Brotherly love. My brother introduced me to it as an interesting computer concept. Then I tried it and got hooked. I am currently studying biochemistry which consumes a lot of my time. I don’t have many large chunks of time that I can spend working a shift somewhere. But this takes my spare time and pays me for it. I love filling out the surveys, I like telling people my preferences. Additionally, they usually pay pretty well. One thing that annoys me are the HITs that have you dredge the internet looking for data on specific people. I think that a business’ data should be accessible, but someone’s personal data should be private. Or HITs that have time limits that are too short so that they expire before you are finished, I think there should be a 5 or 10 minute minimum for HITs. I also like HITs that deal with language and grammar and such. Oh, and images, tagging, and comparing images is fun. I tried some dictation HITs, but those can be difficult and take a long time. AMT can be a bit rough in places, with HITs that don’t submit or they tell you that you already did that HIT, yet they still display everything, even HITs that you can’t accept. But overall it is a lot of fun. There is something that is very satisfying, being able to use your human abilities to help someone else out. I’ve already used some of my earnings to buy a book that I wouldn’t have considered buying if I didn’t have some extra money for spending.

I may very well be one of the busiest people I know that doesn’t have children. I work part time at a grocery store, run my own business that has been going pretty well (just not well enough for me to quit the grocery store gig). I like to pretend that I am an amazing wife, I try to keep our house clean and my husband fed healthy meals, we just found out he is having some health problems and then at the end of the day I try to sit down for few hours to Turk so I can feed my amazon addiction! I am an avid animal lover. I have 6 cats and a dog (2 of the cats aren’t even mine ) and I help rescue animals that are in need of a good home or are in danger of being put to sleep. My days off are spend taking care of my 80 year old grandmother and on top of all of this I am studying Political Science at the local University. And that is just a little about me!

I’m almost an original. In fact I’ve completed over 24 thousand HITs on Mturk since I started. Like others, when I first arrived at the site I thought I might make a little bit of extra money here or there. Of course back then there were only about 100 hits available at any given time, and I couldn’t do most of them because they were transcriptions and I had no speakers. Thinking that I might make a little extra money for household goods or other types of things I’ve now earned almost $2k on the site over the time I’ve been working it. I pride myself in finding the right HIT at the right time to maximize my profit potential. It was also quite rewarding the first time that Amazon contacted me to ask me for my opinion as one of the top turkers, and then sent me a gift with a hand written card about how I ‘share my reputation on Mturk with few’. In the world of anonymity that is Mturk (and this HIT) it was nice not to be anonymous for once! Now, since this is a 'memoir’ I will mention that life at Mturk has been sweet, it has provided my satellite radio (equipment and all) for the past two years and will be providing me with wireless internet going forward. The reason I say this is because it provides me enough income that I can add those things to my budget that I would otherwise have had to leave out. Thus, may I say, Turk On!

I started using Mechanical Turk when I was separated from my family for training (this lasted a whopping six months). It was a welcome relief for something to do while I had down time, this coupled with no TV, and a very limited radio selection, really pushed me towards Mturk. Doing tasks which could break the monotony and engage my thought process, while at the same time allowing me to earn a few extra dollars to help meet my financial obligations, was well exhilarating. I looked for tasks which would allow me to do freelance writing, after that I started looking for tasks which would get my topics published on different websites. I really enjoyed this and continued to work towards this means as any aspiring writer knows, the more name recognition that you receive the more likely it is that others will seek you out. Since I rejoined my family I have had to cut back on the freelance writing, but have found other tasks which I enjoy just as much. I had made enough money to pay the rent on several occasions, and this was more than I had ever expected to happen. I have now moved into the “requestor” phase and actively post tasks for research that I am conducting for an advanced degree. I am going to continue to post requests even after I have finished with my current degree plan, simply because I enjoy using the system that has enabled me to accomplish so much.

AOL had an ad titled “Quickest ways to make money.” The article started with the least desperate way to make money to the most desperate way to make money. I believe the most desperate way was “selling your sperm” or something along those lines. Somewhere around number 12 was “Become a mechanical turk for a website and do human intelligence tasks.” I had no idea what this was, so I did a quick google search, and Amazon’s website popped up. So here I am, working as a mechanical turk. I have decided to try to see how much extra money I can make in one year, and then buy something for myself with only that extra cash saved by being a mechanical turk worker. I am not trying for much money, only working an hour or less a day, but I figure I can save at least $100 by the end of the year. I actually find it kind of fun, though, so at the rate I am going, I could even save up to three hundred or more. I will have all of this extra money just by wasting time and sometimes even having fun doing surveys or filling out information on the internet. In my opinion, that is a lot better than playing an online game, or surfing the web due to boredom. I figure this way at least I am doing something that is sort of productive, since I am making a little money in the process!

I joined Mechanical Turk about three months ago. The experience is GREAT!!! I get to make some spare money to fatten my too-empty pocket. I get to raise my Amazon.com gift certificate balance from time to time. The great thing about MTurk is that sometimes I got to earn $1 just for clicking a few things. Many people might say this is way lower than minimum wage but it is fun. It seems easier just clicking things than actually doing a job. My most memorable experience is when I got a HIT that asked me to do a review on my cell phone. That HIT was one of the first few I did in the first week after I joined MTurk. I was like: “Oh Yeah! I finally find a venue to express what I feel about my cell phone and get paid for it!” So I proceeded to write several lines about my cell phone and took a couple pictures of it. I only expected to earn $1 on it. But to my surprise, I actually made more than $2! The requester gave me a bonus for taking great pictures (and they weren’t really great in my opinion)! It was such a great encouragement for me to continue on with MTurk. I just can’t give up now. I am addicted to it! Right now, I am aiming for the MP4 player I found on Amazon.com which costs about $47. I have earned $45.89 now and I am sure I will be able to make it within one month.

Working as a website administrator might sound exciting, but it can get very boring doing the same thing over again, which is why I was looking for something to distract me. And working for Mechanical Turk is a great one. I used to just sit and play Scrabble online and at least now, I am getting paid. I started about two weeks ago and I’m up to around $30, which doesn’t seem like much but I’m sure it will keep adding up the more I do. It’s nice to look at it as some extra spending money that hopefully will go towards me moving within the next few months and being able to buy some household things. I love doing the polls the most! The reason I was attracted to Mechanical Turk us because Amazon is behind it and I trust them. There are so many online jobs out there that can be pretty sketchy and pay you every month through check. I love MTurk because you can get paid whenever you want and have the funds go directly to your paypal account! I trust this site and think its great. The only thing I find crazy is when very low pay is offered for an assignment that can be complex. I usually just skip over those and go to the ones that are worth my time. I am probably going to be working in my spare time for MTurk for as long as it is available since it really is a great way to making a little extra money on my down time, especially when I am already getting paid for my main job!

I just graduated from university a month ago. Currently I have a job that pays very well and is located only 5 minutes from where I live. I have my own condo and two cars with no debt to speak of. So why on earth would I want to work for mturk? I’ve been using the website for approximately 10 days and I’ve only earned about a dollar a day. I realized I’m not doing it for the money, but rather for the challenge. My job can get quite boring at times and after playing minesweeper and solitaire for hours, I realized this is a better way to waste time. I constantly set goals for how much I will try to earn. I started off hoping to make 5 dollars, then 10 dollars, now I’m hoping to get to 20 dollars by the end of the week. In a sick way I’m using mturk for fun (who would consider these repetitive tasks fun right?). I’m not sure how long I will use the website, I keep telling myself I will stop once I reach my goal but it never ends. The HITS I usually work on are usually the mundane surveys, quizzes, questionnaires. I tried doing those “are these items different?” but after 20 of them I found it was not even worth my time. Furthermore, it’s the only task where my work has been rejected (3 times!). Finding out your work has been rejected is quite frustrating, but not as bad as filling out a questionnaire that takes 20 minutes only to find out it won’t submit….FML

I join the Mechanical Turk 4 month’s ago. And in this short period I got a great amount of money. Sometimes, I get the work which is of my interest, I feel great in doing this type of work. My brother told my about this, firstly I thought that the work would be very hard and I can’t be able to it .But when I register myself in Mechanical Turk and open it, then I found that I has work for all, means in every field. But sometimes I feel that after searching long I can’t get the hit for me, and if get so it’s reward amount is very less. Searching hits take more time than doing it. But still it’s good to work with mechanical Turk. Before this I have done lots of online jobs, but there is always risk of dumpling up your reward amount. Some of the companies do not pay for your work or some will pay less than the amount decided earlier. But mechanical turk give full reward for your work as told earlier before submitting the hit. The best thing about it is that you can do any other work also along with mechanical turk. In September its our anniversary and I am planning to give a surprise gift to my hubby, for which I need a great amount of money. I hope I could get so many appropriate hit so that I can purchase gift for him.

I learned about Mechanical Turk accidentally, while mindlessly surfing the internet one day. I thought it was odd that people were willing to pay for opinions from random people, or for articles like this, or a simple judgment call on whether or not a photograph was pornographic. Since signing up, I’ve worked a couple of thousand HITS and had some fun with it. My favorite tasks are polls and surveys, most especially the surveys about moral dilemmas. These surveys have led to some long conversations between my husband and me, playing different sides of a jury’s judgment on dramas laid out on the screen. Other fun tasks are voice-transcription HITs. It’s a challenge to understand some of the voices, especially when they seem to be recorded from a cell phone. I turn up the volume on speakers very loud, and it scares my cats! I enjoy these tasks, but the cats do not. Some of the tasks I have run across pay such a ridiculously low amount, I won’t spend my time on them. I find that if I leave my comfortable territory of polls and surveys, I spend more time looking for a task that pays a fair amount for the effort required. Mechanical Turk has led to other, more profitable ventures into the world of internet independent contracting, too. None of these are enough to replace my full time job outside the home, but all totaled, they are a good source of beer and sushi money, and I will continue.