MTurk Alternatives

Well, I had one $40+ day, but haven't been able to repeat that success. I topped out on a great HIT doing English Speech, And the ones tracking your own eye movements with the mouse dried up. I've done some more surveys, but they are still not my favorite. I prefer quick little hits unless the longer ones pay really well.

I don't mean to say I've given up on Mturk. If nothing else, it gives me fodder for this blog. ;)

But, I'm still looking for some alternative ways of making some supplemental income until my business (PHP Web Developer) starts making enough to support me. I've put in for some simple part-time work near my house, but if I can make decent money from home, then I'm that much more available to my web clients.

So, My wife found a list of "Legitimate Work-From-Home Jobs". Surprisingly, SwagBucks was mentioned but Mturk was not.

The most promising was Demand Studios. They require a resume` and a writing sample, but apparently the pay is decent.

Since I'm into SEO, I was surprised that I had never heard of this before. It seems Google, and possibly other search engines, hire human reviewers to confirm their algorithmic results. One company through which they hire these reviewers is LeapForce. I wanted a little more detail on LeapForce, so of course I Googled it. I came up with this blog post answering "Is LeapForce a Scam?" The short answer: No, but:

• There's unpaid training and rigorous testing.
• It's piecework, so you might get less per hour than advertised.
• It's contractor work, so you pay your own taxes.
• Work may not always be available.
• It's too easy to get fired.

So, depending on your experience with MTurk, you may or may not appreciate some of these MTurk alternatives.

I used it above, but I didn't mention it. It's not exactly an alternative but maybe a supplement. Adfly will let you shorten URLs like this one. When a visitor clicks the link, they will be see an Adfly ad before being taken to your actual destination. For this, you receive usually around half a cent. It adds up though, so if you have an active blog or other website, it pays off. Also, the Hits Worth Turking For reddit page allows you to link to good hits using adfly. With very little effort, I earned about $0.36 in the first month. Not much, but a decent proof of concept. Add to that, a low payout threshold and it is more attractive than some internet money making schemes.