A friend first told me about Amazon Mechanical Turk back during my senior year of high school, which was 5 years ago. I have been turking ever since then. It is a fun and quick way to make some pocket change. And if you save up, that pocket change can turn into a substantial amount of money. My favorite hits are the high paying surveys. Those are very quick and easy to do. I hate the transcription HITS. I never touch them because the time needed to work on them is not worth the amount they pay you. Ever. With the money I’ve made, I’ve bought textbooks for classes, a set of headphones, and I’ve also used some of the funds to pay for my bills! Again, MTurk is a great way to make some pocket change, which is still worth something, especially in this weak economy. I actually looked into what the name “Mechanical Turk” means and I find it pretty interesting. The Turk was supposedly an automatic mechanical chess playing machine. It basically was a large box with a chess set on the top with mechanical systems in the box. It beat many famous people, including Napoleon Bonaparte. However, it turned out that the Turk was not actually an automaton, but there was actually someone inside the box playing as the Turk. Brief history lesson aside, I am glad I started using Mechanical Turk. I’m glad that it’s run by Amazon, which is a reputable company. MTurk is awesome!