welcoming her. It watches as she falls. The cliff face rushing along behind her, bleak in comparison to the beautiful white visage in front of it. And she smiles all the while.

I have been a Mechanical Turker since last month. I had looked into it before, but never had enough time to do it and make it worthwhile. Now I am out of school and looking for a full-time job, and it is great to be able to make a little money from home. I like the freedom of being able to choose the jobs I do and pick how much or how little I will work every day. The tasks don’t always pay much, but it pays for coffee and movies and other little things that I might not otherwise have money in my budget to buy. Most of them only pay a few cents, but even if I only earn a dollar or two a day, in the end it adds up and some tasks even offer bonus payments for good work. The income is a nice supplement to my savings, and I enjoy being able to pick from a variety of tasks. The tasks can be visual, audio, or writing, so I rarely get bored doing all the different kinds of tasks on the site. Since most of them are short, and don’t require any special knowledge, this site is ideal for people like me, who don’t always have long periods of time available to be on the computer, or who like the freedom to be able to work at odd hours. I’m glad I found this site and have time to earn a few dollars a day.

I came to America in 1997 from Europe. I recently moved to California and got married with a French woman. That was then… now we have five children, all studying to be lawyers and doctors. I myself am a Graphic Designer. I make money by selling art that I have produced electronically. I am a specialist in the printing part of the graphic art too. I dream one day, to go back to the school from which I graduated and to be a teacher, and teach others my skills and knowledge. Recently I have had a birthday and I turned 41. It is funny because I don’t feel that much older, but somehow younger. It is probably because I have so many kids around. I will miss them when they will grow up but, I will also be very happy for them. Knowing that I have showed them the right paths and teaching to make better choices, kind of relaxes me knowing one day they will have a family, and I will have a second pair of kids… oh boy. My family means everything to me. I would not trade them for anything in the world. I also do a lot of my shopping on Amazon. Anything from tools to presents to surprises for my wife. So I guess my purpose here today is to tell all you young people out there today that your dreams can never die, but you can always save them for later. I hope I have been helpful, and dream big!

My Boyfriend first told me about Mechanical Turk when he heard testimonials about it on NPR radio. We were just getting by with each paycheck so I thought I’d check it out. I was excited about the idea because I didn’t have time for a job since I’m a full time college student. My first impression: “Wow..This is a pretty cluttered website, where do i even sign up!?”. When I finally figured out how to signed up I was pretty disappointed with the pay. 1-10 cents a hit? In fact, anything 10 cents and above seemed generous, how degrading. On the first night I worked for about 6 hours trying complete as many do-able HITs as possible, hoping maybe I’d rack up some pocket change. I made 9 dollars that night doing 202 HITs. I figured it wasn’t alot of money for a whole lot of work but as least i can do it at 3am without trouble. The fourth day came and that’s when I got my first rejected HIT. The requester claimed I didn’t do the HIT correctly because I described an object as having “additional color” instead of “additional”. I was jyped out of 5 cents because I put an extra word in the description! The next day I had another HIT rejected because the requester didn’t state the proper instructions in his HIT and complained about my work afterwards. My opinion? Skip it, for all the work you do, it isn’t worth it. You’re better off joining a survey site.

I am a recent college graduate job hunting during the worst recession in recent memory. This is not an easy task and so when I heard about Mechanical Turk I was pretty excited. A way to make money with no strings attached? Sounds great right? Wrong. I mean it is a way to supplement my very small part time wage, but other than that it’s pretty awful. There have been times when I made about three dollars an hour. Three dollars an hour, how do you even live on that? About seven out of a hundred hits were rejected for no good reason, and I’m incredibly paranoid about all the crap I’ve downloaded onto my computer trying to get those fifty cent paychecks. I graduated about two months ago. The only job I had was a work study job, which obviously ended upon graduation. My job became job hunting. I looked, and looked, and looked some more. I had already been looking for about a month before that. So far I’ve had three interviews, one second interview, and one of those was only a phone interview. Everyone wants experience, but how am I supposed to get experience if no one will hire me? I should go back to grad school, but I can’t justify another 20 plus thousand dollars in student loans. So far the only job I’ve found is a 25 hour a week telemarketing job. I try to convince Pennsylvanian’s to support some random police organization. It’s probably a scam, and it’s horribly degrading. And everyone I work with is a drug addict. And it’s the only job I’ve been able to find in three months. And that’s the reason why I Turk.

I found mechanical turk when looking to make some extra money on the internet. Did a few tasks, and was like, “this is kind of fun!” I made a goal to earn enough money to at least buy my children’s birthday presents for the year. I earned enough to purchase my middle child’s birthday gift in a little under a month. Granted, the gift she chose was fairly inexpensive, but it made me feel good that I was able to earn enough money on the side to make the purchase for her without dipping into our household money. I am currently saving for my other daughter’s birthday gift, and will then be working on Christmas and other birthday gifts. I enjoy mTurk because I can sit and do HITs while watching TV, or even some of the “mindless” ones while talking to my children. While it’s never going to make me rich, and while I would never be able to live off of the pay alone, it’s been a nice cash infusion and I continue to complete HITs when I am in the mood for as long as the service exists.

I am a Machinical Turker and have been doing online job with mturk for six months as a full time job, I have to say it is really great. I have been able to earn enough money to decorate my home and furnish my home too. I had enough money saved for my future and to spend with my friends too, but because I had earned money through Mturk, I was able to use it for my PR visa to australia. I came to know about this mturk through my friend, and thought I would check it out and see what all the fuss about it was. I was hooked right from the start. I started with fairly simple tasks and as my confidence grew, I started accepting more involved HITS. I’m not saying you will ever get rich by doing HITS, but it’s a great way to use your time till you could get one good job and still contiune it as a part time job (instead of watching TV or mindlessly surfing the web), and earn some extra pocket money while doing it. This earnings form mturk is really getting bigger and bigger day by day and very useful to me and my family. I dined in inexpensive restaurants. There have been times when I’ve been a little low on cash and have used my earnings to pay my phone bill or my electricity bill That’s what I love about Mturk and really hoping that i would continue this for ever and make some useful pocket money to me and my family.

Mechanical Turk is not for everyone. You will not make a living off of it and be able to quit your day job. You literally make cents and at the same time, don’t make sense. I would describe it as though you are taking a walk down Mechanical Turk Lane, and you see a penny on the floor and decide to pick it up. You see the flash of another coppery gem, however it’s another block away, but your piggy bank is always hungry, so you go through the trouble of walking the distance. You see another penny, another block away, and decide to walk again. That’s what Mechanical Turking is about - you are virtually walking a block to pick up one penny. The downside is that just when you get to the 5th block, just when you are about to pick up that 5th penny - somebody slaps it out of your hand claiming it was theirs because you weren’t fast enough to earn it or they didn’t like your stride so you don’t deserve it. Why would anyone walk a block to get a penny? Well, what keeps people coming back for more is that really lucky day that you found $1 or even $20 on the floor and that was worth walking the block for. Unfortunately, the next time you spot a greenback, there are others right behind you, to your side or even across the other way that see and want it too. Pretty soon, the street will be so crowded, that you can’t even see the sidewalk.