Before I begin talking about Amazon's Mechanical Turk, I want to let everyone know that I updated my first post by creating a table which makes it easier to track my progress and frankly, looks a bit more polished.
So, what is Amazon Mechanical Turk? It's an online market place where individuals and businesses (Requesters) can post jobs, aka Hits, for workers (Providers) to perform. These jobs range from finding email addresses to surveys to classifying receipts. Requesters set the payment terms, which can be $0.01 to a couple of dollars. It sounds simple enough, right? And the Hits are pretty easy to do.
I wanted to know if a person could make serious money on Mechanical Turk. I had signed up a couple of years ago, but got discouraged when I only made $0.05/Hit. This time, I decided to get serious. I've set a goal for the month of February to make $50.00; so far I've earned $44.21, so I think I'll make my goal. I have a couple of favorite Requesters that I like to work for, but they only pay $0.05/Hit. At that rate, I'd have to do 1000 hits, which is turning out to be pretty easy to do. But I try to look for hits that pay at least $0.25/hit and I work everyday. I can do hits while I'm watching TV or doing other tasks on my computer.
It remains to be seen if this becomes a permanent part of my economy.
**February 23, 2016 - I made my goal of $50.00; I'll see where I end up on February 29th.**
