Monetizing Your Expert Answers/advice, If there was a service... Options

[Jozian]

I have an idea for helping subject matter experts monetize their knowledge and advice.

See what you think of my reasoning, as I have been toying with the following line of thought:

As great as Google is, it really hasn't yet come close to being an effective tool for the average joe seeking the answer to a many types of questions. In fact, Wikipedia, Yahoo Answers, Answers.com et al seem to be growing by bounds in importance.

I think that this is because Search Engines still do not always effectively find the right/best/authoritative/complete answer to the searches of many users. Many of these searchers will spend time and brain cells wading through a lot of information in order to glean the answer to their question.

And yet expert advice is available pretty freely on blogs and forums, like Cre8, across many areas of human knowledge.

What if there was a service that could provide basic vetting of expertise, a trustable payment system, and marketing of your knowledge in a flat-fee pay for advice model?

Example: I show up on SEO by the Sea, read some of Bill S's stuff, and want to ask him a question about a patent idea. I recently did exactly this and he gave me some good feedback. This information was valuable to me and I would have paid him for it if it wasn't free.

But there is really no easy mechanism for me to pay him. Nor was there any real way to value the advice/info.

What if you could drop a widget on your blog/site that branded you as part of a valuable network, vetted that you were some level of expert is some area of knowledge, set a price for advice, and allowed visitors to click, pay, and ask a question?

As a method for monetizing your site, would this interest you?

I know that this idea still has some holes in it, but it seems to me there is a business in the empty space between search engines and answers, and that done right, a huge network of subject matter experts could be valuable to everyone.

-Jeff

[EGOL]

I like this idea. My site generates lots of email from people thinking that I give free advice/answers - and I give lots of it - but there is no way that I can respond to the volume of requests that come in.

I watch what types of questions come in and then use that to inform content development - hopefully to reduce the number of questions on that topic in the future and to convert my free answers into an article.

I think that it would be nicel to be paid... and I would save those replies and then use them as a starting point to write articles a year or six months later.

One problem that people would need to watch out for is that giving paid answers in some areas requires a license. I can give paid advice in my field of expertise because I am licensed but if joe schmoe did it then he would be subject to the penalties required for practicing without a license.

[bwelford]

Sounds like an interesting idea, Jeff.

My only concern might be that some questions take much more answering than others. Perhaps as an extension, each expert could have three levels of charging with the rates specific to that expert. You could click on Simple Answer, Adequate Answer or Full Answer at say $3, $10 or $20. The expert would treat the visitor's choice as a maximum budget and would charge a lesser fee if the answer only merited that. If an answer could not be given for the budget offered, then the request would be declined. I guess PayPal could handle this.

[Black_Knight]

I think we are in danger of reinventing the wheel. This is a perfect opportunity to have a premium rate telephone number for people to call for instant answer gratification, which automatically costs/pays according to how much time, to the second, it takes to answer.

I've never looked up the US equivalents, but here in the UK, you can set up a premium rate telephone number (needs a license for 'live' premium rate calls) that costs the caller £1.50 per minute, and if I recall the payment scales correctly, it pays the call receiver the equivalent of around £60 per hour. That's not as much as some of the top SEO and Marketing consultants charge per hour, but it does have the advantage of being easy, self-billing, and self-service.

[Jozian]

Interesting thoughts, gang.

EGOL: Good point on licensing. Also, I agree on using the Q&A sessions as more fuel for additional content. This might be a very good way to attract customers - even if the experts are not getting top dollar for answering every question, it can lead to more business.

BARRY: You are very right about the length/depth of answers. Breaking out the price in several ways might be in order, certainly 2 or 3 variations would be needed, and the base cost might vary by the level of expertise or even expert choice, but we also need to make sure that pricing complexity doesn't drive away opportunities. Subscription models and bulk purchases might be workable as the service evolves.

AMMON: The premium rate phone call idea is a good one, and might be integrated into the mix here, Ammon. But while per-minute charges can solve the pricing issue from the expert's side, I think the marketing of it to consumers is much tougher.

I think Ammons per-minute plan works best where the expert is already a known quantity to the potential client, in which case they might very easily setup a per-minute line themselves with success.

But when customers are on the hook by the minute there is a cost/fear/fraud worry factor that I would want to research. As well, I think that customer complaints on per-minute charge services are very high, and might be a PR and billing nightmare in a large network of disparate experts.

Customer Interface Mechanisms
What I actually had in mind, as a part of the interface, was a live chat session. And that session could also easily charge per minute. I see advantages to chat, phone and email in different instances.

Referral and other value
But what if I want help in an area with which I am unfamiliar? I can read credentials, and spend valuable time checking the person out, but I would feel better about a potential transaction if a 3rd party was vetting the authenticity of the expert.

The service rounding up all of these subject matter experts would be adding value in a lot of different ways; referring business from the hub out, vetting and policing experts, providing a credible payment mechanism, adding value with branding, and more.

In some ways, it comes down to paying for search
The target market I am seeing here is one that has been roundly discounted as viable: Paid searchers.

Most times I use a SERP, even if i wanted a little help finding an answer or researching a topic, chances are extremely high that I would not pay to have someone help me. But I'm not the average SERP user. And if the deadline was tight, if getting the right result was critical, or even if i just didn't understand the subject matter, I might change my tune.

The way I see the Paid Search value equation working best is with people that have an overriding need to understand a subject or find an answer. Think of:

() a person researching the illness of a family member
() a college student doing a term paper
() a businessperson writing a marketing plan
() a lawyer researching a lawsuit
() a journalist researching a story
() a person tracing their ancestry
() an inventor wondering what the next step is
() a job seeker investigating a potential employer
() a website designer looking for help
() a blogger looking for a solution to his WordPress error

These are all examples of searchers that I think will pay to have help finding the answers. So, I'm not focusing on a person with a question, but on a person that needs the right and complete picture as an answer.

This post has been edited by Jozian: Jun 16 2007, 11:06 PM

[EGOL]

In states where I have lived hundreds of people are fined and/or given other penalties each year for practicing in licensed professions without a license. One normally thinks of physicians but it also extends to vetrinarians, beauticians, engineers and many others.

Anyone can write about these subjects but if your writing is for a fee and you give specific advice to a person on how he should do something then you are "practicing" in that profession.

The laws for licensing in the various professions are usually done state-by-state and are not always uniform in detail and reciprocity.

[Jozian]

Thanks for emphasizing that potentially large legal issue, EGOL. I do need to consider that more - and policing it might be tough.

Do you have any knowledge or thoughts on how state or even federal laws would apply if the advisor and recipients are in different states, or even different countries?

-Jeff

[send2paul]

Hmm.. interesting idea Jeff.

Let me throw a Freedom Of Information/business confidentiality type scenario email which you could receive from a potential client on Day One of your business opening...

I'm a respected businessman in my expertise and have signed up to have a widget from your service put on my website. This means that you have a method of tracking the kind of questions and answers that flow through it. You also have the same kind of info from many of my competitors as well. How do I know that you're not:

A. Being paid by some huge corporation to gather data and sell it onto them.
B. Gathering all this data for yourself and using it to create your own business/website - knowing what the opposition is doing.

In essence - who are that I should trust with all this info, and what guarantees can you give me that my business will not suffer as being part of your service?

There ya go Jeff! Stick that in your in box and smoke it...lol... It just worries me that you're asking people to share a lot of confidential business info with them without any real guarantees or protection for them. (Unless I've missed something and that's not what you're doing).

Curious of Essex

[JohnMu]

I spent a few long months on Experts Exchange before I moved on to the real forums . I got pulled in (hence the "long months" -- day and night ) and it was fun to go out and answer questions that came up.

The system works (at least it did, I don't know if things have changed) like this:

People ask technical questions that are generally solvable. Anything from "how can I center text on my web page" to "what do I need to set up a public key encryption system for the global company I work for" and lots of things off both ends. The person asking can give a reward in "points" for answering the question. Anyone can answer the questions. The people answering can ask additional questions. When a usable answer comes up, the person asking can reward the points to the answer (or split them among others, if desired). Additionally, a grade is given for the answer: the grade works as a muliplier for the points, eg if the question has 1000 points and the answer was graded with an "A" (best) then the person answering gets 4000 points (or something like that).

With 10'000 points (from answering questions) you get an unlimited account and can ask your own questions as well. If you don't want to answer (if you only have questions that need to be answered), you can buy an account for $10/month (or something like that).

The system works because there are a lot of really smart people answering things on the site. I was there as well -- it can really sharpen your problem-solving techniques when you are confronted with a unique (and sometimes complicated) problem and have to solve it within a few minutes (before someone else answers it). The level of competence on the site was very, very high. Much higher than the average forum, because only the first, correct answer would be rewarded. "RTFM" won't get you any points there. They have tools that let you "subscribe" to topic areas and give you the questions as they are posted, in real time. You can sit and watch an area, answer what you can solve within minutes and move on to the next. Fun stuff and kind of addicting.

You've probably seen the site in the search results - someone asks a question and you can't find the answer unless you buy an account. Sneaky. (it used to be that the answer was below a several-screens full of advertising for the site, now I've seen them cloak the answer to the search engines and not show it at all to the user. Buggers..) The site is also filled to the rim with ads.

The reason given for not handing out any money to the experts answering was that it was too complicated, all the legal hassles to get money transfered and all the paperwork required for taxes and stuff. (imo: baloney - they just want to keep the money)

Depending on the scale, you should be able to solve that problem. At the very least, a revenue sharing system based on Adsense would be possible (eg ads shared based on the points a user has). Distributing the account-money would be a bit harder, but there are ways to do it, eg: go through an affiliate handler like Commission Junction.

What the site would need would be a critical mass of experts who are willing to support the site and willing to jump at all complicated questions and get them solved. That's not that simple . Remember "Google Answers"? It didn't make it. Maybe the competition from the free forums is now too large to let something like that get off the ground?

John

[eKstreme]

This idea has been done recently. I can't remember the site's name, but basically you use Skype to answer questions as an expert. You set your own rate per hour, the minimum billing increment (per minute or per 30 minute chunks), and your expertise. The site serves as an escrow service of sorts for the money, and it takes a cut from each transaction.

I'll try to dig up the URL.

Pierre

[SEOigloo]

I LOVE THIS IDEA!!!!

I would love to see this happen. I have websites that generate all kinds of questions...gardening questions, birding questions, sewing questions. Being paid to answer questions would be completely awesome.

I'd like to see that URL, Pierre.

Jeff...are you thinking of developing something on this model? I'd love to hear more about it if you do.

Miriam

[EGOL]

Do you have any knowledge or thoughts on how state or even federal laws would apply if the advisor and recipients are in different states, or even different countries?

I don't know how it would work. I assume that the state where the person who received the advice lived (or where the advice applied) would have jurisdiction. Enforcement is usually at the state or federal level.

I don't know how a person who owned a service that brought people together for these types of transactions would be treated if a problem arised.

[yannis]

I like the idea and I think it can be implemented simply with a combination of javascript and php.
(I would actually be very happy to receive $3.20 after which I will email you how. For $13.99 I will help you integrate it into your wordpress as a plugin and for $299 into Drupal!).

Best way I can see it being developed is something similar to what Jeff described above - like an escrow service - for all intends it is actually some form of outsourcing except you provide an API for people to linkto from their website with an account.

The difficulties I can see are the legal ones as Egol mentioned and the pricing model.

A rather more open model - similar to what John mentioned above - would be the open model. Where the question is posted publicly - a bounty is set for the answer and a paying mechanism incorporated.

Yannis

[Jozian]

LOL and thanks, very much, for all the opinions, thoughts and ideas! I figured this topic would bring out some great feedback from the scalpel-like minds here at Cre8, especially since a lot of you are experts that might fit into the idea.

PIERRE: I agree that something like this has been done before, several somethings in fact. I'm trying to position this idea differently, and create a unique selling proposition that steps beyond what others have attempted. I missed the skype-based service, thought it sounds familiar. Please let me know if you remember the name or url.

EGOL, PAUL: I'm sure that the legal (EGOL) issues and privacy (PAUL) issues will need to be addressed, but I really do not think that they will be show-stoppers. I expect potential experts that are worried about data privacy and personal IP are lost to the idea. If this was small and focused on a specific discipline, I would be worried, but the breadth and scale I am looking at would make the privacy issue akin to not talking on the phone to a client because the NSA might be listening and steal your idea. You aren't wearing a tinfoil hat, are you Paul?

I shouldn't minimize the IP and data security here; Paul is right about that. I'm hoping much of the security can be dealt with through the interface if the exchange is online. The initial plan would likely involve the expert downloading custom client interface software that connects to the customer via SSL into any browser. This software also would be the mech for determining when the expert was available to take a question, similar to existing chat support software.

Unlicensed experts giving out legal and medical advice are the bigger iceberg, and would need to be strongly addressed in a TOS and maybe even a mandatory training course. But think larger scope here as well, folks. We should be able to attract licensed docs, nurses, lawyers as part of the expert talent pool, so that if someone actually needed that type of advice, the service would have an option. Of course, then we have a much bigger vetting issue

JOHN: Thank you for sharing your experience using Experts Exchange. That so many variations on services like this exist is a validation that a need exists. These services provide value, but I think they lack certain critical components, like, as you point out, actual cash payment for services rendered. I think they also miss out on two or more on a critical elements in their positioning. I'll add a post about that later today.

There are many many issues that will need to be addressed to make this work, and selecting the right way to charge and payout will be paramount, but I maintain that there is a business in the empty space between search engines and answers.

MIRIAM: Right now I am doing market research and idea validation. You intuit correctly that this is not idle conversation, though I am not yet able to share the whole business idea. This particular idea, as positioned in these forum posts, is mine alone, but it is based upon thinking about how a new client of mine might expand into another line of business. There is a well-positioned client behind my thought process. Together, the client and I, are wondering if this makes sense as a business extension.

YANNIS: I'll send you $3.20 this afternoon via Paypal - please send the script and php. Escrow service is an interesting thought...

Many thanks for your comments and insights, please keep them coming. Remember, if I had already launched this idea, I could be paying you all right now...

-Jeff

This post has been edited by Jozian: Jun 17 2007, 11:48 AM

[JohnMu]

I just ran into justanswer.com - they seem to have fair prices on their questions. I haven't figured it all out, but what I've seen seems to make sense. I like how they have an affiliate program - it could make sense for many different viewpoints. It might be worth looking at in detail

John

[Jozian]

Interesting, John. Thank you.

I took a look at the JustAnswers.com site. It seems that they do have parts of the paid expert model we have been discussing, though it certainly wasnt easy for me to figure out their value equation.

I'd hate to be a noob trying to figure it out, since they make you enter info before they tell you that it's a paid service. It may be that their main page isnt the primary entry vehicle - or they need some help with positioning.

The model they are using appears to be much like Yahoo Answers, but with the added step of making it affiliate-based and actually paying the experts - if their solution is 'accepted'.

-Jeff

[half21back]

I like the idea, my concern is what are the methods you are going to use to "test" the level of the expert and how can I the reader know that this test is based off of an actual verifiable standard.

[A.N.Onym]

I have checked JustAnswer and it seems that the question complexity, as well as prices, are pretty low. I wonder if there's something truly expert out there.

P.S. It seems that somehow JustAnswer.com doesn't redirect to JustAnswers.com. Weird. Maybe they need some expert advice?

[Respree]

Years ago, I used to spend a fair amount of time on the now-defunct Google Answers (GA) site.

It was similar in concept, whereby Google employeed approximately 500 "Google Researchers." They were independent contractors who came from a wide variety of disciplines including business, computers, arts and entertainment, science, sports, etc.

People would log onto the site, ask their question and 'offer' an amount (between $2 to $200) to have that question answered. The researchers would then scour the net, find the answer, post quotes and/or links to the authoritative source, and sometimes add their own perspective based on their background. Other 'non-researchers' are free to chime in with their own opinion as to the answer.

Researchers got something like 75% of the fee, Google got the remaining balance as their cut (from memory).

As an example. One day, I was wondering if website is really spelled Web Site, so I asked.
http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview?id=194921

Here are some observations of this business model.

- The business model does not scale well. One fee, one answer.
- People were sometimes dissatisfied with the answer they received and decided not to pay. Google's policy was that if you are not satisfied with the answer provided, you don't have to pay.
- People bid ridiculous low amounts for answers to complex questions, resulting in many unanswered questions (e.g. bid $2 to compile a list of _________ that would take hours to complete).
- Not a single person (that I am aware of) could make their living being a Google Researcher.
- Sometimes the questions were quite simple. Anyone could have gotten it for free, if they just has basic search skills. I suspect GA appealed to people with more money than time, rather than the other way around.

There were lots of people wanted to become Google researchers, but the company set a limit at 500, so many people were turned away.

Despite Google's massive drawing power, in the end, they could not get it to profitability and shuttered its doors. It's really too bad. The idea was good and I liked the site and community.

[Jozian]

A.N.Onym: re: JustAnswers
This looks similar to what I was thinking at the time. I tried out this service and found the tech to be good but my question too hard - no answer. I like the concept, though improvements could be made in the marketing and the pricing model is a bit strange in the amounts they selected.

half21back makes a good point about vetting of expertise. I'm not sure what the answer is yet. I think a successful site/service in this space has to either go further in vetting (testing, point system, rating system, referral system, hiring system, et al), or step away from it completely and use Yannis' escrow idea.

In case anyone is wondering about the viability of the whole QnA market, Josh at Read/Write Web did some great research on what's out there: Who's Asking? A Roundup of Q&A Sites.

LeeAnn Prescott at Hitwise shows some interesting volume stats for the QnA market as of Dec 2006: Yahoo! Answers Captures 96% of Q and A Market Share

A followup on John's comment re: Google Answers - G wacked that service even though it was doing pretty well. I think other legal or focus issues lead to the cessation, and I'm not convinced that it is permanent. In fact, I heard recently that the russian version of Google Answers was back up...

Let me throw out one more item to muddy the water: Why aren't librarians and library sites getting a chunk of this traffic? Most all Public and Academic Libraries, in the US at least, answer questions for free... and they offer the services by email, phone, chat, as well as in person. Many of them even operate 24/7... And most can access a heck of a lot of info not indexed by the SERPs.

My conclusion re Libraries? Library services are great and valuable but need to be marketed better - they are out of mind and out to the search equation for most of us.