Wednesday, November 18, 2015

Amazon's Mechanical Turk

When I first signed up for Mechanical Turk which is operated by Amazon.com, it was 2006. I have used the site on and off since then to earn actual money. The earning are direct deposited into a bank account or prepaid card that you register on the site or you can opt to use the earnings for Amazon gift cards. To make money on the site, you scroll through a series of "hits" and do the tasks that you feel you can do. Hits range from tagging pictures to writing blog posts and the prices for each task can be $0.01 to $10.00 or more. The work is legitimate and after completing tasks the hit requester approves your work and releases the payment. This process can take a few hours to a few weeks. I recommend the site to earn a few dollars when you are bored, but not a a full time venture. Don't quit your day job to Turk.

Be a Guru!

I signed up for Guru around 2007 or 2008. The site is designed as a freelance market place where people create a profile offering their skills as a freelance employee to employers around the world. You get a set number of bids for a time period and use those bids to apply for jobs on the site that you feel you are able to do. Your profile has to promote your skills and abilities well enough that the employer will want to choose you over the other applicants which can be difficult when you do not have feedback scores and ratings while others on the site a established.

The work that I did on the site ranged from telemarketing to administrative assistant work such as researching flight times. Payments can be direct deposited to your bank account or through PayPal and are processed through the Guru website so you are not giving personal information out online. I was scammed once through the site and did not get paid for two weeks worth of administrative work. Another telemarketing job only paid if the you were successful in generating leads to be forwarded up the chain. The site is legitimate but would work best for people who have unique skills such as graphic artists or programmers.