When I first heard the term “Mechanical Turk,” I thought surely it must be in reference to some obscure German industrial band that my husband probably listened to in high school. But no, Mechanical Turking is a thing–a thing that can make you money!
Back when I was still working on my master’s degree, I started doing surveys to make a little side money. I’m sure you’ve all seen the people who claim to make hundreds (or even thousands!) of dollars a month on them–well, I wasn’t one of them. I’m convinced that the way these people were making so much was primarily through referrals, because I would be lucky to find a survey that paid me more than a few cents for my time. When I discovered Amazon’s Mechanical Turk website, I ditched all the surveys and concentrated on mturking instead.
Why mturking? Well, there are no referral programs or anything annoying like that. You don’t get constant emails begging you to take surveys. You get paid in actual money, not points redeemable for flashlights and ash trays. My favorite thing about it is that there’s a variety of tasks (referred to as HITs) to do–some of them take a second or two to complete and pay a few cents, while others are more involved and pay a few dollars. (Note that if a HIT pays a lot of money for something that sounds really simple, you should avoid it–there’s probably something fishy going on.)
Basically, Amazon Mechanical Turk is a website for crowd-sourcing. Businesses and programmers upload tasks to the site–when you log in, you choose the tasks you want to complete. For me, this was the perfect thing to keep me busy while watching TV. With mturk, when my husband gives me grief about watching The Bad Girls Club, I can tell him, “No, don’t you see! I’m working!” The shorter tasks are also great to do while waiting for dinner to cook or while you’re on the phone. Although the tasks don’t pay much individually, they do add up. I’m always open to getting a little extra cash here and there, especially when it’s something I can do when I have the time, without the pressure of deadlines or mandatory hours and such. Is it a job? No! Is it a good replacement for the dozens of survey companies I used to be signed up for? Definitely!
If you’re interested in signing up as a Mechanical Turk worker, you can find more information about it on their site. And, just to reiterate, this is not an affiliate program, so no, I’m not getting anything out of referring you!
5 Responses
This is very interesting! I’ll definitely have to check it out 🙂
Sounds neat right? I’m glad Tammy posted about this – I’ve never heard of it before!
Did you want to put the actual link over to Amazon’s site for Mechanical Turk Worker? You don’t have URL there in last paragraph.
Thank you for bringing this to my attention – I have fixed it 🙂
Thanks.