Just wanted to drop in and say a few things. First off, I'm kind of new to the forums, and when I say "kind of", I mean I've been here for about a week or so, lurking and Turking, and compiling a list of all of your personal information! MWAHAHAHAHA! No.. not really (at least not the last part). -Back to SERIOUS TROLL MODE- I've been on MTurk for a few months. However, as I was recently writing for a living, I had a hard time taking it seriously as a viable way to make money, with all the $0.01-$0.02 HITs floating around and whatnot (making $30 an article [1-3 hours total work each article] kind of makes the available money to a newbie on Turk look pretty raunchy for the work). Unfortunately, things didn't work out very well for me with that last job, as my workload consistently dwindled (originally, started off doing 10+ articles a week, by the end, I was lucky to get 5 every few weeks), and so, it was either high time for me to go out and get a "real job", or find some alternatives online. This didn't bother me too much, as I had no problem whatsoever finding writing jobs in the past that were worth it, and right up my alley. Sadly though, after submitting over 2 dozen job apps to various employers over the course of a week, and only hearing back on mediocre-paying jobs that required much more work than it was worth, I began losing faith in my writing abilities and my ability to remain "self-employed". That's when (after quite a bit of coaxing from a dear friend who has been worked on Turk for a long time and managed to achieve the ever-coveted Masters Qual) I started setting my sites on MTurk once again, this time, with a bit more of a bright outlook on it. Still, even with lots of hard work and after completing many tedious tasks for little pay, my faith in Turk was fading. And that's where you guys come in. You see, after a referral to this forum from my friend, as well as seeing it come up on Google quite a few times when searching for scripts and other Turk related subjects, I began lurking around here to see what was what on here. And then I discovered potentially the most valuable forum (or website in general, for that matter) I never thought I'd find: the Great HITs section. You guys are literally life savers for me! You see, part of the reason I haven't joined the forums sooner (hence my lurking) is because I'm not exactly a social butterfly. In fact, I'd say my Avatar is a pretty accurate (albeit cartoony) depiction of myself. I'm very anti-social, though much less on the Interwebz than in person, so the idea of going out and getting a "real job" is so anxiety-inducing to me, it almost brings me physical pain (plus being hit by two cars on my bike during my daily commute to work in the past when I was just a lowly whopper flopper makes it hard to do any kind of job that involves constantly moving or physical labor). Plus, at the cost of sounding conceded, I am pretty intellectually bright, and so you see, the idea of mindlessly taking orders from people or lifting things all day for a crap wage everyday just seems demeaning to me. Since I found this forum, not only have I found some pretty decent paying HITs on Turk (a large portion of them being surveys), but I've gotten a feel for some of the better requesters on here, because while TurkOpticon is extremely useful, it is also not totally 100% accurate, as I've seen how some requesters have initially received bad scores during their "infant" stages, and appear to have grown to be fairly good to work for (EyeApps comes to mind when I say this, as these last few days have revealed a lot about a previously "shady" requester). And because of this forum, I've managed to go from making, on average, about $5 a day on Turk (if I was lucky), to $20+ a day. It's not exactly the ideal money for me at this point, but I've also seen that - as ya work on Turk more, become more familiar with it, and reach HIT milestones - better jobs become available, and there's never a shortage in available work! So, again, thank you to everyone who participates in the forums, and for saving me from having to deal with the bull**** of a regular day job!