I joined Mechanical Turk thanks to the current financial crisis when the publication dates for my two books got significantly pushed back. While I am grateful to at least have emerged from this carnage with my book contracts intact, I soon realized that money that I had expected to have in hand was going to be delayed by close to a year. Thanks to the current crisis coupled with travel requirements dictated by these two books, finding a day job was out of the question. So, I hunkered down and tried to learn how to work this system. I joined Turk Nation where I picked up pointers and learned which requesters I should pursue and the ones I should avoid like crazy. I still don’t understand those who claim they earn 300+ a week as the few days I said I’m going to spend the entire day turking, I’d be lucky to make 20 dollars. Eventually, I found a rhythm where I would juggle doing these hits on top of trying to edit my book, secure additional writing gigs, look for other sources of emergency money and the like. Since landing a number of writing gigs, it’s been a challenge as these gigs tend to pay on publication. So, sometimes I have to increase my use of MTurk because some anticipated checks have not arrive in time for me to pay the rent and other necessities. Because I expend mental energies on my writing jobs, I look for assignments that are brainless – tag and moderate images, participate in an online classroom, watch a video, and so forth. However, I have taken on the odd research or writing assignment if the price is right or if I had a day that didn’t involve too much writing.