Should You Become a ChaCha Guide?

When ChaCha came out, there was a low hum that quickly turned into a roaring buzz on the internet and streets. “Become a ChaCha guide! Make money from home and set your own schedule!” This is the dream for almost all stay at home parents, college students, and others wishing to supplement their income. Being a freelance writer and already in the “work at home” circle, I decided it could be a fun change to be a ChaCha Guide.

You can join ChaCha as one of three types of guides:

SMS Guide: The most commonly sought after position, an SMS Guide receives the question an “info seeker” calls or texts in and finds the answer for it. Payment for that question depends on what category it falls under. The range is 10 to 20 cents, with the overall average being 12 cents per question.

Transcriber: A transcriber receives questions the info seekers call in to ask, and types them out so they can be delivered to SMS Guides in text format. An SMS Guide never hears questions, they only get text format. A transcriber gets 4 cents for every question.

Expeditor: An Expeditor receives questions that comes in and simply puts them into categories. They are referred to as the “traffic control” of ChaCha. All they do is put the question under one of 15 categories and send it on it way to the guide. An Expeditor gets 1 to 2 cents per question.

I’m only going to concentrate on the SMS Guide position because it is what I have personal experience in. Some of the applying process may be different, since I applied about 8 months ago and they change things quite a bit. I’d love to hear feedback or stories from those who’ve done any of the positions, and am curious what it’s like for Transcribers and Expeditors.
Becoming an SMS Guide is fairly easy, but time consuming. First they have you fill out the application and tax form and answer a few mock questions. If you get an email inviting you to the guide training then you get to watch roughly an hour and a half worth of videos introducing you to ChaCha features, how to use them, where to find information, and of course how to answer questions according to their standards. Once you’ve gone through that, and feel you are ready, they have a test for you. Ten test questions from a different categories. You are graded by accuracy, what sites you get your information from, and how long it takes you to answer it. The first two are much more important than the last…they want to be sure you can answer correctly and get your information from a reputable source. Once you take the test, you wait anywhere from 1-10 days for them to get back to you and let you know if you are officially a guide or not. It took about 4 days for me.

So everything goes swell and you are now a guide! Hooray, yes? Eh….

Remember how you get an average of 12 cents a question? Now it’s time for a bit of math. In the best possible scenario, it takes you 1 minute to answer a question and you get question back to back. That would be $7.20 an hour. That is certainly workable and if it were the norm, I’d be writing a very different review.

However, here is the more realistic equation. Some questions take longer than 1 minute. In fact on average it takes 2 minutes to answer every question. This already cuts you hourly earnings in half. Now factor in that you will really only get back to back questions on the weekend. On busier weekdays, you wait about a minute between questions. Meaning that overall, you make .12 every 3 minutes, or $2.40 per hour.

Maybe it’s just me, but I am pretty sure that this is NOT what anyone envisions when they say they want to work from home.

There are some that say ChaCha is a scam, and have all sorts of “evidence” for their claim. I do not believe it’s a scam, but I do believe it is a rip off, and I know there are much better opportunities to work from home. For example, Associated Content is a pretty decent opportunity not only to get upfront payment, but residual income as well, an another is affiliate marketing.

In all reality, ChaCha is a pretty good deal for those seeking answers from the service, but not so much for those finding the answers. So be prepared if you do decide to become a guide at ChaCha.