How much money can you make on Mechanical Turk? • Hacker News Board

Re: How much money can you make on Mechanical Turk?

#111

Post by GordonS » Mon, Jul 15, 2019, 5:00 PM UTC

DoreenMichele wrote: post #46

ptero wrote: post #19

The person described is a "senior business analyst", reportedly making good money, but decides to work on MTurk, doing menial tasks, to help offset extra costs (diapers, etc.) of a baby that was born. This sounds insane to me. Almost anything else sounds better: reduce expenses, figure out if he can get more responsibilities and a raise, even get a low % credit to pay for those diapers for a year, etc. . Is this just…

I guess the article doesn't say it well, but this can be done in small scraps of time from wherever you currently are under circumstances where making money with a "regular job" would not be possible. If you make, say, an extra $5/day on what used to be your smoke breaks and lunch hour at work for an 8-5 job, you have an extra $180 or so a month without any additional overhead (for uniforms, whatever), scheduling con…

> If you make, say, an extra $5/day on what used to be your smoke breaks

Surely a better way would be to stop smoking?

Re: How much money can you make on Mechanical Turk?

#112

Post by zachsnow » Mon, Jul 15, 2019, 5:03 PM UTC

cies wrote: post #80

segmondy wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Programming is fun for programmers, we don't get charged to play with computers. :)

> Programming is fun for programmers Bull. If this was true trey would line up to join our company and I could charge them at the door for working with us. Some programming is fun. Sure. Many part of my work are fun. But I'd rather do other things with my life if money was not an issue.

Why would they line up to work for you of all people? They can work for anyone they want, it’s somewhat of a seller’s market when it comes to programming.

I imagine just about nothing is 100% fun 100% of the time. If many parts of your work are fun, it’s fair to say your work is fun. If you’d rather be doing something else, you could try that, too. Maybe you’d like it more.

Re: How much money can you make on Mechanical Turk?

#113

Post by wccrawford » Mon, Jul 15, 2019, 5:07 PM UTC

cies wrote: post #80

segmondy wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Programming is fun for programmers, we don't get charged to play with computers. :)

> Programming is fun for programmers Bull. If this was true trey would line up to join our company and I could charge them at the door for working with us. Some programming is fun. Sure. Many part of my work are fun. But I'd rather do other things with my life if money was not an issue.

Maybe not all programmers, and maybe not all tasks...

But when I compare programming to RPGs, I feel the same way. In both of them, I spend a lot of effort supporting the really fun parts with work. I enjoy both, and I keep doing both. But RPGs have a ton of grind that I generally don't like except that it enables me to get to the fun stuff.

Most of my hobbies are like this. There are things I have to do in prep for the fun stuff, or after the fun stuff to finish the project. And I do them to get back to the fun again.

Re: How much money can you make on Mechanical Turk?

#114

Post by DoreenMichele » Mon, Jul 15, 2019, 5:09 PM UTC

GordonS wrote: post #111

DoreenMichele wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess the article doesn't say it well, but this can be done in small scraps of time from wherever you currently are under circumstances where making money with a "regular job" would not be possible. If you make, say, an extra $5/day on what used to be your smoke breaks and lunch hour at work for an 8-5 job, you have an extra $180 or so a month without any additional overhead (for uniforms, whatever), scheduling con…

> If you make, say, an extra $5/day on what used to be your smoke breaks Surely a better way would be to stop smoking?

Giving up smoking is the easiest thing in the world. I know because I've done it thousands of times. -- Mark Twain

(Also, I don't know where my 3am mental math went wrong, but $5/day is not $180/mo.)

Re: How much money can you make on Mechanical Turk?

#115

Post by blaser-waffle » Mon, Jul 15, 2019, 5:13 PM UTC

ABCLAW wrote: post #106

alexashka wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every time I hear these stories, I don't know if they've done the math. Let's say I live in Toronto (an expensive city to live in) and make 10$/h after taxes working at Starbucks. 40h/week, 4.5 weeks/mo = 1800$ Bedroom in apartment = 700$ Metropass = 150$ Phone = 50$ Internet = 50$ Food = 350$ Total = 1300$ That's 500$ left for things like going out, clothes, etc. Nobody is exploiting your friends - it sounds like sh…

I live in Toronto, those numbers are hilarious. You cannot live in this city on a yearly wage of 21600. Not only are your numbers wrong individually, but they're also woefully under representative because your fake individual isn't buying toiletries, isn't paying for dental, doesn't purchase clothing, doesn't have any medical consumables to purchase, only eats a meal per day or so, etc. I've done the math. I've lived…

Shoot, it's not even Toronto. I live in a 2nd tier Canadian city and those numbers wouldn't fly.

You might be able to swing it for a few months and not die, but that's not really any way to live.

Re: How much money can you make on Mechanical Turk?

#116

Post by ToFundorNot » Mon, Jul 15, 2019, 5:14 PM UTC

rococode wrote: post #109

ABCLAW wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I live in Toronto, those numbers are hilarious. You cannot live in this city on a yearly wage of 21600. Not only are your numbers wrong individually, but they're also woefully under representative because your fake individual isn't buying toiletries, isn't paying for dental, doesn't purchase clothing, doesn't have any medical consumables to purchase, only eats a meal per day or so, etc. I've done the math. I've lived…

Honestly wondering because I've fortunately not needed to budget this closely before: OP said $350 for food and "500$ left for things like going out, clothes, etc.". Does that not cover what you bring up? ~$11.60 per day for food seems enough for a healthy three meals a day for one person - a quick google shows numbers like $250/month on a "moderate budget" for food. I feel if you're eating one $11 meal every day tha…

$11 per day for meals is low, most people who live alone will spend roughly $15 a day (a single meal from McDonald's for instance is $10.95). The cheapest 'eat out' option is roughly $6 for a single meal at Costco/Ikea. Even peanut butter + jelly for every meal, and water for a drink is over $3 a day. Also, for rent, it's more like $800 for a single room in a shared unit, a bachelor is closer to $1500.

Re: How much money can you make on Mechanical Turk?

#117

Post by technofiend » Mon, Jul 15, 2019, 5:15 PM UTC

Thorrez wrote: post #9

FluffyKitty wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Possibly Expensify? There was that news that came out a bit ago that their "SmartScan" actually fell back on Mechanical Turk [1] even though it was sold as a AI-type thing. [1] https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2017/11/expen...

Yep >“Most people’s first mistake is they go on there and accept any task they see,” says Naab. “They’ll do these transcriptions — $0.01 to transcribe a whole receipt for Expensify. That’s a terrible ROI.”

It's an investment because the more lucrative jobs require turks have hundreds or thousands of successfully completed tasks. So people will take one penny jobs simply to build credibility.

Re: How much money can you make on Mechanical Turk?

#118

Post by ataturk » Mon, Jul 15, 2019, 5:20 PM UTC

ForHackernews wrote: post #87

mruts wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a person who actually lives in a 3rd world country and grew up in America, what you’re saying could not be more false. Even the poorest Americans live a life here that would be considered one of great luxury. We’re talking about living on a dirt floor in collapsing mud houses. We’re talking about babies dying from dirty water as a regular occurrence. No running water, intermittent electricity and definitely no sew…

Americans in Flint, MI have poisonous water, and hookworm is on the rise from sewage contaminated water in Alabama.[0] In 2017, millions of Americans went without electricity or running water for months.[1] > If you actually think America is a 3rd world country you need to get out more. I said it's becoming a 3rd world country. There's still some legacy 20th century infrastructure that hasn't collapsed, yet. [0] http…

Not sure why the downvote when it is abundantly clear that in every corner of the USA there is this general trend towards decay with very little offsetting it. All our infrastructure is falling apart. I blame the pension crisis. All available monies are going towards pension obligations. Not much is left over for anything else.

Re: How much money can you make on Mechanical Turk?

#119

Post by bob_theslob646 » Mon, Jul 15, 2019, 5:31 PM UTC

Phemist wrote: post #41

Fun anecdote about some of my own dabblings in online psych experiments and MTurk. 7 or 8 years ago, my then supervisor and I experimented with running psychological (behavioural) experiments on MTurk. We had created a method that would run in browsers in native javascript and were looking to validate it. Coming from a testing-1st-year-psych-students-in-the-basement-of-the-faculty-building kind of thing, we naively t…

Holy smokes that is an amazing story. Do you have any more? I am always fascinated to hear how researchers design studies to prevent people from just spamming in any old answer.

Re: How much money can you make on Mechanical Turk?

#120

Post by neilv » Mon, Jul 15, 2019, 5:32 PM UTC

alexashka wrote: post #104

neilv wrote: post #100

A few years ago, a friend of mine, in her 20s, worked full-time as a technician in a university-affiliated research lab, she managed to find a steal of a studio apartment (half the price of a bottom-end one-bedroom in the neighborhood), and she bought awful cheap bulk food... but money was still so tight that, in the evening, when she was too tired to do anything else, she did these online "gigs" that paid only $1-$2…

Every time I hear these stories, I don't know if they've done the math. Let's say I live in Toronto (an expensive city to live in) and make 10$/h after taxes working at Starbucks. 40h/week, 4.5 weeks/mo = 1800$ Bedroom in apartment = 700$ Metropass = 150$ Phone = 50$ Internet = 50$ Food = 350$ Total = 1300$ That's 500$ left for things like going out, clothes, etc. Nobody is exploiting your friends - it sounds like sh…

> Nobody is exploiting your friends - it sounds like she complained to you, you took her words at face value and concluded that those other people are at fault.

You're contradicting me by stating (false) assumptions about my friend, and stating (false) conclusions predicated on those.

Your analysis also neglects American Millennial debt service and healthcare costs.

I used a personal example of my friend because it was close to home for me, and I thought that by mentioning it (as connected to an HNer), along with an age range, it would be somewhat closer to home to some other HN people. When people mention a potentially upsetting personal example, we should try to be delicate in wording things.