Lately I’ve been following the blog of Jason Calacanis. I like his writing style and I’m quite interested in the development of his human powered search engine, Mahalo. I think its a fascinating concept that has a place in the world of search. Sure Google is kicking ass, but with aging populations and the desire to consolidate our lives into one place (think facebook,rss, etc.), I think this search technology has a real chance in what could be a very large niche.

On to why it’s important to you. Many of our members have experimented with the ChaCha guide program so I thought those with previous experience might be interested in the Mahalo Greenhouse (no you will not be paid for your abilities to grown bean plants in a glass of water, which is unfortunate because I excelled at this in 8th Grade science.) The Mahalo Greenhouse goes a little something like this:

(Click to view larger)

The good thing is, the more results you write, the greater your chance is of having them accepted, and the greater your potential earnings can be. If you’d like to give it a shot you can sign up here. Some of the requirements to be selected include:

• a desire to help people–a lot!
• the ability to surf the web
• previous work experience at DMOZ, Wikipedia, a well-known blog (i.e. Engadget, LifeHacker, etc), a social news site (Reddit,Digg etc.)

The pay scale they have chosen is more than fair in my opinion, you’ll be compensated on a sliding scale from $10 all the way up to $15/result page based on the number of result pages you have accepted. I think most readers and members at WhyDoWork would fit many of these requirements. It is also a part time position so you don’t need to worry about it taking over your life.

According to the Mahalo blog, in the month of August, more than 2,100 search results pages were accepted into Mahalo from the Greenhouse which more than doubled July’s output. That means Mahalo paid out at least $21,000 in commissions last month.

I support this site because I like to see companies that challenge the status quo and raise the innovation bar. It’s good for everyone and this opportunity is a great one for those looking for a little extra money on the side.

Give it a shot. It’s a win-win situation; you’ll be helping your wallet, and helping grow new search results for everyone to use.

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