I recently got into working with Amazon Mechanical Turk to make some money on the side while at college. I actually joined towards the end of spring this year, but since my information wasn't confirmed right away (I believe I forgot to provide my SSN when setting up payments to go into my bank account) I slowly crept away from it.
Thankfully I kept seeing others post about MTurk online and the easy money they were making, so at the beginning of August I contacted them and asked what I needed to do to get my account up and running with the correct information. It was settled within two days and I was making money.
Basically companies and people put tasks called "HITS" on MTurk with a price amount you'll be paid to do the HIT for and an allotted timeframe you need to complete them in. The more HITS you do with a good approval rating, the more HITS there are that will open up for you to do.
The best part about MTurk is that YOU choose how much you earn. If you don't feel that a HIT paying 10 cents for 3 minutes of work is worth your time, you don't have to do it. You can use the search function to separate HITS out by time, price, and many other options. I usually set my search function to look for HITS paying at least 30 cents, and then I find ones that will take around 3 minutes to do. If it's a slow weekend, however, I'll lower my standards just so I can get more HITS in and more money if I have the time to do so.
You don't have to be too dedicated to the site if you're just in it for a little extra cash (which you can have sent to your bank or have it automatically deposited in your amazon gift card account). As you can see below some days I earn less than a dollar, but that's because I only did a few HITS and they probably weren't worth a lot. I do what I can when I have time. On other days, I can earn a lot more when I put more effort into it. 8 HITS earned me almost $6. Sometimes the requester will even give you bonus money or a chance to win bonus money. Check it out and see what you can earn!
