ChaCha Pay Lies and Scams: Press Releases and Articles
Table of Contents:
-
I. Introduction
II. Press Releases and Articles
III. New Front Page “Enhancements” Scam
IV. Pay Me Now Fees Scam
V. Working for Free and Deactivations
VI. ChaCha Archives
The more I dug around about the pay lies in the press the more I seemed to find. So what you are going to read are articles posted around the web about ChaCha by reputable news sources. Before you begin reading this section it is important to point out some information about what guides actually do get paid.
ChaCha live guides are supposed to make anywhere from $5-10 PER SEARCH HOUR. What that means is they get paid while they are in a search by the hour, not per search. Guides are limited to 6 minutes of paid search time so the most they could get from one search is 50 cents unless they are on an Elite level which pays double. If you can find me a guide that actually gets paid on the Elite level all day I’d be interested to know.
Just keep all this in mind while you look at the quotes from the articles below and see if you notice any kind of trend.
This one here I let slide for a while as it was an obvious mistake on the part of an NBC affiliate. I expected to see some sort of retraction to the article and video (video will auto-play so be forewarned) on this story by now from NBC, or at the very least a press release by ChaCha that corrected the obvious flaws. I’d like to thank the author of Ex ChaCha Guide and Are these results sufficient??? for giving me these links.
This is the biggest lie, misinterpretation, fraudulent claim, whatever you call it that has gotten my attention:
You’re probably wondering what does Sharae get from your search. She gets paid. 10 bucks each time.
“42 searches last night alone.”
That’s more than 400 bucks. And it all goes to her Cha Cha debit card that she can use when she finally gets off of the computer.
If you were reading that you would probably be ready to quit your job and work 16 hour days doing Chacha if you had no clue about what they actually get paid. Sorry to burst your bubble, but that isn’t even close to being true. I already told you that live guides make $5-10 per search hour at the beginning of this post, but if you just happened to be reading that article elsewhere you would have no idea. That’s a far cry from $10 per search.
This article has been in syndication now for almost 2 weeks and it is still there. This isn’t some blog reporting this like me. This is an NBC affiliate. THE NBC. The National Broadcasting Company which has unlimited resources compared to what a lowly blogger like me has. Every ChaCha hater, and lover has read this piece or seen the video. Complaints must have been pouring in, but obviously something as completely fraudulent as these claims must not be such a high priority for one of the biggest news services in the world to correct.
After reading this article I asked some people at the BoredReader if they could help me with locating more ChaCha sponsored articles that make claims similar to this. I was immediately directed to the website of ChaCha founder, Scott A. Jones ego site here.
Upon landing at his page I was amazed at the amount of times the pay has been reported in a misleading way. Keep in mind that these article are all linked to and copied to the website of Scott Jones. ChaCha is his company and these articles are linked on his site with the misinformation. These aren’t just recent articles either. It seems as if Mr. Jones has been letting the lies about pay spread for some time.
Check out the quote in this one from back in December:
ChaCha’s service is free to users because it’s advertiser-supported. But the guides are paid $5 or $10 a search to ensure quality control. Many guides are parents who work from home. Others, including Jonathan Cline of Indianapolis, are on their way to, or already in, college.
That article is still on Jones site , but the original source has taken it down. It is available in the Chicago Tribune here still.
This quote is from February in an article from Technology Review here, but also linked on Jone’s website:
But the site’s real calling card is its collection of 29,000 human guides, who earn $5 to $10 per hour working with users in live chat sessions to locate the Web’s best answers to their queries.
This is technically true about the pay, but not entirely true. If is $5-10 PER SEARCH HOUR. Not per hour. Again they are letting it sound like guides get paid to just sit there even if they are not in a search.
Let’s talk about that number of guides. I can’t substantiate this with actual guide numbers, but one thing is certain. There are not that many active guides on ChaCha. I can’t give you numbers to say one way, or another, but if you take a look at that number of 29,000 and assume that there are that many guides working regularly you would be seriously mistaken.
You see ChaCha has always had a policy about how inactive guides would be deactivated after 30 days of inactivity. This is great information to give to potential advertisers and a great selling point when they make the claims of having 29,000 guides. As an advertiser you would assume that there really are that many active guides, and that they have been active in the last 30 days. This is completely false.
When I was a live guide there weren’t quite this many members, but I can tell you that the vast majority of those that were listed as active guides were in fact inactive. Like I said I cannot give hard numbers on this, but it has been observed by myself and many other guides so I can only speculate from experience and by looking through the guide community on a regular basis.
I asked to be deactivated by ChaCha from being a live guide 4 times. Yes 4 times by sending in an e-mail to Chacha. Not once did I ever receive a response. This was well over 2 months since I had done a live search. I was in the system as active even though I had not done a search for over 2 months. That’s 1 inactive guide being counted.
ChaCha allows the guides to invite new guides into the system and pays the sponsor 10% of what they make. To give you an idea of how inflated their guide numbers are I had 17 people in my network. Of those 17 people, only 6 of them ever did more than 10 searches as a guide. 8 of them never even did one search. To this day, only 1 of them actually still searches at all. Every one of those people are listed as active guides. Including myself, and my network, that is 16 people that have not done a search in over 30 days. All still counted as active by ChaCha.
In fact anyone can see who has an active status as a guide on Chacha. Simply go to the Underground. You can also see the last time that individual did a search as well. They have a place to look at every guide in the system, see who is in their network, as well as see what their last 5 searches were. It won’t take you long to discover that there are an amazing amount of guides that are listed as active, yet haven’t done a search in months, or never at all. I’m sure guides love the fact that this site is out there for all the pranksters to browse.
Still at it, but not as obviously fraudulent as they have been in the past:
ChaCha is trying to solve that problem by paying “guides” up to $10/hour to retrieve information,
That article can be found here.
These next 2 quotes are from a recent article posted on CNN.com Just 2 weeks ago:
They’re paid up to $10 an hour, depending on how users rank the quality of their efforts.
Now this is technically true, but it is worded in a way that makes a reader think they are simply paid by the hour, and not per search hour. It isn’t implied that they are paid per search hour here, just by the hour. Considering that this is a business article about the investment that is ChaCha it would make more sense to point out that fact.
From the same article you can see what Scott Jones thinks about the people that are ultimately the backbone of this social search engine:
Jones says callers will be on hold for 15 to 30 seconds waiting for their results, making that a great time to throw targeted voice ads at them. Toss in the ads that online searchers see, and Jones thinks he can make $12 million next year, while paying his guides no more than 20 percent of revenue.
This article can be read in full here.
This is how ChaCha is portrayed in the press. These releases are all over the place. They are on the website of ChaCha founder Scott Jones. Articles with lies and misinformation about Chacha pay are a recurring theme. So when I wondered how the NBC story could let that information slide for so long, I couldn’t even imagine that the founder of ChaCha would actually link these articles on his own website. He is promoting the lies that are out there. No disclaimer, nor any sort of correction to the claims made in the articles that are obviously false.
You could literally find these articles everywhere. One of my favorite claims however, is this one:
For example, say you’re a college student who has been spending all day at the library studying and have become very hungry. He/she could spend their last hour at the library as a Guide for ChaCha earning pizza money, and order a pizza on their way home using their earnings. It’s that quick. Instant cash anytime you want.
That ladies and gentlemen is on the Chacha Blog! Right here. Unless you can get frozen pizzas delivered to your house there isn’t much chance that you can earn enough money in an hour at ChaCha to pay for a pizza, much less a tip for the delivery person.
The truth isn’t pretty so apparently ChaCha decided to promote lies to get guides to join their network. It has been noted already that there are a very large amount of guides that get into the system and simply quit after a few searches. You have to wonder how many of these people read these articles and thought that they were going to be making some serious money with Chacha. The inactive guides scattered all over the Underground are still sitting there as active with little to no searches. Most haven’t done any in months which says a lot about the live guide experience. ChaCha isn’t what they say they are, and they promote lies on their very own sites to con guides into working for them just so that they can create inflated guide numbers.
Work at home opportunities better than ChaCha:
Spread the Word
Filed under: ChaCha, Computers and Internet by JMH
Enjoy this post? Subscribe to the RSS Feed
Related Entries:
Trackbacks
- ChaCha Guide Pay Lies and Scams | JMH Techtronics
- ChaCha Pay Lies and Scams: New Front Page “Enhancements” Scam | JMH Techtronics
- ChaCha Pay Lies and Scams: Pay Me Now Fees Scam | JMH Techtronics
- ChaCha Pay Lies and Scams: Working for Free and Deactivations | JMH Techtronics
I never trust these programs. Either way, I am better off selling my blood and getting drunk with the money if they only pay $10/hr.
dayang . . . getting into investigative reporting . . .
You don’t have your facts straight and you sound like a tick off ex employee. The owner of the blog Are these results sufficient? was activated with good cause. That guide were messing with the pranksters and than posted the chat logs on her blog. Which that person knew was against policy and against their contract.
Please quit trying to make ChaCha out to be a bad place to work. It’s a great place! There are many and I mean many guides who love it. You are not going to change any minds besides making people laugh at you. Have a great day!
Looks like you are going to have some fun with this. The comments are starting to roll in.
I never said anything about anyone getting deactivated. Nothing about it at all. You obviously didn’t read it, or understand it maybe.
I don’t believe she was making herself out as a victim. It says right on her blog what she did.
As usual, the caliber of intellect for ChaCha guides shines through bright and clear.
Great article – well written and informative. Keep up the good work.
That’s funny Terri.
Also JMH- she does play a victim. This is from her website
About Me
witchywoman
Ex ChaCha guide who got screwed up the Azz for nothing
View my complete profile
So therefore, she does play a victim. So I wouldn’t be using her as a reliable source for your article. I find it very bias.
Biased? I think, no I KNOW you will find more negative Guides than positive ones at this point. Alot have given up within the last week.
She isn’t a reference for the article. I didn’t quote anything on that site whatsoever. All it said was “Thanks to [these sites] for providing me with links to the articles. Nothing more.
If you want to talk about her posts on getting deactivated go over there and do it. I’m sure she would appreciate the traffic and can respond to your accusations there.
I figured linking to articles on Scott Jones site was a pretty easy thing to understand. Seems like most of you came in here just to make silly remarks with out even reading what the article was about. It is about Pay lies and scams in press releases that involve Chacha. Nothing else.
Don’t you find it odd that the founder would actually link to these articles when the information is so blatantly false?
I will add to the post I put on your front page…
At the bottom of this article it has links titled:
Work at home opportunities better than ChaCha:
Both of these links are affiliate codes for other sites. He is writing this just to get people to click on his links to make money.
Associated content says you will be paid $3-$20 per article….if they accept it. I spent 10 minutes trying to find PayPerPost’s payment info….but couldn’t. And “Big List Of Paid Surveys”…what does that pay.
In the interest of full disclousure why don’t you print here what you make from these programs? ChaCha is no scam. I don’t know about Associated Content, or PayPerPost….but most if not all of the surveys listed on “Big List Of Paid Surveys” are 100% SCAMS!
You are a hypocrite.
WOW Great article and thanks for mentioning me, also Mellisa I Had QUIT being a guide before I was deactivated, so your theory is null and void. Also those were not prank sessions, were you the guide? No. Also…I was screwed just like many. When you have the facts please go over and post them.
Finally I yes I got screwed for nothing, because I decided to send them e-mails wondering why this was happening and that was happening. And because I decided to post some negative aspects of the company on a message board.
But I see no reason to verify this with you. And also there ARE more upset guides then non. I am NOT talking about deactivated ones, I am talking about active ones. HE IS RIGHT, go thru and see how many haven’t searched in a long time.
As before another great article!
Mike,
This story speaks for itself. The links tell you the story as well as the quotes.
As for the affiliate badges there is a Disclosure policy on my sidebar. Fell free to read it here as well:
http://www.jimimorrisonshead.com/disclosure-policy/
I didn’t realize you were under any obligation to sign up for AC or PPP? Certainly you aren’t under any obligation to do surveys either.
If it would make you feel better I can write a post about each company as well and tell you all about them. The links from the badges should do that for you, but if you would like me to go into detail about how great they are and tell you how much money I make with them I will be happy to. Just let me know. Of course you realize that it might actually make me more money if I do this.
Just in case anyone is unfamiliar with advertisements on websites, or with affiliate programs like Mike clearly is I will say this again. Read my Disclosure policy.
Guess Mike must be one of those “Expert” guides who obviously has no clue how to read and comprehend what is on a site. Mike, how long have you been on the Net, not long I am guessing from your total lack of understanding about affiliate links.
The ones here are no different from the ones on the ChaCha blog, except here they have been researched first for honesty and this site has a FULL Disclosure policy in effect. Quite unlike ChaCha who bombards not only the “Info Seeker” with unwanted popups, but the Guide as well.
LOL. I will let you guides think what you want. I love ChaCha, no I am not a cheerleader for them. However, you must not have work from home long because you sure don’t understand the IC part. Have fun trying to bring down a company and making yourselves look like whiners. Have a great day!
Thanks for the useless comment. First I am an ex-employee and now we are ICs. Make up your mind.
Read the article and tell me that has anything to do with the useless information you are sharing. Tell me honestly if you think that those articles I posted, which are on the website of ChaCha’s founder, are misleading or not, and that they do not perpetuate lies.
Doesn’t matter. I’m not an ex-employee, or IC. ChaCha lies to people about the pay and does many other things to screw you over, which will be addressed in the next few articles. Apparently I need to spell it out for you guys so I am doing so. If you still think it is great to get treated this way when I provide you with this information AND options that are less time consuming and more profitable then by all means live in your fantasy world you have created for yourselves.
I don’t care about ChaCha. Their idea is garbage and they won’t last anyways. The more people I can prevent from even signing up and wasting their time as guides the better. ChaCha surely isn’t going to give them the information so I guess I will.
Melissa, wow, you are a true moron. GOOOO ChaCha!
Wow Ricky J, thanks for the comment! I am pretty sure I am more educated than what you could even think of being. Don’t be jealous, it’s going to be ok.
While I agree that that was a totally stupid comment for Ricky to make, I am not sure what happy planet Melissa is living on. If you check out the official forum, most guides are pretty pissed at this point. When they DUE get happy, it sure isn’t for long. Lots of negative posts over there that get locked right away. In fact because of all the negativity and people fighting over there they implemented a new TOS for the forum that is much stricter.
DUE? I must be living on Ricky’s planet.
Maria, I understand there are some people who are not happy. There may even be a lot of people who are not happy. However, I know there are a lot of people who are happy as well. As with any job there is ups and downs and when you start out with a new company of course it’s going to be a bumping ride. Babytobee.com was bumping when they first started out and they had basically the same issues. People saying it was a scam, problems with their systems, and many many unhappy people. Well they are still around and it’s been a good 2 years or so. I understand that some people are not as patient as others are. I am very impressed on how patient that I have been with them. However, I know that it’s going to be a bumping ride and that things are going to go up and down.
As for Ricky’s comment was totally out of line. However, I learned not to care about what other’s think about me. It won’t get me anywhere!
This Cha Cha thing is too funny. It reminds me of Amway.
Reminds me of Kirby Vaccuums. With all the “Spread chacha to your friends and family because we refuse to pay for any advertising” makes me imagine little Chacha girls in short skirts knocking on doors all over the neighborhood saying they are doing a fundraiser to get into college and win a trip. We feel sorry for them so we allow them in and then they say ok, I will be right back. Next thing you know some 350lb guy comes barging in your house holding up a giant ChaCha anvil and threatens to drop it on your head and won’t leave until you download the damn toolbar. But hey, that’s just me.
Funny stuff gentlemen.
I’m a guide. I have been for quite some time. when I first signed on I knew that this wasn’t something that would be around forever. I figured I’d roll with it and make the money that was available while I could.
Everything said in this article is true. You can sit at your computer and stare at the screen all day and make very little money. 99% of the searches I’ve seen have been pranks and the rest are usually kids needing help with homework or the occasional internet illiterate person.
There have been so many complaints on the cha cha forums that they started locking the threads down or deleting them all together. Guides are treated like shit and yet so many of them are trying to stay optimistic because they need every red cent they can get. I’ve seen tons of posts with guides shoving their noses up the butt of admins and mods because they are afraid if they don’t brown nose they will be deactivated. Every time someone from headquarters makes a post all the guides run over as quick as they can to do more butt kissing when it was only a matter of minutes before, that these same people were posting really pissed off messages. they fall all over themselves thanking hq for posting as if it were a lifeline sent from heaven.
I’ll be leaving cha cha soon and I’m not disgruntled at all. I never had faith in this business model to begin with so I don’t feel the list bit upset by the crap they pull. I’ve used them in the same way they’ve used me. I do no support cha cha in anyway but I do support the guides who are just trying to take their sick children to the doctor or put gas in their cars or provide another day’s meal for their family. btw..I did email good morning america and tell them the truth of what happens at cha cha and suggested that maybe they might want to do another press release with the real information and never heard back from them but that’s to be expected when the person over at GMA is in the know with scott jones.
please forgive my typo’s in the previous message as I had a late night last night working for another company that does indeed pay well and so today the brain is a little tired.
No biggie Not a ChaCha-cheerleader. This is an informal setting. Thanks for the comment.
I am a guide. I have been for quite a while.
For those who are guides and have access to the ChaCha forum…I am sure you have noticed some things.
1) The number of active guides who posted has dropped big time. Many guides are being kicked off due to their negative posts (depending on how you want to look at them) or just because they are tired of all the honey-coated messages that that gets posted.
2) Mr. Kellar, Communications director for ChaCha, has openly posted that anyone posting negative messages will be removed from the forum and deactivated.
Does this sound like a company thas is in great shape with lots of happy employees! Trust me it’s not. There are people in HQ itself who are sick of the nonsense.
Now they are actively searching out other message bases where guides are posting and are trying to shut them down by force. They have their scouts out looking for agitators (Hi there you guys!)
Does it have ChaCha anywhere in the name? Run for cover…you are violating their trademark. They have tons of money to through at you in legal fees.
At this time, plans are in the works to set up a message forum for ChaCha guides who want their voice to be heard, to share ideas and experiences, or just to bash ChaCha without fear of losing their jobs. This scares ChaCha a lot. Why?
ChaCha makes all their money from advertisers. To get those advertisers, they need to demonstrate that a huge amount of traffic goes through them. They make vague references to data that demonstrate that ChaCha is one of the major search engines on the net.
But the facts are different….the truth is coming out.
Ask any guide:
60% of the searches are pranks (at least that much)
When discussing traffic, they include ALL traffic….including guides coming on to work. This is measured by the number of accesses to the underground pages, which regular searches do not have access to. Whack off another 20%.
That sure doesn’t leave much traffic, does it? What do you supposed the advertisers will do when this truth comes out?
Now that you “see the light”, do you now understand why ChaCha is doing everything in their power NOT to stop the pranksters? One of the techs said their latest idea is to allow you to report an abuse after the session closes, so you won’t be rated bad. Does that stop the pranksters?
Right now their idea is to channel all searches through their main page, then they ask if you want a guided search. Does that stop the pranksters?
Scott has this brilliant idea of forcing all users to “log on” in order to get a guided search. Go back to your treehouse and play Scott! Dumb idea!
Wait till you see what coming up next folks. If you don’t see the light yet, maybe that will.
The number of guides working for ChaCha are decreasing. They would like you to believe they have 30,000 guides. But they won’t show you numbers. I’m betting that if they have 5,000 “active guides” it’s a stretch. But we will never know, since they won’t release those figures.
Anyway…keep your eyes open…once the new forum is up and running links will be posted around. Search for it. ChaCha doesn’t have enough money to shut it down.
Excellent comment Agent Biff.
Looks like they got to the Reader’s Digest as well with more truth stretching on the pay I saw on Bored Reader today:
full article here
Obviously this is incorrect again as they do not make $5-10 per hour. It is $5-10 per search hour. You will not make $300 a month working 2 hours a day with them if you do not have a network. If anyone is quoted saying that they make $300 a month for working 60 hours they are either exaggerating their time, or they have a network that earns them money.
I have been reading the many forums for and against ChaCha for several days now and it seems to me that as my grandfather used to say ” If your getting into trouble then you have entirely too much time on your hands”. These people that are pranking ChaCha are spoiled little brats whos parents get them everything there little hearts desire and the people that set around whining about how ChaCha didn’t do what they said they would and ” Omg I didn’t make any money!” should have stuck around long enough to see that a new company has some glitches just like any new company does! People in this world are such whiny little babies!!! If you think that you are going to get something for nothing then you need to GROW UP! I cannot believe the amount of crap I have been reading about “ChaCha said this and ChaCha said that”… booHoo… why don’t you go work for the garbage collection in a large city or Mcdonalds…I am sure they can fit someone of your caliber into their corp. schedule. In other words get off your duff and GET A JOB!
LOL…didn’t see this post from before. The old…whine about the whiners comment. Those always make a lot of sense to me. Everyone likes to complain. You just have to pick the side that makes most sense. IF a company flat out lies to prospective contractors, and treats current contractors like dirt I take the stance that this is a public service message.
Why a public service message? If anyone reading these articles is like myself they will have little time to work on scams when there are much better options out there. I got into ChaCha early and therefore hadn’t seen all the BS they spewed beforehand. Since I saw it first hand myself it is only natural to tell others about their tomfoolery. You know how it goes. Good experiences you may share with a few, but a bad experience you will share with many. It is no coincidence that you see more an more bloggers ripping Chacha.
lol @ get a job. I make more in 5 minutes now than I made in a whole day doing ChaCha. For people that get paid to search it blows my mind they are so brain dead they can’t find a better WAH job. One that is easier and pays a hell of a lot more with out the hassles and lies.
Kim, you have probably given the best representation of the idiots that continue to do ChaCha. We have all moved on and yet you all cling to some moronic belief that things will change. They won’t. They have people like you taking it up the ass for them and they don’t need to.
ChaCha is a huge fraud that plays on thousands of WAHM desperate to be able to stay home and also provide for their children. Having fallen for this scam I can attest to having sat at my computer one day for 12 hours to make $33.00.
Hey JMH…
How do you know that I work for ChaCha!!! I don’t as a matter of fact and in fact use it every day~ As for the whole “We have all moved on why aren’t you” garbage then why are you spouting your trash about it instead of working that “FABULOUS” job you brag about? I think your full of it and I think you like to here yourself talk about how important you really are if only to make yourself seem bigger than you really are…a low life on a website.
Quite a wasp’s nest you’ve stirred up there, mate !
LOL…are you serious, Kim? Why are you even here if you have no association with CahCah? You can’t possibly think their service is worth defending after all the info I posted on here about how they screw over the people that work for them on a daily basis and lie in press releases.
Using Chacha is even worse than actually working for them. You have to be brain dead to not know how to use a search engine, or one lazy ass person. I’ll go with lazy.
“a low life on a website.”
lawl…pot calling the kettle black. Go talk to one of your guide friends and quit commenting here.
As a matter of point to say that everyone that uses ChaCha is brain dead is to assume that the thousands and I mean thousands of people that are not hard wired to the net is ludicrious! Do you REALLY think that your type is the only kind of person in the world!?! How absolutley arrogent can you possibly be! Oh I know…a real smart ass. In every sense of the word. You know everything….That must make you God. So sorry to disturb the master of the universe!
Won’t make that mistake again. Just one thing “GOD”. You might want to look at the whole picture instead of dising on the company my friend works for. She needs the money and makes a decent amount so she can stay at home and NO the other sites haven’t worked for her. What is it to you if she’s and “idiot” as you say? If you really ARE God you would really care about her and not about spouting off your very large mouth about something you know nothing about.
And don’t worry….I won’t be back. I think this site is for people with too much bravado and very small insight.
It’s a shame that people with connections use their brains for bad intentions instead of making the world a better place with positive work. Good luck on that power trip JMH.
I have a feeling your gonna need it.
You did read these articles didn’t you? Why exactly do you think I wrote them anyways? To give people who are getting shafted better things to do with their time and make more money. No power trip here. Just exposing a few lies that your favorite company tries to release to unsuspecting parents who can’t afford to pay for childcare.
Thanks for subscribing to my comments. I appreciate it.
For future reference, when you come back that is…you can edit your existing comments here and don’t need to make a new post if you have more to add. You can even delete the part about not coming back if you wish. I won’t hold it against you.
No luck needed, Kim. I’m doing just fine. Thanks for your concern though.
It seems to me most long term ChaCha guides are NOT how some persons protray them here. It seems to me they are pampered housewives living cushy lives. They need the money like a hole in the head. I am not sure why they do it. They think it is fun? Anyone who needs the money wont do ChaCha for long. That is quite obvious.
You know, I haven’t done ChaCha since before March. Out of curiousity I checked out some of the old forums I used to post to, full of ChaCha Rah Rahs. Well, I noticed that 1) The forums are DEAD..2)The people that actually DO still post are former Rah Rah’s who are now rebels and got deactivated for voicing their opinions. It’s really interesting.
What is even more interesting is that the ChaCha folder on Wahm was never opened back up. She must have thought it was not worth the effort anymore. That’s pretty bad..I mean Wahm is one of the most popular work at home help sites.
I am a ChaCha guide, i only make .20 cents per answer. Also apparently you can’t google answers or use wikipedia cause i got an email for doing that. Oh well that’s where the real answers are. if you use there pathetic excuse for a search engine it would take an hr to answer all of the questions.
Wow. Whoever wrote this is an idiot and obviously has no clue what he/she is talking about.
I’m a ChaCha guide, and wow.
This person is far, far off from the truth.
FYI, guides are paid 10 or 20 cents a question they answer.
Haha.
Have a good day.
Not sure if anyone is still reading this, but our pay just got cut again. Now to make our old pay of .20 cents an question, we have to make “top guide” (for which the qualifications has never been released clearly…) or we drop down to .10 cents a question until we make top guide again. If we make it.
I had applied to be a guide and really question how they can classify the guides as Independent Contractors? I am familiar with the IRS guidlines for classifying as a IC, and in my opinion, this position fails to meet some of those guidelines.
First, telling the IC what sites they can and can not use to obtain the information. As an IC you are free to decide how to perform the tasks of the job.
And second, the Guides are the “core business” of ChaCha” I sure hope they don’t find themselves being penalized by the IRS one day…
After I found out it’s .20 per response, I decided it wasn’t worth it…I think it’s a good way to make some extra cash..but not a full time job.
Hey, I looked at your survey sites and didn’t see cashcrate.com. They are pretty reputable!
They are running a new payment scam. They give you a fake earnings number then give you like 20x less when you cash out. I had 80 dollars in earnings but BEFORE I was about to cash out it said 4.47.
TRY AND STOP ME FROM GETTTING THE TRUTH OUT THERE. COWARD. ILL POST EVERYDAY!!!
Tonight was my first time using the new system. I think this really needs to be thought out a bit better. I was in the middle of editing my reply to the customer, In the middle of doing so I get a pop-up saying I was taking to long to answer and the question. It was being taken over by another guide. IS THIS FAIR??? NO. If we need to search for an answer then edit that answer this takes time. Not to mention pages sometime open slowly. Is this even taken into consideration? It seems to me that questions will get bounced around from guide to guide and those of us who take the time do thoroughly search for the BEST answer are penalized. Not to mention we will be unable to even make top guide OR get paid for our efforts, because we do not get to finish what we started. Seriously this is not going to improve the quality of answers the customers seek. Surely, NOT a way to keep guides happy and willing to do do the best job they can.
Disgruntled Guide.
i work for chacha and we make 10 cents per inquiry, not so much an hour. Thanks
Well now… this is all quite interesting.
I’m not here to necessarily bash or defend anyone, as I’ve come upon this entire site merely in the course of a little “internet sherlockin” in order to get the best information available about ChaCha before I apply to become a guide.
I was told about ChaCha from a friend, who had just recently become a guide himself. I’d heard of online deals like this where you basically sit around and make hard cash, so I wasn’t very into the whole idea of it at first. However, he vouches that he made 40 dollars after about 4-5 hours of total “Cha Cha Work Time.”
This sent my radar up.
I have no doubt that he was being completely truthful with me. He also went on to point out that he’d made 4 dollars for the person who he put down as his referrer (Also a local friend).
I understand that this is in no way a logical choice for a stable career, but isn’t it perhaps just a really good, easy, clean way to make offhand cash for everyday things?
Now comes the argument of time vs pay. I couldn’t imagine a single mom trying to hold things down on the home front by sitting in her room logging hours of Cha Cha each day. The logistics just aren’t there.
However… what about the 18 year old kid who’s still in high school and works long, boring, hours at his current job doing nothing but streaming videos on a computer screen.
This is the case with me. I’m a test proctor for a community college, and so I get paid steady hours by the state to hand out tests and answer the phone. Thing is, only 1 or 2 people tend to come in per 4 hour session. So I’m literally sittin’ there on my ass just watching videos on youtube, and basically wasting time in every sense of the word.
It gets so bad sometimes that I really almost feel bad about going to work, that it feels almost like nothing but a waste of my time. Then I realize that I’m getting PAID 7 an hour to do little more than answer a phone and play silly online games.
Now… here’s where ChaCha plays into all this, and ultimately the question driving my entire reason for being on this Blog (or whatever you guys refer to this as).
Is it a smart, safe decision to apply for a job at ChaCha just to earn a few extra dollars, perhaps WHILE I’m already at work?
or will I be horrendously ripped off in some way and have my identity stolen and evicted from my home due to my dealings with ChaCha?
Please, guys, no BS on this answer. =)
yes Cestio, this website has a lot of b.s. about chacha all over it. i’ve looked online.. and this is one of the only sites you can find someone bitching about chacha.
chacha is not a get rich quick! chacha is just fun and unique. if you want to be a guide, be lazy, get fat, get paid… try it out!
Just the fact that these articles continue to spread means that ChaCha is still screwing people over. It wouldn’t get posted all the time if people didn’t find the place fishy.
I don’t follow ChaCha AT ALL anymore. I have better things to do. If people make comments I’ll respond to them and that’s about it. Every month or 2 I see a new comment about another policy change that pissed some people off and I know the scams continue.
These are just a warning. That is all. You worked there for a couple weeks? 1 Month? That’s great. Just wait. That’s all these articles are about.
my position:
i’m a full time student and i have a part time job that uses a computer. most of the time when i work i have lots of freetime. i ususaly finished homework and still have lots of time left.
Question:
shud i invest in this company?how much whud i get paid for 3 hours of chachaing each week for a month?
$10 a week at most I would guess. So…$40-50 a month.
I’m a ChaCha guide, and, while this may not be a good “job” for many, it is for many more.
For example:
Mothers. Why get a job to work to make money to pay for the gas to get there, the dry cleaning, and then daycare for your kids, only to make a few extra dollars, if that.
ChaCha is a great opportunity for many to work from home, whenever they want, and for however long they need or want.
As far as pay goes, no, it might not be a 6 figure salary, but I also do not have to pay for gas, and clothing, and whatever else, as I said before. It balances out.
Just this week someone made around $1000, just in their pay and bonuses…in a week.
Some weeks I make only $200. Others, I make $80-$100 in a day, just depending on the effort and time I put into it.
Also, the other jobs you suggested at the bottom of the page… I tried those, bullsh**. Don’t suggest something you haven’t tried yourself. ChaCha is far more legitimate and worth my time than any other job I have found online.
It is a job I actually enjoy, it pays my bills, buys me groceries, and I can work naked if I want to..from home!!
Like any job, it has its cons, but ChaCha is a very new system, so I give leeway. Like any business, they have to work and try different things to see what works best.
Some would rather sit at a desk and complain about their boss all day. I’d rather sit on my couch, ChaCha, make extra money for me and my family, and deal with the minor flaws.
Joined ChaCha in July. After three weeks got the making 95% and above accuracy got the how would you like to work more for less pay…the from .20 cents to .10 cents and if you would like to make what you used to you will do better. Hung in there and made my same agreed rate of pay for twice a much work. In case you haven’t heard on November 3rd ChaCha began telling users that they now have a 20 question limit that rotates every thirty days. After their twenty questions are up they are done for their thirty day period. Questions on that day for me dropped off dramatically and within that twenty four hour period November the third ChaCha implemented a specialist criteria at which point things fell apart completely for at least 4,000 of the top guides myself included. There are now tons of posts at ChaCha forum where there are guides who now sit all day at the computer for ten or twenty cents per question and making forty cents and hour. Lastly if you say anything bad about ChaCha there are the koolaid drinkers and Moderators who feel perfectly free to threaten people who disagree with them and take their posts down. Lastly, I will say this what seemed to be a great idea has apparently turned into a Ponzi scheme with no longer any posts from their HQ in Carmel, Indiana acknowledging any problem at all. No explanation why texters are not answered and made perfectly clear that no dissent will be tolerated. I am an older person who has been around for awhile and my opinion is that ChaCha has run out of money or intelligence and should be investigated for possible fraud.
Thanks for the post. The exact same things I have warned about continue it appears. I’m glad you took the time to write that out and leave it here.
This was why I wrote these articles to begin with. ChaCha seems like a great thing at first, but it doesn’t take long for them to see if you are doing a bit “too well” to punish you for it so they can reduce how much you make.
I doubt they are out of money, although I never really saw how they could be making much in the first place. We all had the same ideas when we started, which was when they were very young. We had it WAY better than you guys do at that point too. You actually could make some decent cash doing it.
They always make these little changes out of nowhere so that you will see about half of what you were making go away overnight. They have been doing it over and over again. They are literally a scam that keeps starting over and over again. Once they cleanse all the unhappy people again they use a new method to go out and get more people so that they will not know any better. IT is a vicous cycle and they typically don’t let you get very far before they do something like this to you.
I was a ChaCha guide. You definitely do NOT get paid by the hour. You get paid 10 cents per search. If you get 200 searches in a week with a 98% accuracy rating, then you receive 20 cents per search. ChaCha guides do not and never have gotten paid by the hour.
However, I do agree that it’s a sketchy business. One day I received a deactivation e-mail and I started searching the web for more information on other guides who have been suddenly deactivated. I found some interesting stuff…
God I’m such a FUCK’N IDIOT!!!!!!!! I sound about as intelligent as Bill O’Reily! Wow, after actually trying out chacha, I realized you don’t get payed well, but they do pay, and for as easy as it is, you can do it practically anytime! Try it!
EDIT: Some idiot tried to use JMH as their title and posted this. Well done. Guess being nice to people who have legit websites is gone thanks to this asshole.
Wow, JMH, did u just get a change of heart on ChaCha? well, I’m a former employee (an actual HQ employee, not a guide/). as they have moved out of a two story house on the corner of Scott Jones’ humongous estate into a luxury shopping mall, i was involved in every bit of the process.
They started out as a live search engine, of which your article is bashing (with the right reason). when they started the text and voice searches, and as it gradually succeeded. they are no longer the laughing stock of the tech world and raised a few eyebrows. and they have won quite a few awards, and the traffic kept coming in. it took about 2 months to reach the first million queries, but then they got about that much within a couple of days. so then there’s the problem. a query was essentially 20 cents, multiply that by a million, and even a 3rd grader will understand why the guides got a pay cut. (tough luck, guys, hey, it’s a business. the little guys always get screwed over, it exists everywhere and everyday).
even after the pay cut, chacha’s popularity continued to grow and they continued to struggle to find a way to make revenue. they had funds, of course, over 20 million or more, from investors ranging from the simons, rod canion, mort meyerson, to um, rex grossman? but that stuff was not gonna last when u take up three spaces in a luxury outdoor mall, host free friday banquets, bringing in top of the line furnitures and a gigantic plasma tv into ur break room. not to mention the money u used to lure silicon valley guys to come to boring indiana, spending ur money to promote urself at the indy motor speedway events, etc.
so as america went to the polls, chacha raised the axe and cut 15% of workforce. some interns were let go and moderators work were cut down. there was this fear instilled in everyone who was there, but still they stayed optimistic.
u ever wondered why u didn’t see chacha’s ads on tv? because they were afraid of more users. the viral growth is much larger than any tv exposure can bring.
so they went on to start limiting actual guided answers (limiting costs) and started building automated answers database. kinda like google answers but not as dumb. i.e. if u ask “what’s abe lincoln’s birthday”, and if someone has asked it before, then u would automatically get the previous answer. which actually makes the service better cuz it comes back lightning fast. but yeah, sucks for the guides even more, they had a million a day traffic now it is being reduced by the limit, or cap, as they called it. so yeah, their new strategy is to have as less guided answers as possible. but if u r an expediter or transcriber, u would always have job security. so by doing that, chacha’s service actually improved. and their mobile search volume surpassed those of google. but, i digress.
so in the spring they made another cut, this time 15% of the workforce and some of them had been with the organization from day 1. also, everyone else in the company received at 10% paycut. but at the same time, they had implemented ad sales on texts and it is targeted keyword sales. so if u ask a specific question, an ad from the vendor in that specific field would display. so if u ask about tiger woods, maybe the ad will be from a golf pro shop or something. which they claimed to provide higher click through rates. so they were finally receiving income, but it was not enough to cover the expenses. and unfortuantely, i did not survive that second wave of cuts.
i stayed in contact with my ex coworkers, kept up somewhat. they did strategically hiring and hired ad sales execs and agents. as of now, the paycut still hasn’t been removed as far as i know. but chacha is still here and i still use them a lot.
it’s good that chacha has an owner and ceo who is mega rich, so he doesn’t need income from it. scott jones actually puts effort into this company so who knows, chacha might be here a long time. his track record is pretty good.
anyway, that’s my story, and u get the exclusive, for now.
No…I didn’t change my mind. That comment was from someone else using “JMH” as their name. All posts from me are linked to another website. That one wasn’t thourough enough.
They posted several comments, and I didn’t get them all until today. I don’t look at comments here very often since I really don’t have that much interest in this anymore.
Must be a ChaCha Employee too because they didn’t even have their own referral link. Maybe ChaCha doesn’t have referrals anymore? Either way it is funny.
…………..
Okay, the only comment I have is about the real “JHM”
Please look at the comment this person posted and take note of the DATE posted in this one in particular!!!
JHM, on March 31st, 2007 at 4:59 pm Said:
……..”blah, blah, blah, blee, bleu, blah”……………
“I don’t care about ChaCha. Their idea is garbage and they won’t last anyways………….blah, blah, blah”
So now here it is December 2009 very close to March of 2010 (almost three years after this comment) and ChaCha is still around, be it if they are credible or not!!
Well we all know now that “JHM” is not a psychic….. LMFAO
It isn’t anything like it was. Nothing. Only reason it lasts is because the people funding it are stubborn, and have a pretty good idea on how to funnel money into a useless service.
You know how they stay a float? They take the money away from guides. Any time they increase their revenues it is directly attributed to paying the people that do the work less money, or they scam the people using the site into clicking GOOGLE ads, or some other ad they have put up there.
I’m sure they still have it set up where sponsored results are their main results no matter what the guide actually gives them. I don’t have the desire to look into any of that anymore.
All I care about is that people don’t expect anything great from them, and not be surprised when they get screwed over. Every couple months a new comment comes here and guess what? It is a guide that got their pay cut. Every one of those comments just add to what I have already said.
Also, not sure you guys realize how to use a blog, but this site isn’t “Full of ChaCha” hate. I haven’t written a post on Chacha in 2 years. None of you recognize dates on here at all, and the ChaCha posts are easily navigated to as they are labeled as such.
If you want to post something about how it is now, by all means, go for it. Don’t expect me to care. Just realize that anything I wrote here is from a loooong time ago, and if it isn’t like that anymore it still doesn’t change the fact that they are untrustworthy. The follow up comments from other guides over the years has proven that time and time again. In fact, it is rather amazing they still come as people have to be pretty pissed off to go out and actually search for somewhere to bitch about Chacha in the first place.
Google Voice is a lifesaver. The functionality that it offers is amazing, for example the ability to forward calls. I’ve got a few extra invites. Also I hope that Apple rethinks the Google Voice app, hwo could such an killer program get not accepted by Apple?