Becoming a ChaCha Guide Review

This part of the ChaCha review covers the training that they give you.

In the past, to become a ChaCha guide you needed to be invited, however, now they are taking anyone who passes their simulation. To apply click here, then click on become a guide (lower left), then get started (lower right). Prior to passing the simulation, ChaCha guide applicants are required to do well on a multiple choice registration quiz with questions such as 'what is the normal term for a U.S. Senator?' Applicants can use any resources (the internet) they want to complete the registration quiz, but there is a ten minute time limit to answer the twenty questions. They also administer a timed typing test. Once ChaCha guide applicants pass the registration quiz(zes), they are invited to become ChaCha guides.

After receiving the invitation, you must register with ChaCha and fill out a W-9 so they can pay you. Once you register, you must review resource material about ChaCha and how to use their search engine and dashboard modules. These training resources prepare you for the simulation that ChaCha requires you to pass to become a paid guide. The ChaCha simulation consists of ten questions you must answer with an 80% accuracy rating. In addition, the training resources give you the ChaCha answer guidelines. These guidelines include: not using sites like Wikipedia and Yahoo answers as source websites. You are allowed to use them, but not to cite them as your authoritative source. Of course profanity is not allowed, and neither is 'chat talk' such as lol and emoticons or smileys. The ChaCha training materials also offer videos showing how their dashboard works so that guides are not surprised during the simulation.

Here are two examples of simulation questions: "What was Charlie Brown's dad's occupation?"
"What are MF Doom's aliases?"

ChaCha does not set a time limit for guides to answer the simulation questions, but in their resource material they say that queries will be transferred to other ChaCha guides after ten minutes and most queries should be completed within three minutes. In order to help ChaCha guides answer queries faster, ChaCha has set up a quick links section with categories such as 'people, music, local, etc.' Using these, the ChaCha guide can quickly search for the answer to a question. Another cool tool ChaCha has is a recent queries list. When a ChaCha guide accepts a query, they have the ability to look at that person's recent queries in order to put the current query in context. For example, John22 has a query "what inning is the game in?" The ChaCha guide can look at his previous queries to see that he has asked about the Boston vs. Angels baseball game and can then answer the question appropriately.

Another tactic ChaCha uses to help its guides leave no query unanswered is to encourage friendly lighthearted answers to obviously unsearchable questions such as 'what are you wearing?' Answer: 'A white t-shirt and jeans. It's my favorite thing to wear! ChaCha again!' Guides are asked to give more than is required to complete their answer within a 160 character limit.

Once you have completed the simulation you will be sent an email either inviting you to come on board as a ChaCha guide, or letting you know that you did not do as well as you needed to be accepted as a ChaCha guide. At this time they are not allowing people to retake the simulation.

Once you have been accepted, you simply log in and make yourself available. Queries will come in. Most of the time the queries came in back-to-back. Once I had completed a query, the next one came right in. However, sometimes I would immediately click on the 'answer this query' button only to see the message 'another guide is already responding to this query.' So it appears that queries are sent to multiple ChaCha guides and whoever answers first gets paid.

Oh yes, the pay. It is currently 15 cents per query for the first two weeks you work as a ChaCha guide, and then the pay goes up to 20 cents. ChaCha guides can opt to be paid monthly once earnings reach in excess of $100 or you can choose the pay me now option. If you choose the pay me now option, you are issued a debit card and have instant access to your earnings. As a ChaCha guide I averaged a completed response every 2 - 3 minutes. Assuming I received back-to-back queries and responded in a lightening fast 2 minutes, that is 30 queries or six dollars an hour. I would need to work lightening fast for about 17 hours to make $100 dollars.

As of 8/4/08 the pay rate changed. Guides who complete 300 queries per week with a 95% accuracy rating receive 20 cents a query, and all other guides receive 10 cents per query. Lots of work for a little bit of change!

On 8/12/08 ChaCha announced that they were listening to their guides and were going to make some changes to the changes. Here's what they did, they lowered the expectation of 300 completed queries to 200 completed queries per week for guides to obtain the Top Guide pay rate of 20 cents per query. All guides who miss Top Guide benchmarks will still receive 10 cents per query. They have promised to make the accuracy rating system transparent so that guides know what they should be striving for. Also, they have announced a new job that will be opening up called an Expeditor (sic) which will allow those who just want to log in for a little while here and there to make an average of $4-7 an hour in a fast paced environment doing exactly what, they haven't said yet.

They have also promised upgrades to the system so that guides don't miss the benchmarks due to ChaCha technical difficulties. AND guides who achieve Top Guide status for three weeks in a row will be allowed a break to do less than 200 queries that fourth week and still maintain the 20 cents per query pay rate. Let's see if this quiets the guide uproar over there at ChaCha.

ChaCha, in an effort to reward the guides who still show up for work, have been doing several GREAT things. They have been sending out "high volume alert" emails to guides when the queries start rolling in. They have also begun giving incentives to guides to log in and be actively working.

What are the incentives? MONEY. Emails are sent out with instructions like this: "Starting at 8:30pm and going to 3:00am Eastern we're adding TWO more "Hot Minutes"! One " Hot Minute" will be worth $250 and the other will be worth $500! All you have to do to win is be online and accepting searches!" Guides who have accepted searches within the five minutes surrounding the mystery hot minute are put into a random drawing and one guide wins. Most of the Hot minutes are worth $20 and others are worth $100. Either way, that's a heck of an incentive. I think I'll log on right now! Thanks ChaCha!

Finally ChaCha has unveiled the Expeditor position. I have been invited to test for it, and of course I'll detail my experience here for you as soon as I do. In the meantime here is ChaCha's description of the Expeditor role:

"The Expeditor role is a good fit for Guides who need maximum flexibility and who love fast-paced work.

Expeditors are like the Air Traffic Controllers of the ChaCha world. It's your speedy, savvy work that keeps the questions flying in swift, orderly fashion to the right places. At times, you'll even intercept questions yourself and provide an instant answer to the customer.

As an Expeditor, you sit at the crux of the system, converting all incoming questions into a standard form, determining if answers already exist, and categorizing the questions so they're routed to the best available Guides. We think the Expeditor role is a perfect fit for Guides who prefer a more systematic set of tasks.

What's required? Strong grammar and spelling, excellent general knowledge, fast typing, quick decision-making, and strong reasoning ability.

You might make a great Expeditor if you:

... like solving puzzles (crossword, sudoku, jigsaw), Spelling Bees, Trivial Pursuit,

... like organizing things, putting everything into the right box, keeping your inbox tidy

... like playing games like Civilization, SimCity, Command and Conquer, Total Annihilation

... are fascinated by internet indexes, card catalogs, and methods of organizing data

... like the top-level view best - where you can see the farthest

... think you'd make a good Air Traffic Controller, Librarian, or Career Counselor

... enjoy seeing the amazing variety of questions people ask ChaCha

The Expeditor

The Expeditor performs a more systematic and defined set of tasks than a Generalist/Specialist. We compare Expeditors to Air traffic Controllers because their work keeps everything moving smoothly. Expeditors don't search for answers, they help identify who should do the searching by correctly formatting and categorizing each question.

Expeditor Duties

* Converting questions into a standard form
* Determining if an answer already exists
* Categorizing questions to route them to the best available Guide
* Providing direct responses for certain question types

Expeditor Skills

* Strong grammar and spelling
* Excellent general knowledge
* Fast typing
* Quick decision-making
* Strong reasoning ability

Expeditor Compensation

Expeditors do many more transactions than a Generalist or Specialist. Expeditors are paid a $.02 base rate with a $.01 quality incentive. This quality incentive will be automatically paid out to all Expeditors at least the first 30 days while they learn the system. Pay averages between $4 - $7 per hr."

THE CATCH: You cannot be an Expeditor AND a general query guide. You must choose one or the other. Once you change roles, you cannot change back for 30 days.

Well, I wonder if Expeditor's will be eligible to receive those wonderful monetary incentives?

To answer my last question, yes! Chacha is offering monetary incentives for Expeditor Guides.

I received the 'come test to be an Expeditor' email on Saturday. Chacha advised in the email that although there is a 30 day waiting period to change from regular guide to Expeditor guide, that requirement would be waived for those who test by Tuesday. Also, the Expeditor Training 'Universe' would be down for three hours in the mornings for upgrades. So now I had to get in there and test soon.

Chacha provided more training materials such as video of how the Expeditor interface works and how it should work when things are running smoothly. There is also a taxonomy chart which shows Expeditors how to classify questions. There is a new Chacha toolbar which my browser would not download. I really think there is a Chacha problem with this since I followed tech support's directions and it still won't download in the training universe, but, anywho, it did not affect my Expeditor training.

I tried to test Sunday, but, beta bugs would not let some necessary fields in the Expeditor Universe populate which meant my responses could not be sent. After three questions were cancelled because I took too long to answer due to the fields not populating, I logged out of the test. I would guess that Expeditors have approximately 2 minutes to complete each question.

What exactly do you do? You take the question, succinct it -- break it down to its simplest parts. Categorize it into Chacha ready made categories (i.e. for a movie question the category would be Arts & Entertainment/movies.) Decide if it is local in nature (like the weather or another location specific question.) Then you send it to a guide to answer. I'm told that questions may already have answers in the system, in which case the same systematic answer is applied to that query and no guide receives it. Very easy work.

I tried again on Monday to complete the 10 query minimum in the Expeditor training universe, but had the same technical problems. Finally, on Tuesday I completed the 10 queries, and later that day I was invited to be an Expeditor. The Catch -- I had to make a decision within 24 hours whether I wanted to expedite or search. I chose to expedite since it is new.

I still haven't been able to download the new toolbar, but that may just be me, since I have not searched the Chacha Knowledge Base or Forums to see if this is a widespread issue.

I read something about Chacha today that really concerns me.

I talked about the pay me now way to get paid from ChaCha. Well, I hate those ATM fees, transaction fees, etc. I go out of my way to avoid them because I don't have money to just give away. In this case, it seems that my $2.00 pay me now fee is going straight to ChaCha and some unknown bank beneficiary. This article explains more: http://www.jimimorrisonshead.com/2007/04/13/chacha-pay-lies-and-scams-pay-me-now-fees-scam/ I'll revisit this subject next.

Whether you should become a ChaCha guide or not is up to you. It does work but it takes a lot of time. If you are dead broke with $0, it might not be a bad idea to be a ChaCha guide for a few weeks until you can afford getting into a better program.

Despite the fact that being a ChaCha guide is not the greatest way to make money online, it still deserves a few stars for actually working. Also, it is hugely flexible since there are no schedules or set times that you must work. However, many users of ChaCha have resorted to attempting to find the most obscure and unsearchable things to query ChaCha guides about.

ChaCha is a great casual moneymaker, but it's important to understand the difference between linear income and residual income when making a decision as to where to spend your valuable time. Linear income is when continuous work is required in order for the money to keep coming in. With residual income you do something once and it continues to produce profits for a length of time, or forever. A regular job and being a ChaCha guide both fall under the category of a linear income because you have to keep working if you want the money to keep coming in. Investing in the stock market or using the internet to leverage your time is a form of residual income.

I created another lens to explore other online money making opportunities. See Dollars and Cents here: http://www.squidoo.com/DollarsandCents, or just click on the link in my LINKS section.