I’m still lying around the house all day, sick as a dog. I’m probably going to die. I oughta get to writing that will! 😀 (joking)
So a few weeks ago, I was looking for a way to make money without actually leaving my house while I look for a summer job. Especially now that my hair’s purple, the likelihood of getting a summer job is close to zilch. I turned to my ever-present and somewhat loyal friend Google for help. Like many other lazy bastards such as myself, I tried Pay-to-click sites. Again. I quickly got bored of that.
After deciding I did not like the commitment of writing for some newsletter or journal or whatever, without even a guarantee whatever I write will be published and compensated for, I found a newish service Amazon had started. When I say newish, I mean like 3-5 years ago. It’s called Mechanical Turk, or mturk for short. Essentially, companies and individuals will post tasks that computers can’t do (and/or they or their employees won’t do) for other human potatoes on the internet to do for them. I like that phrase. Human potatoes. It’s mine now. Anyhow, the ‘workers’ do these tasks and are compensated with a small monetary amount ranging from as little as a penny, to about ten bucks on average. Of course, there are tasks that pay more than that. THose ones generally require experience and qualifications that you can earn the more time and effort you spend ‘turking’. There’s also something about skills, but I don’t think that applies to me just yet, cause I have none! 😀
Some examples of these tasks range from doing surveys, to filtering images and keywords, to writing articles, to transcribing audio files. It’s mostly all boring and relatively easy stuff. You start off with a probation period of ten days. During this period of time you are limited to 100 ‘HITs’ (Human Interaction Tasks) you are permitted to do per day. You also need to complete at least one ‘HIT’ every day during this ten day period to get rid of your probation status and finally withdraw the money you’ve made.
Of course, I’ve perused the interwebz as thoroughly as I’ve cared to in order to find neat little tips and tricks to make more cash with less effort. I found a few things that were a bit helpful. And a few that did almost nothing for me. I will proceed to list them in numerical order of whichever pops into my mind first.
1: Join the forums. Which I did. Since then, I have not looked at the forum since, because let’s face it, I’m not all that social. (And they didn’t look to be that active anyways.)
2: Do not go for any hits below $.20. I found this to be complete BS. Maybe if you’ve been doing it for awhile and are qualified for the better ones you should heed this advice, but I’d say for the first month or so, don’t do anything below $.05. They’re often fast, easy, and will make your approval rate and submitted HITs count skyrocket. Your options are also slightly more varied if you don’t limit it so much.
3: Take as many qualification tests and request as many qualifications as you can. I did this, and most of them are still pending. But, it is worth it. It opens up your options a lot. Although, sometimes you have to look up specific qualifications in the search bar to request them.
4: Download the Firefox/Chrome add-on. This is extremely useful if you plan on doing this long term. What this add on will do is give you a rating for each requester BEFORE you accept a HIT. It shows up as a little red arrow next to their name. It does pretty damn well for weeding out scammers and the like. Saves your valuable time too.
5: Set a goal. Whether it be a time per day goal, or an amount earned per day goal, both give you a reason to actually work. (Aside from the obvious cash benefits) My goal is at least $50 a week or about $10 a day. It also gives me time to take a few days off to slack. Because, you know. I’m a slacker.
And my personal tip: the amount of work and effort you do will reflect in your pay. Most blog posts I’ve seen regarding mturk will be all proud of themselves saying “Oh, I’ve been doing it for the past 4 days, and I’ve only earned 5 bucks”. Please. My first 4 and I had earned close to 40. How? I actually did the work instead of clicking a few and then being done. I understand these people had ‘real jobs’, but they can’t expect to just start off on something like this and earn big money right off. Don’t be discouraged. Do a LOT when you first start out. Aim for at least 20 hits per day. Not sucky ones, good ones. Ones worth at least $.05 per hit. As you get better and better, you’ll be able to do more and more in a lesser amount of time. Another thing, do NOT shirk the work. Some jobs are relatively mindless, and some requesters are lenient, but 9 times out of 10, if you do a sucky job, you WILL get rejected. And this will hurt your chances of qualifying for better HITs.
My progress so far? Been doing this for roughly a week and half. With a lot of slacking, I’ve managed to make about $75 so far. Not bad, eh?
Daily Scribbles 