I have returned

I spent the weekend in Dallas. I went to Guitar Center, ate at Chipotle (the best burrito on this planet), saw the fourth Harry Potter movie, which was excellent, and went to the Baylor vs Oklahoma State football game (go Baylor!). I’m back in Waco, ready to do some hardcore Mturking.

I checked my status and found that almost all of my hits have been accepted! In the last 30 days I’ve submitted 1243 HITs. 1124 HITs have been approved, 55 rejected, and only 64 pending. Only 4.7% of my hits have been rejected! I have only really worked three hours total and I have accumulated earnings of $33.72, with about $2 pending. Mturk is a very viable source of income for a college student who doesn’t have a lot of time to put forth towards a typical job. Just turking an hour a night can bring in nearly $300 a month!

I will start turking again tonight. Hopefully I can put in a few extra hours to make up for what I missed. I am looking forward to making my first investment. I haven’t chosen a broker yet so I don’t know my first milestone. Amazon stock is pretty inflated right now but if it comes down I will probably buy some.

West Coast Domination

I just loaded up Mturk and all of the HITs on the front page are from CA. I guess the A9 SUVs are over on the west coast right now.

I noticed that overnight I had a huge amount of HITs accepted. My earnings are up to $21 so far. My rejection rates are way down to a measly 6.5%!

The Mechanical Turk Monitor reports that HITs will be auto-accepted after 30 days no matter what. One of my biggest fears has been resolved.

A lot more productive

Today was a really good Mturk day. I didn’t have a lot of extra time like I thought I would, but I still ended up submitting 332 HITs. I noticed that there were some new HITs where you verify the artist name on a cd cover. You only get one cent though, so it definitely doesn’t compare to the image adjustment hits.

I found out a couple things that really improved productivity and usability. First, the Quicker Image Adjustment script was updated. It now has auto-accept built in, so I got rid of my old standalone auto-accept script. I also found out that I could full-screen firefox with F11 and I could see the full pictures.

As you probably already know, the big black box that said “none of the others” is gone. It has now been replaced with a picture with overlayed text. This might help improve rejection rates because it is going to be a lot harder to write automation scripts.

Probably not going to have much time to Mturk tomorrow because I’m seeing Underoath and Thrice in concert in Dallas.

Day two

I spent about an hour and a half Mturking today. I submitted 489 HITs. I did hits in Scottsdale, AZ and Tempe, AZ. I encountered a funny picture:

I listened to the new Engadget Podcast while I turked. Clicking pictures while listening to podcasts is so easy. It’s actually fun. I don’t really even consider it work. I am getting addicted to Mturk. I have a lot of free time tomorrow, maybe I’ll be able to do some extra turkage.

Thanks to the Turk Lurker for adding a link to my blog.

First day of turking

I spent about an hour on Mechanical Turk today. I submitted a total of 348 A9 image adjustment HITs from Tempe, AZ. I timed myself at my peak and in 16 minutes I completed 106 HITs. If every single one of those were accepted, I would earn approximately $11.93 an hour. If my 7.5% rate of rejection stayed about the same, I could earn about $11 an hour. I used to have a job at Dairy Queen where I earned $6.00 an hour. I can almost earn double with mturk.

I used two Greasemonkey scripts to speed up the process (thanks to the Mechanical Turk Monitor for the links): 

• Quicker Image Adjustment
• Auto-Accept Script

As of now it seems very possible to make a steady source of income with Mechanical Turk, and in a week or so I might be able to make my first stock purchase. Again, suggestions of online trading companies are definitely welcomed.

It’s time to turk.

Tomorrow (or later today, it’s past midnight), my experiment with Mturk will begin. I will start Mturking for at least an hour a day, and I will take all of the money I get from Mturk and invest it in the stock market. I don’t know much about online stock trading companies, so suggestions are welcomed. I’ve browsed through the blogosphere and found a couple good blogs of fellow mturkers:

• Mechanical Turk Monitor
• Turk Lurker

This will definitely be a great opportunity to (hopefully) make some money, and learn more about investing.