I have been using Amazon’s Mechanical Turk for about a week now. I suppose I have become a bit addicted to it. I guess the fun of Mechanical Turk is that it is sort of like a game for me… like I am completing tasks in a game for “points” except the “points” are actually real money. I wouldn’t be here, spending hours on completing tasks for under minimum wage pay each day, if it wasn’t fun. Oh, well, I suppose it’s educational, too. I like completing writing HITs(such as paraphrasing sentences, rewriting articles, or writing new articles entirely) as they are good practice for improving my vocabulary and literary skills in general. The reason I initially joined MTurk is because I’m saving up for a netbook laptop that I hope to be able to buy in about a month from now. It’s impossible for me to get a job right now, so I’m hoping that “turking” will help me at least shave off a decent chunk of the $320 that I have to come up with by then. (So far, my earnings have averaged $1.67 a day, and that’s with half of my total submissions still pending. If I keep this up for exactly one month from today, I will at least earn $50 towards my future laptop. Given that half of my submissions are still pending, that could be about a good $100 towards my laptop! Now, say I do this for a whole year, averaging about $100 per month. That’s $1,200.00 in my pocket for whatever I want, earned in my spare time.) I can see myself using it past that point, though. Instead of wasting my time with television and unproductive activities on the internet, I can turk away my boredom and earn a little bit of extra spending money all at the same time… and that’s what I love about Mechanical Turk.
I’ve been turking now for about 6 weeks with no real goal in mind except to make a few extra dollars – although “extra” is a fantasy right now. I need every dollar I can get my hands on since I, like many others, am laid off from corporate America. I have since set a goal. My nephew is getting married in Las Vegas in December and I want to be there. I need to make enough to cover the airfare and the room. I love turking! I approach it as a job, getting up in the morning, making coffee, and then sitting down for a few hours of turking. Then I take a break, look for a job or do chores, then back at the turking. I also turk when I can’t sleep or when I’m bored. I find that it allows me to use my brain for something other than complaining about the state of our economy. I have resigned myself that the “good old days” are just that – old. My life has changed dramatically from a monetary standpoint but has gotten better from a stress level standpoint. Migraines are all but gone, I’ve almost eliminated two of the three medicines I was taking daily and I am able to find the time to enjoy life. Definitely different than the life I was used to. The very best thing of all is the time I am able to spend with my family, especially my mom and my son. We have a great relationship and I am thankful for every day we share.
I got started turking here recently when I found out my niece will be getting married over in Hawaii. What I figured I would do is to do this thing for the next two years. She will be getting married in two years. I figured that if I did this part time I could actually make enough to get over there and to enjoy myself. I have figured that I would need to do about $3.00 worth a day to fulfill this in due time. I have really enjoyed it a lot it has opened up a lot of avenues in the past. I keep telling everyone that I am literally saving pennies up to go to Hawaii. They are not thinking that this work’s out. If and when you can get a few that pay something worthwhile it is worth the effort and time to do this job. I had heard about this from several sources of information and thought what the heck. I would love to give it a try. I gave it a try and I am gaining pennies and dimes each and every day. The longer I do this I know I am getting closer and closer to my goal in the future. There are day’s when I don’t feel like it. But I do it anyways. If I can keep the average at about $3.00 a day I am okay with that. Which really that doesn’t take that much time and effort to let that add up the way it does. Turking is a way to make some extra cash when I needed it the most.
In the last six months I have been sitting eight hours a day at my job. I have started getting a little pudgy around the mid section, which isn’t great. So I thought about to start exercising again. I use to run all the time and enjoyed the routine. I decided that I wanted to get some new shoes. I quickly discovered that Nike has a new device that will track your running and give you feedback about your performance. I decided that I must have this setup, which is an Ipod Nano, Nike+ sensor, and the shoes. But nothing in life is free so I needed around $255.00 to in order to have these items. Don’t know about you, but this is a lot of money. I started searching the internet to discover how I could earn some extra cash to buy these things. I discovered Amazon’s Mechanical Turk and tried a few cheap requests. I needed to verify that this would actually pay me and I could achieve my goal of earning the money I needed. I did a couple of surveys and saw that it worked. So I am doing very odd jobs on the Internet as I work towards my goal. So far I have only earned a few cents, but it is a start. Who knows maybe after a couple of days of this I can have ten bucks that will help save me some money, and get in shape. So that is how I got started.
I joined Mechanical Turk two weeks back and have already earned a good amount of money. I had to buy a gift for my boy friend which was too costly and I needed enough money for that in three months time. So, I had begun a search for online jobs. At first I got engaged with a few survey websites but they were not really frequent with the surveys and paid less than what I wanted. Then I came across a blog which had mentioned Mechanical Turk as one of the options for online jobs. I immediately joined it and found it to be the best place for earning online. The tasks were so interesting. I got some really good paying surveys on the site. In addition to that, there were many fun and creative tasks as well. I even wrote a lot many articles for people. Frequency of hits wasn’t a problem at all. I can choose my time of working and the tasks I want to complete. It’s just two weeks and I’m already addicted to the site. I wish to gift my boy friend a (*edited to keep surprise*) on his birthday which is in September. I’m still short of around $150 but I’m pretty sure that with the rate I’m earning currently, I’ll definitely be able to gift him a (*edited to keep surprise*) on his birthday. I plan to take gift certificates of Amazon and buy him a good (*edited to keep surprise*). I’m really thankful to Mechanical Turk for giving me such great tasks and paying me for actually doing those small jobs.
