Getting things done on the cheap with Mechanical Turk

(Russ) The sad truth is that in life many tasks are boring, tedious and just plain no fun. Like most I would like nothing better than to outsource this work to India, or some other place where the pittance I will pay makes it all worth while.

Enter Amazon's Mechanical Turk. To quote amazon: MT allows people to, "complete simple tasks that people do better than computers. And, get paid for it". Basically MT allows you to throw together a short description of the task you want completed, choose how much your willing to pay for it and how many times you want it done. This task, or 'Hit' as its called in MT parlance is then posted on the MT site for MT workers to get busy on.

I've had mixed experiences with MT; fundamentally it depends on the kind of task you are requesting.

(Billy) Generally, the simpler the better. Need data entry done? Great, use MT. Need to collect contact information from 1000 websites? Use MT? Need a well-crafted, well-researched article needing loads of technical jargon? Do it yourself.

MT is great for one-time, incredibly tedious tasks. If you need something more, try getting a Virtual Assistant. Try GetAFreelancer.com. Tim Ferriss has some great advice in his book "The Four Hour Work Week" on this. Maybe we will put a post together someday.