ChaCha: My Work at Home Part-Time

ChaCha used to be a human powered search engine where "infoseekers" (IS) or searchers connected to live "Guides" who conducted searches for them; the IS could also chat with the Guide in a live window. Now they've replaced live desktop searching with their mobile answers services, textChaCha and ChaCha Voice. textChaCha allows infoseekers to text any question (for FREE) from their cell as if they were sending a normal text message. An SMS Guide (aka text Guide) receives this query, searches for and types in the answer, then sends it back to the infoseeker. ChaCha Voice works in a similar way - the infoseeker calls the ChaCha Voice number and asks a question, which is sent to a transcriber who transcribes the message and sends it to the pool of SMS Guides.

I'm one of those SMS Guides and I'm really enjoying it. A lot of college students and stay-at-home moms are Guides. I was a desktop Guide in ChaCha's early stages but the searches eventually became few and far between so I made little money. With textChaCha, the service has really picked up and now I make enough to pay some bills. I don't rely on it as my main income since I'm already doing a paid internship for the summer, but it's great for supplemental income. There's a lot of freedom and flexibility with ChaCha because Guides can work whenever and wherever they want - some ChaCha while they're watching TV, at home, in the dorm, etc. Here's detailed info on how to become a ChaCha Guide.