I always get the feeling when reading about Mechanical Turk that for a service which promises the ability to get arbitrary amounts of lumpen labor for pennies with an API you have to do an awful lot of speaking to individually identifiable people about pennies, which is so far from my desired job description it isn't even funny.

(The attraction for me when I used FeedbackArmy was that they took care of the "managing turkers" headache for me. I boggle that someone would want to do that, but I guess people boggle about my business model, too...)

Mechanical Turk is the Pink Sheets of human dignity.

Neat tips. I especially like the idea of joining Turk-worker communities and asking what they prefer. Good customer service to your employees, too ;-)

Solid numbers for times and prices are also welcome.

And "ask open-ended questions" sounds like good advice, especially early on when you want reviews and ideas rather than very specific, closed tasks.

Most Turkers are women? That's very odd to read. I distinctly remember an article posted to HN a few weeks ago where a "Turk Boss" asked Turkers to take pictures of themselves, and a vast majority appeared to be Indian men.

This could easily be self-selection bias; many women may very well shy away from sending their pictures away anonymously for cultural reasons.

I remember years ago reading about Mechanical Turk, and the demographic profile then was about the same; the reason given was that homemakers and underemployed women could hop on Turk for a few minutes whenever convenient, such as in between cleanups, and get a few jobs done.

Here's my reference: http://behind-the-enemy-lines.blogspot.com/2008/03/mechanica...