I haven't used mTurk personally, but I know people who have, and I've looked a lot into their model.

Here's the deal: For a small amount of money (1 to 5 cents, or more if you like), you can pay people to take a specific action on your site, like posting a review, voting on 10 items, commenting to a post, etc.

I took a look at the mTurk site (https://www.mturk.com/mturk/findhits?match=false), and here are some things that you can earn money on:

- Look at 25 photos and click on the parts that are sidewalk ($0.02)

- Enter the title, name, and residence of a US Patent ($0.08)

- Write a 30-word comment to a blog post ($0.03)

- Find the longitude and latitude of a business, given its street address ($0.10)

- Write a one-paragraph abstract of an information technology article ($0.05)

I find it amazing that so many people are willing to do such drudgery-laden, time-intensive tasks, but evidently, when you toss a bunch of nickels into the air, lots of people jump.

I'm a big fan of Mechanical Turk after my last project: http://iamelgringo.blogspot.com/2008/09/mechanical-turk-now-...