Yesterday I talked about how to grow a user generated site from the ground up. Last night I also got a beta invite to try out Mahalo Answers, a brand new user generated site which serves the same purpose as Yahoo! Answers, but with at twist; they’ll reward you with money for participating.

At first i thought the name was lame so I dug up a Hawaiian dictionary to see if they could have come up with something more original but I didn’t hit any winners.

What It Means for You

Out of 35k registered members on WhyDoWork.com, about 19,000 are online freelance and work seekers from outside the USA. The majority of our site users earn a decent amount  of money online by diversifying their efforts into multiple programs that normally pay in USD. Mahalo Answers is one such additional way that an online income can be supplemented.
NOTE: Unless you have trained 100 monkeys typing at 100 macbooks to answer the majority of questions mankind has, you will not become a millionaire from this service, but you can earn a decent amount monthly just by sharing what you already know.

How it Works

Here’s how the site works. Currency on the site is called “Mahalo Dollars”. If you ever want to cash out you can do so once you have $40 via PayPal and get 75% of your visible balance back in cash. I thought I’d give it a go and report back to you as it is a legit way to make money online. I was impressed with the results.

Here’s the question I posted last night:

When posting the question, I was able choose a category and assign a tip amount (I chose a dollar), to be awarded to the best answer as chosen by me. The answers started to pour in, and I got email notifications for each. The recipe for making money on Mahalo answers is simple: Answer questions well, get rewarded with the tip. The largest tips I’ve seen thus far are typically around $20 for a question.

As the best answer I selected this one. I actually thought this was the best answer, but since it was written by the site’s founder I thought I’d spread the love to someone that might be a repeat visitor to the service.

Question Marks

What if users aren’t willing to pay to get answers to their questions? This is true, but people have been using other free alternatives thus far and tipping is optional with Mahalo. I believe that there will always be those seeking more research and depth in answers that would be willing to pay but only time will tell.

Feature-wise, one particular piece of the site I did not ‘get’ was the categories. There was no easy way I could find to subscribe to a category to follow the questions being asked. For a knowledge expert and online income seeker perspective, tracking all the questions in a specific category (via RSS) improves the likelihood of me following a category and coming back; something I’m sure would benefit everyone.

Overall I think it’s worth keeping an eye on and using if you’re looking to make a few extra bucks a month. Building up a solid reputation early would be advisable to ensure long term success on the site, so join soon and start answering if you’re considering working it into your online money making efforts.

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