Once upon a time, a web browser stumbled on mturk.com. It promised a slightly different way to make money. Run by those nice folks at Amazon, mturk is a sophisticated way to loosely organize a large number of people to do many different kinds of tasks and get paid for it.
It's simple: businesses post rewards for the completion of tasks. Perform the task to the bidder's satisfaction and you get paid. Amazon handles the details.
Does it work? More important for our purposes: is there money in it?
The answer is, maybe. There are opportunities to earn real money. For example, amazon has partnered with cellular companies (somehow). A subscriber will type into his or her phone a question; say, 'good pizza in raleigh NC'. That request will go out to the mturk website where folks have a chance to accept the challange and find an answer. While those types of questions are worth, literally, pennies, by answering enough questions correctly, turkers can earn anywhere between a $5 and $50 payout each week.
Other business work through mturk also. For example, www.castingwords.com is a podcast transcription company that posts transcription tasks. Successfully complete the transcription and you'll earn a payout. Jobs work out to be about $10 - $12 per hour.
Oh, if you're wondering about quality assurance, mturk uses a simple feedback tool - post a good answer, transcript, etc and your score goes up. Higher-level tasks require higher ratings; conversely, provide too much junk and soon you won't be able to bid on projects anymore.
The answer is, maybe. There are opportunities to earn real money. For example, amazon has partnered with cellular companies (somehow). A subscriber will type into his or her phone a question; say, 'good pizza in raleigh NC'. That request will go out to the mturk website where folks have a chance to accept the challange and find an answer. While those types of questions are worth, literally, pennies, by answering enough questions correctly, turkers can earn anywhere between a $5 and $50 payout each week.
Other business work through mturk also. For example, www.castingwords.com is a podcast transcription company that posts transcription tasks. Successfully complete the transcription and you'll earn a payout. Jobs work out to be about $10 - $12 per hour.
Oh, if you're wondering about quality assurance, mturk uses a simple feedback tool - post a good answer, transcript, etc and your score goes up. Higher-level tasks require higher ratings; conversely, provide too much junk and soon you won't be able to bid on projects anymore.
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