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How much money can you make on Mechanical Turk?

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

#131

Post by whycombagator »

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…

Just to add some context, as others are suggesting $11.60 is not enough for food:

I used to live, fairly recently, on a hard limit of $10 per day for food - I did not eat out (almost never). It was enough to bulk up on (over 4000 calories), was balanced, and even included the prices of some basic supplements I took. This was in an expensive area of the US, that per a quick search is roughly on par with Toronto.

$11.60 seems like it could cover a days food in most, if not all, North American cities. You have to be diligent about budgeting, where you shop, what you buy, etc. But it can be done.

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

#132

Post by ForHackernews »

ataturk wrote: post #118
ForHackernews wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

All your comments are marked [dead] and hidden. I've 'vouch'ed for this one because there seems to be nothing obviously wrong with it (and selfishly because it agrees with me).

Have you been shadowbanned?

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

#133

Post by DoreenMichele »

JamesBarney wrote: post #126
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…

I've only ever freelanced as a developer but you could never charge 4x your billable rate. Good Sr. Devs make ~140k with benefits and there is no way you could charge out at 280/hr without a very sophisticated business model. I could see how this could be different at lower hourly rates though. Clients are less likely to pay, they are less price sensitive to 16-32$/hr.

Yeah, I hear that "4x as much" figure a lot but few people seem to actually charge that. Instead, what actually happens for most people is that (for example) they are covered under their spouse's healthcare policy, so they don't need to cover the cost of benefits.

Historically, a full-time job with benefits was designed to be held by a married man who was worth that kind of compensation because he gave his all at work, went home, collapsed into a chair and said "Woman, get me a beer!" and "What's for dinner?" Then he slept like the dead.

Research shows women with children typically cannot give their all to a job like that. They get stuck in Pink Collar jobs that preserve time and energy for the "second shift" of cooking dinner, doing housework, etc. They need to be able to get up in the middle of the night if their kid is sick and so forth.

People are marrying later, having fewer kids and so on. I routinely see comments online about the downsides to that, for example how it's impossible to work full-time and cook from scratch to feed yourself properly as a single person. Cooking for one is too time consuming and labor intensive. Home cooking makes the most sense when one person is cooking for an entire family. This leaves a lot of people living on takeout and the like, which amounts to overpriced junk food in most cases.

Employers need to get enough value out of the transaction to make their business viable. They can't pay a living wage with benefits out of the goodness of their hearts. And we no longer de facto expect the wife's labor in taking care of her man to be a hidden part of the deal for ensuring that the employer gets enough value out of the deal.

I think these social changes are major driving factors in the gig economy trend. It puts the onus on the worker to figure out how to accomplish enough to pay their bills at a price that makes sense to the employer.

And part of the answer is that supplementing your income with low paid, small tasks using scraps of time that you previously could not have used to try to make money helps that equation make sense for both parties.

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

#134

Post by simonebrunozzi »

Working as a "turker" on Mechanical Turk, or as a Tasker on Taskrabbit, or as a Lyft/Uber driver, all have one thing in common: the switching cost to/from that particular job is almost zero.

In my view, this is why you can get paid less than what you deserve, but that option is still attractive to you.

In other words, if you have 34 minutes between things, one of the few paying things you can do is MTurk, even if it doesn't pay well.

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

#135

Post by AcerbicZero »

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…

The article is more or less an advertisement for the book the "senior business analyst" has written, with a little context thrown on top to make it look legit. If you look at the authors other works, this seems to line up with their style.

That might be a little harsh, and perhaps there is no ill-intent here, but the majority of the second half of the article reads like a low-pressure sales pitch to me.

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

#136

Post by JamesBarney »

ska wrote: post #129
JamesBarney wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe Toronto is way more expensive than Houston, but a cheese burger from McDonalds is $1 and 300 calories. Pre-made Tasty Bites are like 2.40 and you can throwthem on a bed of rice and eat 3 meals for $10 a day. And if you cook yourself and eat mostly vegetarian or cheap meats you can easily get your per meal costs into the $2 range. https://www.budgetbytes.com/ I know the rent is more expensive, in Houston you can…

> I know the rent is more expensive Yes, the roughly equivalent 1br in Toronto is going to be about $2500 these days. Also keep in mind Texas has no sales tax, Ontario does. And we are talking CDN not USD (hard to directly compare some things). It's in general a bit more expensive in Toronto, across the board (except health care, obviously). Houston is one of the cheapest "proper" metros in USA and Canada.

I like the quotes around proper .

Yeah we're proper in the sense we have a good food/cocktail/bar scene, and a great classical music/art scene.

But we have no public transportation and the density doesn't even get close to other metros.

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

#137

Post by Havoc »

rjf72 wrote: post #25
Havoc wrote: post #23

Only way I can see this working is if you're in a CoL area that is low end 3rd world. Else pretty much anything else will be more profitable

I think many people do this not out of need but as a time waster that pays a bit. As the article mentions, 75% of 'Turkers' are American. The article's subject says, "I’d literally be sitting around bored half the day without it. Making money beats doing nothing." Of course he wouldn't be doing literally nothing. Instead he'd be just mindlessly wasting time browsing Facebook, checking out the latest clickbait, postin…

>I think many people do this not out of need but as a time waster that pays a bit. As the article mentions, 75% of 'Turkers' are American.

Been tempted myself. But then I crunch the numbers vs my actual job and go clean my apartment instead.

That plus a very real fear of RSI from all the mouse clicking. I mean I already click at work all day then on hn/reddit in afternoons...

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

#138

Post by slowhand09 »

xyzzyz wrote: post #130
ToFundorNot wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

$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.

In Walmart for $11 you can buy 1 pound of chicken breast ($2/lb), 1 pound of rice ($.50/lb), 1 pound of tomato sauce ($.50), 1 pound of carrots ($1/lb), 1 pound of bread ($.88/20 oz), half pound of butter ($3/lb), half pound of cheese ($2/8 oz), and still have $4 left after tax. You can literally feed a family of four with this. Of course, most nominally poor people will spend much more, because they're not actually…

I concur with your experience. Spouse is a great shopper. We probably spend a little more than this daily, but we frequently get 2-3 meals each out of it. Dinner for 2, 2 days lunches. We eat out 2 nights per week, one being take-out pizza and a salad. The salad always gives us enough for part of a 2nd meal. We shop carefully, cook at home. Buy soft drinks, bottled water in bulk, make iced tea, buy big bags of ground coffee, etc. We do this by choice and eat better foods than most people we know. We can afford to spend quite a bit more, but this suits our lifestyle.

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

#139

Post by ToFundorNot »

xyzzyz wrote: post #130
ToFundorNot wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

$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.

In Walmart for $11 you can buy 1 pound of chicken breast ($2/lb), 1 pound of rice ($.50/lb), 1 pound of tomato sauce ($.50), 1 pound of carrots ($1/lb), 1 pound of bread ($.88/20 oz), half pound of butter ($3/lb), half pound of cheese ($2/8 oz), and still have $4 left after tax. You can literally feed a family of four with this. Of course, most nominally poor people will spend much more, because they're not actually…

Maybe where you're from but: [1] chicken breast 5.86/lb [2] rice $.94/lb [3] tomato sauce $.63/lb [4] carrots $.99/lb [5] bread $1.38/20oz [6] butter $2.95/lb [7] cheese $3.05/8oz

Which shows that it's multiples more expensive in Canada.

[1]https://www.walmart.ca/en/ip/boneless-skinless-fillet-remove... [2]https://www.walmart.ca/en/ip/rose-jasmine-white-scented-rice... [3]https://www.walmart.ca/en/ip/great-value-tomato-sauce/600015... [4]https://www.walmart.ca/en/ip/carrots/6000191271746 [5]https://www.walmart.ca/en/ip/great-value-100-whole-wheat-bre... [6]https://www.walmart.ca/en/ip/natrel-salted-butter/6000199418... [7]https://www.walmart.ca/en/ip/great-value-cheddar-cheese-marb...

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

#140

Post by xyzzyz »

slowhand09 wrote: post #138
xyzzyz wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Walmart for $11 you can buy 1 pound of chicken breast ($2/lb), 1 pound of rice ($.50/lb), 1 pound of tomato sauce ($.50), 1 pound of carrots ($1/lb), 1 pound of bread ($.88/20 oz), half pound of butter ($3/lb), half pound of cheese ($2/8 oz), and still have $4 left after tax. You can literally feed a family of four with this. Of course, most nominally poor people will spend much more, because they're not actually…

I concur with your experience. Spouse is a great shopper. We probably spend a little more than this daily, but we frequently get 2-3 meals each out of it. Dinner for 2, 2 days lunches. We eat out 2 nights per week, one being take-out pizza and a salad. The salad always gives us enough for part of a 2nd meal. We shop carefully, cook at home. Buy soft drinks, bottled water in bulk, make iced tea, buy big bags of ground…

This has been my experience when I was growing up, and when I was a student. Food these days is insanely cheap if you aren't going for specific tastes, or if you're good at cooking.

I'm much wealthier now, so I spend much more on food because I can, but if you're really frugal, you can keep your expenses extremely low by simply avoiding expensive ingredients. For example, a single red bell pepper costs $1.50, which is insanely expensive compared to chicken, beans, rice, or carrots, based on the nutritional value. Of course, fresh vegetables are nice, but fresh vegetables any time of the year are very modern invention, thus expensive, and you can easily do without them.

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