Paid Forum Post Answers

[mr moose]

If you want to get paid for your answers join one of those survey websites.

[zappian]

Horrible idea of the century.

If you want to get paid for advice become a psychologist or a taro reader.

Leave our forums alone.

[as96]

This is not going to happen, but in the rare chance they want to add a paying system, they could add a "donate" or "tip" button to the answer marked as best answer.

So it's not forced, it's just a donation, and 50% goes to the LTT group and the other 50% to the user who wrote the answer.

[Laputacake]

memecrunch.com/meme/HXVJ/oh-hell-no/image.jpg?w=500&c=1

[xxnextenxx]

The main issue and reason this could not work well and be of actual benefit is it would not help LinusTechTips.... It would not bring in more USEFUL traffic, if you look at GiffGaff who do this, they save money by payng the community to essentially be their tech support but this forum is not designed to do that!

[Kinda Bottlenecked]

So we're monetizing on forums now?  :lol:

 

There are many reasons why this wouldn't work. The idea you're suggesting is also very similar to the paid mods that have been ravaging through the internet. Of course like you said, it would be good if people can live off what they like doing. But I just can't see where this would lead to anything good. First off, the LTT community (like the modding community and other internet communities) have been formed by people with similar interests. Let us assume that Mr Linus built this forum so that a bunch of techies could get together and help each other.

 

Fast forward some time and we now have a larger community participating in the forums. Veteran techies on the forum are now helping other forum members in need. What makes communities like LTT very lively is that it is free for both us and Mr Linus ( well excluding the cost to run the website, server , etc, etc).

 

Now... if Mr Linus has to offer payment to the members so that they could continue being the active forum member they already were. It would now only be free to the users if Mr Linus decides not to charge us for being in the forums. Mr Linus now has additional cost on top of the cost to run the website. A small company like that would not be able to keep up with the cost of the number of questions that are being answered 24/7.  

 

If we assume that at least 5 questions in 12 hours on average are answered in each sub forum in the computer hard ware section. And if we decide that best answers should be paid a dollar each. That would mean $10 spent everyday in each sub forum and 280 every month per sub forum. Multiply that with the number of sub forums in the computers hardware section (10) and that would be $2800 per month. Of course all this numbers are only assumptions. 

 

Also if we assume that members can new earn money for giving answers, members will now be competing with other members to give the best answer possible. But what if you've made a thousand word long answer but the member who asked the question marked a post with only a sentence as the best answer instead. How would you feel? Of course feelings differ from person to person but the majority will feel that such a lazy post does not deserve the money. You would feel anger that all your effort is being wasted. You didn't get the money. Members are now basically competing with each other over money. You wouldn't be able to find tech jokes. As many of the posts would now be serious answers competing to be the best. That would essentially kill the fun and laid back attitude of the community and turn it into a dull and chaotic battlefield where everyone is in a competition.

 

tldr: Mr Linus wouldn't benefit from it. The community will be thrown into chaos.      

[NumLock21]

Want to get paid, then get a real job, instead of dreaming in la la land, thinking you can become rich quick just by posting on forums, while sitting in front of a computer all day, with bag of chips.

[Misanthrope]

Maybe a user - user tip system could be feasible but I couldn't possibly see paid help working at all. Forums don't really seem like an appropriate place to pay people for advice or help, since effectively all the replies with help or advice are "at your own risk".

 

I thought that gild thing was supposed to be just that

[JoaoPRSousa]

Hell no.

[ttam]

Would not be worth the effort for a few people to end up getting $1 here and there

[TheMidnightNarwhal]

I'm sorry you feel that way.

 

Well he is kind of right, you didn't explain much.

[anthony1s]

It's been a while since I started this thread, but I wanted to share that this idea is being developed. I'm in no way involved with it. Just posting this as an "I told you so" to the naysayers. If it succeeds or fails is up in the air, but it's interesting to me nonetheless.

https://steem.io/#whitepaper