by Jennifer Hudock

Created on: July 25, 2008

After I graduated from university with my bachelors in English/Creative Writing, the notion of entering the typical workforce with such a unique degree was daunting. There wasn't a bookstore in a one hundred mile radius that wanted to hire someone with a college education because it meant paying more, and the local papers were all overstaffed as it was. While I struggled to find work outside the home, I started to look for ways to supplement my family's income with online work. Some of my early attempts were worthless, and then I started to hear about ChaCha.com in early February of 2007.

At the time you could only become a ChaCha guide if you were invited by someone already in the system. I was fortunate enough to meet up with a guide who had an extra invite and within hours I had begun my training to become a guide. By the end of the day I was earning for my searches, and I thought I'd found a great way to stay home and focus on my writing, while still managing to earn extra income to help out my family.

The training at that time was ongoing, and sometimes rather unprofessional. The application was set up to work through internet explorer, and pop-ups were a nightmare. Even with the proper computer memory requirements, it was hard to hang on to searches once an onslaught of pop-up ads took over your session. Despite that, it was easy to earn between $15-30 a day, so I wasn't about to start complaining.

Then summer hit. With the kids out of school, and less infoseekers tuning into ChaCha each day from 9-5, it became impossible to make even the minimum of $15/day. Many guides were outraged that ChaCha could still even consider itself a work at home opportunity, and ChaCha answered that they had never intended people to make it a full-time job. It was pizza money, extra cash for gas or recreation, but not actual income. The number of people who depended on ChaCha to pay their bills swarmed the forums regularly complaining about let down the felt, as though ChaCha didn't care about the time or energy they had put into helping the company grow. Many of them began to seek out other work at home opportunities. Several of us turned to online database Mahalo.com and began to supplement our sorry incomes by building search pages.

When ChaCha started to change their tune, people were still skeptical, including me. They began working with an SMS program, training many of us to begin answering texts from mobile users in various areas of the U.S. At first it was amazing.

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