Up until about eighteen months ago I was a successful executive at a Fortune 500 corporation. I had never had to worry about job security or money before even as a single head of household. Then came the recession of December 2007 and I lost my position to a corporate restructure. I found myself, a single mortgage holder with no income other than unemployment insurance. I continued to be on the computer for as many as hours as i was when employed. After spending hours online job hunting I would need a break and play some games to relax. Then I discovered MTurk quite by accident. I was reluctant at first as online schemes are in abundance but I quickly had my fears put to rest once the initial payment was successfully transferred into my bank account. Since that time I have earned in excess of five hundred dollars doing HITS which has helped pay some bills. I enjoy the surveys most of all as they seem to pay the best and provide some fun coupled with challenges. This is also true of the rewrites and editing HITS. Quite honestly, once I am employed again I will most definitely continue to work on these HITS. It’s by no means a way to get rich. It’s simply a relaxing yet productive use of time that will provide extra cash for retirement savings or a personal treat now and then. I highly recommend it as a way to pass the time while earning cash!
I entered law school because I had no idea what else to do with my liberal arts background. To my surprise, I developed a passion for public interest law; to my dismay, that area of the law is not particularly lucrative. Having attended college on a scholarship, I was ill-prepared for the penny-pinching that would mark my law school tenure and, in all likelihood, my future career. By May of next year I will be $120,000 in debt, and I expect to pull down between $40k and $50k a year. Fortunately, perhaps, I have no social life, and I live in a boring town with little to do but stay inside and read Wikipedia articles about 19th-century architects. So what’s a law student with a flexible schedule and limited budget to do but join Mechanical Turk? The money I’ve made so far is enough to pay for some pre-interview dry cleaning, if nothing else. And I have learned a great deal about areas previously unknown to me, like baby clothes sold on Amazon and the major publishers of fancy postcards. Now if only I could find a way to integrate “Experienced Mechanical Turk user” into my CV …
This is the memior of a klutz. A klutz who surrounds herself with other klutzes. It was the winter of 2006. I was a college freshman with a shiny new Macbook Pro, perfect for my major in Graphic Design. I loved that computer. Everything about it. And one day my roommate, and evil spawn of satan “Greta” decided to spill lemonade all over my laptop and not tell me. Needless to say, she bought me a new one. A brand new, shiny, MacBook Pro, the second one in my possession. It treated me well, got me through the good times and the bad. I think it became a part of me. Then, in the summer of 2009 there was a terrible accident. Wine was spilled all over the poor replacement and it was curtains for it. With the economy the way it is, I had to find some way to make money to fix it, right? Well after some research I stumbled upon Mechanical Turk. It was a godsend. Now I turk every day. It’s like an addiction. And I owe it all to being a klutz.
In the town where I live we have been hit hard by the recession. A lot of jobs have been taken away including mine. I want to get my wife the CD she has been looking for but unfortunately no store around here has it. What I have been trying to do is to earn enough money here on Mechanical Turk to but it for her from Amazon. I know it will take a while to do but in the end to see the look on her face it will all be worth it. My experience here so far has been very positive I am earning a good relationship with a couple of employers and starting to get ready to earn some bonuses. My qualifications are also growing quickly so I am opening up the door to more and more opportunities which will allow me to but this CD faster. If this proves successful for me I could look at continuing to do this to but more gifts for my relatives until I can get a steady job again when my schooling is done and I have a brand new career.
Show Me The Way To Go Home…. We’re broke right now – covering the bills and that’s about it. Nothing new there, then – a good proportion of the country is in the same situation, if not worse. However, my family lives overseas and my Mom is not well and cannot travel. Being able to earn a few bucks here and there online is a godsend. Every penny is going towards an airline ticket back to the Old Country. It’s so nice to be able to log onto an account and know you’re not going to get ripped off when you do the work…most of the time, anyway! I think some of the requesters are a little harsh in their rejections, but there’s no comeback. I guess that’s one way of getting us to do all those 1 cent hits – so we can build our acceptance rate back up. Turk is quite addictive, there’s no doubt about it. If you’d told me a couple of months ago that I’d be heading straight to the computer first thing in the morning to check on acceptances and see what’s new I’d have thought you were daft! There’s about $40 in the kitty right now. A long way from home, but gaining on it. It really is fun to watch the money accumulate, little by little. I’ve even opened another bank account to stop me from spending my Going Home Moolah It’s also been fun to join the Turker Nation and learn from other Turkers – amazing what you learn there. I hear the Bagpipes calling…
