300

No, it’s not the movie with all those Spartan warriors. It’s my first month working for Amazon Mechanical Turk (Mturk) in which I have eclipsed the $300 mark in earnings. Woo-woo, for me.

In the past, I was a pure hobbyist when it came to Mturk. I dabbled around taking HITs enthusiastically for a couple days, then lost enthusiasm, going through periods of waxing and waning with productivity with Mturk. It was only recently that I decided on a more systematic and professional approach to Mturk.

I set a goal of earning $10 a day and averaged that throughout the month even though I had a couple days in which I made very little. To offset those low earning days, I put in a couple long weekend days in which I pushed my total earnings to over $20 per day.

Now, if you’re envisioning me sitting hunkered down over my computer from sun-up to sundown, then you’d be wrong. I have a fruitful and busy day job. I do Mturk to make a few extra bucks in my spare time. Yes, on the high earning days, I did spend between three and fours a day working on Mturk HITs, but most days have me working 90 minutes to two hours. I tend to get up early before my family is awake and work for one hour on Mturk. Then I do some HITs over lunch. If I meet my quota, I may stop for the day, but if I have a few extra minutes in the evening, I might fit in one or two HITs before I go to bed.

I’ll be writing an article soon that discusses my strategy in more detail. For now, I just hope the attractive and well paying HITs just keep coming and I can maintain my new found discipline.