Would you like to take a survey?

Wait, before you answer that, what if I told you it was a paid survey? what if I told you that you could make anywhere from $0.50-$3 per survey? I bet you'd tell me you've already tried to make money with surveys and there is always a catch, or that the payouts don't make it worth your while, or any number of other reasons, valid reasons, why you don't want to join a paid survey site.

I speak from experience, After nearly having to abandon an email address, and getting nothing but frustration from survey after survey which I didn't qualify and very small payouts for the ones I did, for I'd given up, I was only going to take surveys if they came through Swagbucks.
I went through and deactivated all my survey site accounts, unsubscribed from the emails and let out a sigh of relief as my spam mail slowly began to dwindle.

Not long after this, with a new wariness and skepticism I once again began to search for another means to earn gift cards and such. My main focus was on Amazon gift cards because you can really buy just about anything on Amazon, and among other things, I had my sights set on a Kindle Fire.

I don't remember what exactly my search phrase was but one of the sites that turned up was something called Amazon Mechanical Turk, or Mturk for short. Now after my previous experiences there was no way I was going to just sign up for it without a bit of research. After I'd satisfied myself that it was not only legit but it wouldn't flood my email I signed up for an account.

Mturk is a virtual marketplace where requesters can find workers, and workers can find work, the hits range from surveys to writing tasks, and many more, some are specialized some are not, but you can always find something that you are qualified for.
From the requesters side, it works like this: say you are a University student working on a thesis and you need to gather information, well with Mturk its very easy for you to gather your info, all you have to do is submit your survey to the site, set the number of people you want to take the survey, and how much you plan to pay for each hit, then you just sit back, and wait for your results.

From the workers side its much simpler, you simply decide on the amount of money you wish to make per task and then search for hits you are qualified for, after you've been active for 10 days you can either transfer your earnings to an Amazon gift card or transfer it into an attached bank account (sadly no PayPal option). The bank transfer takes a few days, and I have not tried it yet so sadly I have no information there.

I was skeptical to be honest, I really didn't think I'd actually earn anything this way but after a few days the hits started being approved, my approval rating went up, more hits became open to me, and my account balance went up.  I joined a forum called TurkerNation and they not only offered very helpful tips but gave me proof this was a legitimate way to earn money.

Not a lot of money, mind you, this is not a way to pay bills, but you can easily make 10 or more a day, I've been using the site for a bit over a month and I tend to do mostly surveys, as I can average about 3-5 in an hour, and I never do hits that pay less than $0.30, but I've also done writing hits, things like 150+ word blog posts and reviews, for these I am generally paid between $1-3 per hit.  I only "turk" in the evenings, and only for an hour or two so I average roughly $5 a day.

Doesn't sound like much? Well, just a few days ago I was able to purchase the Kindle I wanted, and I'm already planning my next purchase.

Check it out for yourself, do your own research, sign up at Mturk and check out TurkerNation, its a great way to make some extra money.