I was born in 1985 in augusta ga. I cant recall almost nothing of the first four years of my life. It could be said that I had a happy childhood that included a brother and four sisters. Based on my report cards, I was an average student. My father was a teacher and my mother was a housewife. We lived in a small town called Augusta and were active in the baptist Church. At the age of ten I joined the Boy Scouts of America. During high school I was active in sports. At the age of sixteen I took up deer hunting and also began dating. After high school I attended college for 2 years. After graduating from college I got married and worked as a life insurance salesman. Four years after graduating from college I landed a secure job as a land acquisition agent. Within the first year of my gainful employment we bought a cozy brick house and we had a bouncing baby boy and one year later a beautiful daughter. Within the third year of my employment we had another baby girl. In 1993 we bought land and moved into a country home. Much of my life has been devoted to working and raising a family. My son attained the rank of Eagle Scout in 2002. My daughter graduated with honors in 2006. Both are presently enrolled in college and now my spouse works as a Registered nursi in a wonderful hospital. Much of my leisure time has been spent outdoors, hunting, fishing or hiking in the mountains.

Mechanical Turk is certainly not a means of supporting ones self, but for me has become a fun little game I like to play each day to earn a little money and a break from the monotony of my day. I’m a stay at home mom of 3 little girls, have a self-employed husband and I too have a small out of the house business. Instead of spending my few free moments each day playing pointless online video games I go to Amazon Mechanical Turk, do hits and love it when I reach $10 so I can transfer it to our checking account. It’s simple, fun and I never even have to leave my house. I LOVE this site!

I enjoy using Mturk for various reasons. Many of the hits are fun to do, and a way to make even just a little extra cash when needed. I have been struggling with my weight all my life, and I was very pleasantly surprised to come across a hit in which you test a weight loss program. It was nice to find weight loss help where I didn’t have to spend my own money on something that may, or may not work. So I’m very excited to see how that pans out. In addition, I enjoy being able to help others, even if it’s just writing a simple review for something. I feel like I’m contributing something to society, which is a good feeling. Some of the websites I have found while doing hits, are really interesting, and I probably would never have known about them otherwise. At first I was a little skeptical, a lot of online money makers are more of a headache than anything. But I’ve been very pleased with Mturk so far. I have a lot of fun doing the hits and am learning new things as well. I haven’t made much money yet, but due to other things going on in my life, I haven’t been able to devote a whole lot of time to Mturk until just recently. I can’t wait to see what new hits will be put up over the next few weeks!

Silence. That’s the beautiful word that describes the magical time every afternoon when both of my preschoolers sleep. Life with a 3-year-old and 7-month-old is busy. Not busy in the “I-have-four-errands-to-run-around-work” sense. Oh, no. Busy in the “I-have-to-prepare-lunch-for-my-daughter-and-I-while-breastfeeding-the-baby-and-doing-a-load-of-laundry-when-my-daughter-falls-down-the-stairs-and-must-be-taken-to-the-ER-for-stitches” sense. This is a never-stop-moving-or-thinking busy. A no-time-to-think-of-myself-at-all busy. The kind of busy that makes going to the bathroom a luxury. But, for those one-and-a-half to two hours of naptime each day, I can join the rest of humanity online—catch up on email, float around a bit on facebook, balance our checkbook and do our online banking, read newspapers, and play mindless games. When I tire of games, I go to Mechanical Turk—mindless games that pay money. So far, I’ve completed surveys, rewritten sentences, translated documents from Spanish, transcribed other people’s speeches, visited random websites, and offered my opinions on a myriad of websites, products, art projects, and clothing. The variety keeps me from getting bored, and when something sounds boring or tedious, I just don’t choose to do it. Who knew someone wanted to pay me for my online time? As an amazon.com junkie, I have so far re-invested all of my MTurk earnings on amazon purchases, including my husband’s Father’s Day gift. It feels so good to buy things I would have bought anyway with someone else’s money. And the best part is—I have done all this while my two little angels slept. Ahhh, the sweet sound of silence!

I really enjoy doing the hits on Mechanical Turk. Like a lot of people nation wide the economy has had a negative impact on me and my family. I have looked for other odd jobs to supplement my income and have searched a lot for online opportunities. There are a few legitimate work at home things but Mechanical Turk is, in my opinion the easiest to use and has the best variety of tasks to do. It gives me a great way to earn an extra few dollars every week! (Every dollar adds up weather it’s one extra you earn or one less you spend. ) I enjoy the writing tasks the most, as well as taking the surveys. There is just so many different tasks to choose from though I think I’ll always be able to find something to do. Even though the tasks don’t pay enough to be considered a part time job, they don’t take very long to complete either. I always search for HIT’s with the most available, hopefully finding something enjoyable to do. Then I search for hits that pay the most per task. You just have to develop your own style based on the type of hit‘s that you like and what you are after. Fun or money, or just spending a few hours turking. Hopefully lots more people and businesses will discover the great labor pool and become requesters on Mechanical Turk. Weather they do or not I’ll be here completing hit’s and having a blast

I’ve been unemployed since February 2009, aside from a few short temp gigs. I earned too little from my past job to qualify for state unemployment, but I made too much to qualify for welfare. I found out about Mechanical Turk last fall, while I was still employed. I couldn’t make ends meet each month so I began in earnest, seeing if I could make enough to help pay some bills. Amazingly, with persistence and an almost obsessive determination, I was able to rack up enough HITs to get me through some very lean weeks. I made a couple hundred dollars last year. Since then, in between sending out resumes, signing on with temp agencies and filling out applications, I continue my Turking. In the past month I have made over $100. Sometimes I sit for hours, refreshing the available HITs page, hoping to snag some of my “favorite” tasks. I have learned which HITs to avoid (e.g. too much work/time involved for too little money, or tasks that could be easily rejected), and usually stick to items that are quick and easy. I do get annoyed that some requesters take their sweet time in approving HITs. Also, when I work on a HIT from someone I’ve never worked for before, I usually only do a few at first, to judge the review & approval rate. But overall, requesters are fairly quick to review and approve. I love it when my balance hits the $10 mark and I can cash out!

I read about Mechanical Turk in a Wall Street Journal article several months ago. The article described several ways to make money online and Mechanical Turk got a big write-up. I was intrigued and went online to investigate. Since I already had an Amazon account from my many purchases over the years, I was able to start working HITS right away. I was hooked from day one. I am semi-retired from the business world but not old enough to collect Social Security, so a little extra income is welcomed. I know that I am not going to get rich with this activity, but since March of ’09 I have made $151 so that’s not too shabby. I also really enjoy working on the HITs. There are so many different varieties that there is always something interesting to work on. I especially like and am good at, rewriting sentences. Although for the life of me, I can’t figure out why anyone would want to pay people for doing this. I also enjoy taking surveys. I feel that Mechanical Turk is a great site for people like me, who have left the regular work force and have extra idle time. Rather than spend this time doing mindless searches on the internet or playing online games or checking out social network sites, why not do something to exercise your mind and earn some mony to boot. I am so glad that I read that article in the Wall Street Journal, otherwise I would never have known about Mturk.

Amazon Mechanical Turk has been a real blessing to my husband and I. Two days before I graduated college was my last day at work: I had gotten laid off. I felt awful, both because now we wouldn’t have any extra money at all, but also because our 3 year dating anniversary was coming up and I knew I would never be able to afford anything for you loving, wonderful husband. So when I found out that I was getting laid off, I started using Amazon Mechanical Turk everyday and earning enough money to get my husband what he really wanted: a titled battle map and dungeon master screen so we could all play Dungeons and Dragons together. He moved halfway across the country two years earlier, and he missed his friends and how they all played Dungeons and Dragons together. So as a special treat, I ordered both the matt and the screen and we played Dungeons and Dragons on our anniversary with a couple of our good friends. It was one of the best anniversaries we’ve ever had, and I’ve never seen him smile and enjoy any other gift I had ever gotten for him. Without Amazon Mechanical Turk I would have never been able to afford it, and I still am out of work for the moment. With our one year wedding anniversary coming up in a month I am working really hard on Amazon Mechanical Turk to get him the gift he’s been wanting for over three years: (edited to keep the gift a surprise). It’s quite a bit more expensive, but I think I can manage to complete enough hits to get him a great anniversary present!

The Mechanical Turk Newbie. I haven’t been doing this long, just ‘stumbled’ upon this website whilst surfing during the week. I guess you can call me a ‘Mechanical Turk Newbie’ in a way. Why did I choose to do this? Well, lets just say, I spend enough time online, sometimes doing aimless things, so I thought, ‘what the hey?’ might as well do something and earn something while doing it. I’m not expecting to get millions here though. Come to think of it, I’m not even expecting to get hundreds of dollars, looking at the rates of most of the hits, but it helps pass my time, I guess. Plus, I guess, its also nice to know that you’re helping someone with their work or whatever they are working on. Providing, of course that the HIT providers are genuine in allocating their tasks to us, which I think is, the case most of the time. If however, you are a cynic, you can also say that this is the perfect avenue for those who are looking for ‘cheap labour’, where they post tasks given to them (as either students, researchers or employees) to work on, and we gladly do it for them at a very, very low price!. Either way you look at it, I guess…it works! As in most things, it is regulated by the most basic rule of supply and demand! Where there is a demand for something, there will be a supply for it! In any case, if you like helping, then I guess, you won’t think too much about it. It does help you pass the time, though.

I am a Mechanical Turk. Not a turkey, nor a person of Turkish descent, but a person who does these odd little gigs for pennies. I live in California with dogs and cats and children and fish and a hamster and a husband. I’ve worked for myself for years and sit here now in my dusty home office with the TV on and click on links and type. Being a MTurk is a welcome relief from my real gig as a community coordinator where everyone knows me wherever I seem to go. This is quiet anonymous work, done in my pajamas, cigarette burning in the ashtray. Have I cashed out on the big bucks yet from MTurk? Nope. Just a few dollars in my account. Will I ever make it big on MTurk? Perhaps if I lived in a small country where the cost-of-living is low, this might pay a bill or two, though the cost of the internet would probably negate any earnings. Will I keep on Turkin’? In the slightly re-arranged words of the Grateful Dead, “Turkin’ - gotta cash my chips in….. keep Turkin’ like the Doodah Man… together, more or less in line … just keep Turkin’ on….”