What is this thing called Turk? That was my question when I ran across an article about “turking”. I read it and was interested enough to check it out. I am one of the recently downsized 50-something executives that must now find out what I want to be when I grow up. I do know it won’t be stuck in an office deep in the middle of corporate America. I want to do something creative. Or fun. Or something that actually uses my brain. Turking has certainly helped me to remember that I have a brain. I go for the ones that make me think. I love words, so I gravitate towards the rewrites. I love to get one with multiple hits so I can follow the yellow brick road – or the thought process of the requester. I am not exactly getting rich from turking, but I am able to fill my gas tank. It’s better than aimlessly surfing the web or playing games to rack up points but no income. Watching those pennies add up is fun and it gives me something to look forward to. Even when I eventually find a “real” job, I will continue to turk. It’s something new every time I log on. And who knows, maybe someday I’ll get to be a requester on Amazon Mechanical Turk. Hey, maybe I’ll make business cards that say “Ms. Downsized, Professional Turker” – might get some conversations started!

I never really liked high school when I was a teenager. I woke up dreading every day and most often would just make up excuses to stay home. I would do all my homework and do what I had to do get by with a B but I never really applied myself. Even to this day I don’t remember much of what I was taught because I was just memorizing what I needed to for the hour and then forgetting it all. When senior year past I was more than happy to finally have some time to myself. I got a little selfish, however, and let the deadlines go by for applying to college. I told myself I’d just take a year off and work. I thought during this time I would figure out where I wanted to go in life and what career path to choose. That’s not how it work out although. I got lazy and just started lounging around going to work for 3 hours 4 days a week. I became horribly lazy while all my friends were in school following their dreams. I became depressed for a long while when I had nothing to do for days on end while everyone else was busy. After a year I finally decided to go back to school and make something of myself. While I was sitting around depressed I could have been in school. My suggestion to high schoolers now would be to not take a break after senior year. If there’s no career path in mind just take gen. eds during that time. You won’t regret it at all, you’ll actually be saving yourself a lot of boredom.

I’ve lost my home, I lived out of my car. I’ve lost my car, I’m living on the streets. I have a storage, I had a job that pays cash. Now I’m working on getting my bank account out of the negative due to bank fraud before I lose my storage. I’ve found a lot of online job offers, most of them require you to pay them upfront which is really suspicious anyway you look at it. Then I stumbled on some legitimate jobs that not only are free, but it is easy to sign up for. Two of them that say they pay, I guess they pay, but its very tricky. Before that I was reading paid emails, which pay you extremely low. It would take you a whole day to make a penny on those sites. I’ve been getting kicked out of stores for the very fact that I’m homeless, I’ve had cops called on me many times. I’ve met with some cool friends that are in my same situation. We talk about our experiences. I tell you it is hectic being homeless. Be careful where you sleep. You never know what you might wake up into. There are scavengers, and bum bashers out there. I would’ve gone to a shelter but unfortunately, from what I’ve read and heard, they can be dangerous. Right now I have a hiding place where I go to, I lie down there and pray no one finds me until I’m able to get a place to stay. I have some people helping me out, but I’m doing the best I can to help myself so I don’t become a burden on them. I’m not taking it as bad as I thought I would, but I do miss playing with my electronics. I have DVD players, PS2, computer and 6 channel stereo in my storage. I’m looking forward to being able to play those again.

I’m proud to say that I am a turker. Currently, I’m a college student who is unemployed. Most of my schooling is covered by scholarships, however, I still need some money to go out with my friends. Using mturk, I’m managed to make some ends meet and pay for a meal or two. With a little luck, I’ll have enough for a date with the girlfriend tomorrow! It’s not easy, but there is money for work, even if it is menial.

I started with MTurk back in November when my sister-in-law told me about it, at first I did laugh at her, and said she should get a real job! She would spend all day working hits and bring home maybe $5.00, but I gave it a try and since then I made over $100, granted not alot of money, but it is $100 that I made, tax free,in my spare time while watching tv, one hundred dollars is one hundred dollars and that will be applied to my cruise for next year. This is just something fun to do when I come home from work and I don’t want to do alot of thinking. I like to find the ones that are multiple choice, surveys,the easy ones. Granted you can do ones for alot more money, but I fell they require to much time then there is a good chance you can be rejected. Quick and easy that’s what I say. It’s too bad they don’t pay more,because I think more people would do them. Some of my friends think I’m nuts for spending so much time for so little money, but once again, I’m a hundred dollar richer than I was in November. The one nice thing about doing the hits is that with some of them you can get a bonus, that’s always exciting to see. Evey Sunday I get on the e-mail to see how much money I made for the week, they send you a weekly report and a monthy report. When your ready to cash in they put YOUR money right in to your bank account, easy access. It a beautiful thing!

I’ve been working on Mturk for a little over a year and I’ve made over $2000. It’s been an enormous help when I don’t have the extra cash. I had a car that was breaking down every other week, and bills were piling up. I don’t know what I ever would have done without Mturk. When I first started, I was only making a few dollars a month. But it didn’t take long to figure out which hits you could do to maximize your earnings. Although the transcriptions pay pretty low, they are some of my favorite hits to do. I’ve learned so much transcribing podcasts that people would normally have to pay to listen to. I’ve even been able to transcribe some interviews with directors and cast of films that I am a huge fan of. It’s pretty easy to tell when looking at mturk whether your time spent is going to be worth it or not. Some people expect you to do ten minutes worth of work for a penny. I avoid these like the plague, unless they are super super fun. I especially love hits that are part of larger projects, like art projects. The other things that are easiest to do are hits that are only a couple pennies but mindless work. You can just sit and click while watching TV, and by the end of the night you’ve made a couple of bucks. I love mturk, and I don’t know what I would have done without it. It’s saved my butt a ton of times.

I am a 26 year old full time philosophy student and stay at home mother. I have a six year old son. I am an existentialist and plan to be a lawyer. I grew up with a loving mother and artsy father. They were both very free spirited and taught me how to enjoy life to the fullest. I have been to rehab and I have been back! I have survived it all. I plan on traveling the world and enjoying life to the fullest extent. My son is a rainbow at the end of the stormiest weather. He brought faith and love into my life when everything seemed bleak. He showed me what it was to feel again and breathe again. I am the girl that walks into the room and everyone stares at. I speak volumes with my eyes and occasionally I chew you up and spit you back out. But underneath it all, I’m just a girl. Just a girl who is insecure, a girl that wears a mask. At the end of the day, I don’t know who I am or why I’m here. I do know that it’s not about the destination so much as it is about the journey there. When it’s all said and done, I do stop and take it all in. I stop to breathe, to smell the roses. Life is about rising from the trenches and reaching the top. I won’t give up. My life is mine and I own it!

I have a master’s degree. I have a good job in my field. I have a car, and an apartment, and all the signs of outward success. However, my job barely allows me to pay the bills every month. I live paycheck to paycheck, and I have very little money for fun. I work full time, but I have odd night and weekend hours, on top of regular 9-5, so a second job isn’t a real option for me. I take my work laptop home with me, and use unsecured wireless because I can’t afford to update my 1st gen iMac. I’m embarrassed that I’m whoring out my over-educated mind on mturk, doing mindless outsourcing tasks for pennies. I’m also a member of a number of online consumer survey sites, where my thoughts on shampoo and fast food restaurants earn me $0.20-$1 each. The academic part of me thinks that mturk and the online survey sites are an interesting sociological experiment. The capitalist in search of a new computer is only interested in how much money I can make, and ignores any hits under $0.20. A very small part of me wants to lie so I can qualify for the $30 hit. I’m still not sure why I’m doing this whole mturk/survey think. I’m really not. Will I stop once I’ve make enough to purchase that computer? Or will I keep on participating in this social experiment? All I know is I’m just doing this hit for the few extra cents it will throw me.

My life pretty much consists of working a depressing customer support in attempt to save money and eventually break free to become something I really enjoy. Or at least can tolerate. Every hour of work I feel the noose tightening around my neck, which makes it hard to even consider another job. And what other job? Something that pays decent seems as rare as a unicorn. Yet every cent counts, so I find myself taking surveys online, and clicking away on Amazon Turk. Yeah, pretty much the same story as everyone else. But I feel I’m better than this. Not better than Turks, but better than this life I am leading. I should be getting pampered. Showered with affection. Rained on with gifts. People should scream with glee when they hear my name, and cry when I leave the room. Ladies should be throwing themselves over me. Heck, guys too! Grapes should be fed to me as I bathe. That is what my life should be - not listening to some spoiled, annoying customer complain about being charged an extra 20 cents on their credit card. Guess what, missy? - it’s called TAX. All kidding aside, I do feel I am worth more than the the mountain of crap I have to deal with these days. Maybe I am not a saint or God, but my time is worth much more than sitting in a call center all day. Now excuse me while I spend an hour making $.01 on a HIT.

I am a Turker, hear me roar. My job is extremely boring and doesn’t challenge me whatsoever. The people I work with are not just idiots, I honestly believe they may be insane. When I told my supervisor that my kids mean more to me than any job ever will, her response was “maybe you’re not cut out for this job”. Tell me, wouldn’t it be truly screwed up if a job meant more to me than my children? Anyway, in retaliation for calling her out on something extremely unprofessional she did, my hours have been cut by 50%. The excuse is the economy, but in the meantime they’re using the money saved from my salary to do some unneeded construction projects. It’s ridiculous. Anyway, the reason I come to Mechanical Turk is to appear busy when I have nothing work-related to do. It makes the day go by a little bit faster, and I enjoy finishing HITS on the site. My favorite HITS to complete are picture related. The first ones I ever completed had my marking faces and license plates in Google Earth, which I really enjoyed. It was fast, and all the little pennies really added up. I’ve since earned over $100 on Mechanical Turk, which I use to buy the things that I want, but wouldn’t normally spend the money on. I’ve gotten clothes, books, and DS games with my earnings. I’ve recommended Mechanical Turk to some of my friends, and they’ve enjoyed it as well. It takes some perseverance to work enough to earn something substantial, but if you spend a little time each day and search out the good HITS, in next to no time you’ll suddenly have a little cache of cash to spend however you see fit. It’s safe and secure as well, which is more than I can say for a lot of those “pay survey” sites. I’ve never gotten any spam from this site, which is obviously a good thing. That’s me, and that’s why I’m here. To while away the hours and to stick it to my job, even if they don’t know I’m doing it.