One of the things that I do as a guide for Mahalo is answer and ask questions. There is a Q&A section on the Mahalo site proper, but as a guide your questions and answers take place on other client sites, who use the Mahalo software for Q&A, and bring us in to populate it and make it look interesting.
The unfortunate thing for me is, the more interesting the site, the less likely we are to have to write a lot of questions and answers for it. The more complicated the subject matter, of course the higher our weekly minimum is on that site.
I prefer the Mahalo Q&A personally, and even though I'm not getting paid to ask and answer questions there, I'm still doing it - for the tips. People can tip you for your answers, and if your answer is the best, you get paid by the asker (anything from a penny to a few bucks, you can see how much they're offering for an answer up top, and others can add to the pot by voting a question as interesting). The questions there are much more interesting, and I'm racking up "best answer" awards to the tune of about $10 a week, not bad for the little time I spend on it and the fun I have. It's taken over the time I might have once spent on the Lush forum, only now I get paid for all my sage advice (No, he's not going to ask you to marry him if you've been living together three years and neither of you have ever discussed marriage), historical accuracy (No! Actually the Emancipation Proclamation only freed slaves in states that had seceded from the Union, the 13th Amendment is what really ended slavery...) and witty rejoinders (dude, you have to go find those yourself on the site, I'm sure they're there)!
The problem is, you get paid in Mahalo bucks, which aren't real currency. They used to pay them out on paypal, but not any more; now you can only use them to ask questions on the site, buy stuff in their store, or donate to charity. I'm thinking I'll be saving up for an iPad myself, or mayyyybe a Kindle, if I can stand to save up for long enough. It's more likely that I'll blow it on an Amazon.com gift card. I would buy some Mahalo swag just for fun, but I'm holding on to this hope that eventually all my witty (ahem) answers will win me the Q&A person of the week award, in which case you win a whole swag package - mug, hat, beach towel, iPod cover. I don't know what I'd do with the iPod cover. I have a nano, of the little square variety that no one makes covers for any more, but that's a different story altogether.
So, as a guide, you get paid $0.75 for each question or answer. That isn't too bad, considering that I can knock off ten in an hour and still have time left over. Although I'll admit that that is because until now, I've only asked or answered things I could manage without researching. Unfortunately for me, I've pretty much run out of ideas for one of the business sites. I don't know much about entrepreneurship. I'm going to have to start listening to Dragon's Den episodes and pulling stuff Kevin O'Leary says out of context to make it into a question I think. As for answers, there's little hope for me. I'll have to start googling, and lose that extra time left over in the hour. Of course, if anyone out there has a bunch of questions needing business advice, let me know!
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