Great story.  It’s all about getting the answers you need – on demand.  My Gen Y son does something pretty similar but in his own area of expertise. He’s in lighting design and he can pretty much work from the office, on the stage, from his home or on the road from his microsoft enabled phone and bluetooth headset.  He’s great to have at dinner or a party if you want to know what they actually put into that cous cous or really need to know how the MAC 572 Neutron lighting panel reduces surge across the grid. 

It’s mind boggling though to think of how this changes the way businesses will need attract, manage and incent this new generation of workers (so they can get more cash in their coffers as Steve D. recently posted).  The three gen workforce crisis is upon us. It’s not just about finding talent – it’s about meeting demand and making money and creating shareholder value.  It’s important stuff especially now when the econony is so unpredictable.  Dorothy, we’re not in Kansas anymore so we’d better buy a map!
 
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Lorie Page
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This sounds tremendously entertaining. It’s too bad I already have a day job – I’ll bet I could really knock out a good search/copy/paste workflow.

It’s neat to hear that she and her friends are collaborating to get better results.

It’s a great service. I use it all the time and they typically get back with an answer within a couple of minutes. Except, of course, when I demo it to someone.

I just don’t get something, how can they pay people $3-9 without charging for the service, they say it is free. What about the business model?

I work for ChaCha as well. I have a part-time job as a librarian, so I work as a ChaCha “guide” for several hours a week when I’m not doing my regular job.

The way ChaCha makes money is through advertising. Every once in a while, they will have a promotion for a certain area code, where anyone who texts in a question from that area code will get an advertisement attached to their answer. I believe they also do advertising on the website too, sometimes.

I make about $5 an hour, and I have to say I find it hard to believe that anyone would make $100 a day on it. I actively participate in the ChaCha guide forums and the consensus is usually that anyone who makes more than $10 an hour is rushing through their answers and not doing a good job, and the Quality Control people will catch up with them eventually. (Not saying that your driver’s daughter is doing this, but if she really makes that much money, she’s the exception, rather than the rule.)

I think an important part of the service, which wasn’t mentioned here, is that you can get answers “on the go” when you are away from a computer. So it’s not necessarily that the people asking questions don’t know how to look them up for themselves, but they aren’t at a computer. I frequently get questions from people looking for the phone number of a business, or for directions from point A to point B.

Of course, a large part of ChaCha’s customers seems to be teenagers who want to know who the Jonas Brothers are dating, or asking for definitions of sexual terms. But, it helps pay the bills.

There’s a new advertising promotion with ChaCha check it out here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AH8_0IDjqPQ