Mechanical Turk Lets You Make A Few Bucks Online

Rob Allshouse of Sacramento multitasks on Mechanical Turk with his kids Jonathan, 11, center, and Jordan Hart, 8. "Turkers" make small change doing small tasks for a "requester," such as identifying photos; Amazon gets a small cut.With the economy reeling and California's unemployment rate moving toward 12 percent, many people are looking at all possible options for earning an extra buck or two. Amazon Mechanical Turk – an online site based on the evolving concept of "crowdsourcing" – is emerging as a way Web site visitors can make a few dollars, without the hassle of launching a formal search for a job or freelance work. "I'm saving up for some Christmas presents for my wife," said Rob Allshouse, of Sacramento, a casual user of the Web site run by Amazon Web Services, the online retailer's foray into computer technology. Crowdsourcing was coined in 2006 by Wired magazine to mean taking work that would traditionally be performed by an employee and outsourcing it to a large group of people on the Internet as an open invitation for work. Via Mechanical Turk, Amazon has established a marketplace where firms – known online as requesters – can post tasks that they want crowdsourced.