So what is this funny sounding Mechanical Turk website? The actual site is http://www.mturk.com and it is run by Amazon. Mechanical turk allows you to sign up as a worker and perform HITS – “Human Intelligence Tasks.” These tasks range from answering surveys to classifying job descriptions to writing short product reviews. I would recommend signing up for a free email account at yahoo or google to avoid being spammed. Many of the surveys want you email address and I always prefer to use one other than my primary email address.

So you basically sign up for a Mechanical Turk account and then look for “HITS” to perform. You must first Accept a HIT then you can complete it. The HIT owner will then review your work and either accept or reject it. If it is accepted your will receive payment in your Amazon payments account. (You can setup an Amazon payments account as part of the sign up process to Mechanical Turk and then link it to your personal checking account to transfer monies.)

I like to hook up my ipod and just zone and perform some HITS at night for relaxation. So try out Amazon’s http://www.mturk.com and let me know what you think!

I recommend setting up a separate email account for eBay. You can get a free email account through google, yahoo or msn. There are bad people that target eBay users with spam sending messages as if they have come from eBay – never click into these emails to access your account. Always go through www.ebay.com.

Now for selling items, first do some research, after you have signed up for an account on ebay you can actually do a search for the item you want to sell – see what the ads look like and research what people are asking for the items. You can also click the show completed sales box and that will give you a history of auctions that have closed for the item over the last 30 days.

Take a good digital picture of your item. (Keep the resolution relatively low though, so it is not a huge file size. 640×480 pixels is fine for ebay.) Also write a true and accurate description – note any flaws.

Research what it will cost you to ship your item. I am based in NY, so I always use the 90210 Beverly Hills,CA ship to calculation to give me an idea of what is the most it would cost to ship it to the other side of the country. Do not skip this step – shipping can be costly – you want to make sure you charge enough for this! eBay does allow you to select to calculate by location and this may be the best choice to use.

I like to employ a pricing strategy of “start low and let it go” coupled with making sure I have the shipping costs covered. So I will usually start my auctions at .99 (Remember we want to make some extra cash, but we do also want to get rid of our clutter so we can focus!)

When you list you auction it will close typically 7 days later at the same time. (You can run shorter or longer auctions but 7 days seems to work well for most items. It gives you enough time to have people who are looking for a particular item search and see your item for sale.) Some of the busiest times on eBay tend to be Sunday night and Monday night – between 8pm and 9pm Eastern time. Ending at a busy time can increase the number of bids your item gets in the last few minutes of the auction. Now don’t be concerned if you put your item up on a Sunday night and you have only one or two (or no bids) by midweek – my experience has been that you get the most bids in usually the last day and typically last hours or even minutes of the auction.

After your item has sold, always wait until you have received payment, in the case of e-checks – cleared payment, before you ship out your item.

Happy Selling

One of the best online marketplaces is Craigslist.com. The site gets an impressive amount of visitor traffic, it is fairly well organized into categories and most important it is FREE to list items for sale! Craigslist allows you to target your local marketplace so it is really great for selling larger items that would be problematic to ship. (Example – This week I am putting a 30 gallon fish tank and an antique Singer Sewing machine up for sale.)

The product descriptions for items sold on Craigslist.com are usually very straight-forward and concise. You don’t want to write a novel. However, you do want to include useful information about the product. Any flaws in the product should be mentioned.

Pictures are worth a thousand words – so spend a little time sprucing up your item and then stage a few shots. (Please note on any items in the antique, coins, stamps or similar items – do NOT clean the item – this can actually reduce the value. In my sales example – the fish tank was cleaned spotless with hot water, the antique Singer sewing machine was just dusted off.) Make sure you show important details of your item and also any blemishes. This will save time when a potential buyer sees an item and then sees a flaw that was not obvious from the pictures.

I prefer not to list my phone number when I sell an item but to communicate with potential buyers over email to start. I also like to meet somewhere in public when the sales transaction takes place. I usually use a parking lot of a Home Depot or local grocery store to meet buyers.

I only accept cash as payment for items. You are not a bank – no need to take on the credit card processing fees on a payment source such as PayPal. You also do not want to be stuck with a strangers bad check.

I hope these tips help! Craigslist.com is a fast growing and exciting marketplace. It is an excellent place for us to start our journey into making money online.

In addition, a clean well-organized space to run your business will facilitate clear thinking, allow easy access to what you are looking for and it also just makes you feel good.   So clean out the space around your computer.  If you haven’t touched something in that area for over a year – THROW IT OUT, or donate it, or sell it on eBay or Craigslist.  Purchase some inexpensive organizers – example: stacking trays, accordion file folders.  Spend sometime at the beginning organizing yourself and you will then be able to start focusing on some of your extra income opportunities.

When cleaning up and organizing put aside anything you don’t use anymore. Remember a good rule of thumb is.. if you haven’t used something, worn something, etc . in one years time – you should get rid of it. We will explore some options for turning some of these items into money in the next post.

Below is a great video that I found on YouTube for organizing your home office:

The purpose of this blog is to explore how we can make money say Hello! (Hopefully hang out and stay awhile too!)  We will primarily explore ways to make extra money.  Most of us are still employed.  However, a lot of us are worried if that will still be the case tomorrow.  Wouldn’t it be great to generate another ADDITIONAL income?  You could use it to pay down debt, to take a family vacation or just to save and start to build the security your family deserves.

The internet provides abundant opportunities for the motivated to generate some extra cash.  In the coming days, weeks and months, we will explore Affiliate Marketing and discuss what works and what does not work.  We will review affiliate marketing books and online programs.