Topic: Get Paid in Bitcoin for answering tech questions (Read 687 times)

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Hello everyone I've added payouts for questions answerers in US Dollar, along with Bitcoin.

Again url is https://dzhaven.com

Can you restrict your website to IP or country with a phone number login only [per account] and manage to get a code installed, which could stop virtual numbers from joining? I don't think anyone would bother to create a lot of accounts because it will stop a lot of lazy guys from doing that, and if you can afford to send OTP every time they try to login, it is better than the best.

For your marketing, why don't you try to set up a signature campaign here? While you are relying solely on Google ads, I think you can get a better response by opening up an Ethereum based signature campaign if BTC and its fees are not affordable for you. You can pay less and still get quality members advertise in various parts of the forum if you set up your rules like that. It will gain much more speed in gaining good user base with this method.

Well, merit comes from "merit sources" or valuable members so there is less of a chance of fraud from there end. So creating multiple accounts won't help them, Unless they all make up a group to scam the people who are asking these questions. I do agree it's hard to control fraud but then again when viable measures are there, they should be implemented.

In Merchandise case you can't use the product till it's shipped. Even a line of code once it's made public is useful to the person who is asking the question, that's why I said you can't compare these two things. E.g in a developer's case, all I could do is use the information the person has made public. I have already gained something from the person who spent the time in writing the response("code" in this case). While on the other hand, the developer has technically wasted their time.

Also, Remember with platforms like eBay etc there are systems for chargebacks so both parties are still safe... But with Knowledge, you can't erase one's memory. As for I implying people are generally evil when they are anonymous, there is plenty of evidence to back it up. E.g There was a survey done: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/a-third-of-male-university-students-say-they-would-rape-a-woman-if-there-no-were-no-consequences-9978052.html

Considering this is something disgusting and still has such a high percentage just shows human nature when there are no consequences attached.

Your original premise that the site was created primarily for the interests of the respondents is wrong. It is created for both question asker and respondent. Paying for an answer is not an unfortunate necessity, it is a major feature of the site--that makes the interaction more fair and equitable for both sides.

Additionally in terms of fraud or other bad behavior it is a two way street. It is also possible for respondents to create multiple accounts or get their friends to pad points for their answer, and subsequently bring themselves unfairly into the forefront as the leading answer. Just like on ebay both the seller and the purchaser are able to commit fraud. On amazon sellers sometimes mislead on their products and buyers claim to never have received their item. On stack respondents pad their points from their friends or using other accounts. Askers sometimes don't give proper credit. The list of sites and fraud methods goes on and on.

The point is fraud is possible with ANY PLATFORM. There is nothing inherent to my method that makes it more so. Again if fraud was as rampant as you claim amazon and ebay could not possibly have lived long enough to be the huge businesses they are now. And yet here we are having hundreds of thousands of businesses doing billions of financial transactions on the internet not knowing who the user really is or if the user account they are trusting to buy, sometimes thousands of dollars worth of merchandise, is a fraudster. Again people are not as evil as you imply. My analogy still stands.

hmm, I have read your eBay response before. Your assumption is that people will come back for more answers, hence why they have an incentive to reward the appropriate answers. If I am being honest... It's like comparing apple with oranges. You can't compare Knowledge with a single person use product. Also, Just because a system is "working" doesn't means its the correct way. How many people have to go through chargebacks and all the trouble which this "system" creates for them. I do respect your opinion of not paying up till you are satisfied but this is letting one party exploit the other, you can't deny that people will misuse this. So my assertion stands valid to some point.

E.g I am a developer, I'm developing this "Radar" for my game but I'm stuck with the math. I create a bounty for a working Radar code. A developer creates the code from scratch, I get to use the code without even paying up. The developer who spent an hour or two coding it has essentially worked for free. What I would suggest is to have a review system for each answer, e.g it was rejected for X reason. At least this way the community will have an idea why the answer was rejected. Anyway, Good luck with your project.

You should try the site as there are multiple disclaimers that appear at the relevant time to explain how the system works: including fees, payments, etc. So yes those explanations are already there and transparent.

But for your first criticism. I cannot force people to pay, as you imply by your question about refunds its their money until they choose to pay. And yes there are refunds as long as a response has not been marked the answer already. I've answered this question actually several times, but if you look at ebay they use a similar system as mine. Users have a points system, a reputation, and people choose whether or not to do business with them. On ebay it is also possible to just create new accounts and continue scamming as you say, but for some reason the system works and people continue to choose to use it.

The rate is my choice. And people will choose to use a different system if they think its too much.

Ultimately what I'm saying is that I disagree with your assertions. People aren't as evil or dishonest as you imply. And if the system, as it is now, is too loose for some answerers--again I'm transparent about it so people should go somewhere else.

hmm, what happens to the Questioner's funds. Are they locked in for the bounty? Let's say the questioner doesn't mark the answer as "answered" and different answers get more than 10 "community" votes. Will the Questioner get a "refund" of sorts, if they feel like the question wasn't answered properly? Also, What's stopping the "questioner" from creating a new account? e.g often a "code" solution will be a real one. It will actually resolve the issue of the "Questioner" what's stopping them from creating a new account? At least with the case of a "Merit system", the person who wrote the code from scratch to help them will have a guarantee of sorts that their efforts will be rewarded. Your whole idea behind this website is people getting paid to answer questions, right now it seems like one side can get away with solutions without really rewarding the deserving user... If the funds are being locked in for the bounty till it gets marked then a "merit" like system could help.

E.g People who will get their answers marked as "answered" will receive these special merit points which they can use to vote for answers from other users. 10 points from other developers could mean it's the perfect solution for the problem.

As for 25%, I feel it's a bit on the upper side. Most Popular freelance platforms keep 20% at max. Maybe consider dropping a bit. Also, there needs to be a FAQ page. This sort of information should be available. As for the Design, TBH you can find many inspirations from just doing a quick google search

Thank you so much for your feedback @Thekool1s! Yes your suggestion is right on as I have a similar mechanism to try and prevent fraud, as you suggested. There is a question reputation system called Bounty Paid Percentage. It tracks how well the question asker is paying their bounties. Within the algorithm that calculates this score there is a check for questions that have at least 3 responses and that the community has up voted at least one of the responses with a point score of 10 or higher. If so this question is included in the calculation and affects the questioner's score. This means if they have a lot of these types of questions there Bounty Paid Percentage score will go down and people will obviously be less likely to answer their questions. Having said that I do not force people to mark answers and pay, as ultimately they may have legitimate reasons and it would be impossible to know for sure. I'm trying to keep a balance between the questioner and answerer, and be fair to each group--as both groups are important.

Your suggestion on the thread page, would you have a sample of what an input screen without "InputBox" usage would look like. It's hard to envision.

The site makes money by taking a cut from the answerer's balance. Currently it is 25%. I make money on that side instead of the question asker since it is most important to get questions into the site, and charging for that might turn some people off. The answerer on other hand, even with my cut, is making money by using a website that they did not create or pay to run. So it felt like the right call.

@dharric I really like the idea and i see real potential in it. I have some suggestions that I will like to recommend. One of them is a possible solution to ETFBitcoin's objection of the "Questioner" not marking a reply as "Answered". There could be a "merit system" and other responders could "vote" each others answers. The answer with most votes will be automatically get marked as "answered". They will also get these "merit points" for their effort even tho their answer might not be the correct one. So it will prevent spam/scam from both directions.

As for the Design, I feel like everything is grouped too close to each other. Give it a bit more of breathing space. The items could be enlarged as well, there is too much whitespace currently... Also, the "Thread" page could get a refresh, e.g don't use "InputBox" for titles and previews.

I had a question, How will the website make money? Are you planning to charge a fixed fee per Question? or will there be a withdrawal fee of sorts?

Super important point I forgot to mention! The site will also eventually help you get a job. I will have an algo that parses the top answerers on any topic and provide data to highering managers. This is opt in only, not mandatory. But if you're looking for a job your reputation and answers on the site can really help.

1. Thank you for acknowledging my point
2. I completely agree. This site is not for everyone and certainly on the internet one is free to choose. However I believe that there are a subset of people that could be large enough to make at least a small business out of. For example stack alone is so huge getting even 10-20 percent of their traffic should be a business unto itself. Not to mention quora and all the others.

By way have you seen the latest version of my site, https://dzhaven.com. I made some style and navigation changes to be more attractive and useful. Please take a look if you can. Thanks.

https://dzhaven.com

I am not sure how google ads is going to help you. Yours is Q/A type portal. People will come here from google but if they do not see any answer then they will go back.

I think you need to hire some writers who has technical knowledge. You can ad for writers. They will creates good contents in your site in return of payment. It could be per post or weekly or monthly salary based.

May be you can have some people who will collect good questions which where never answered in the internet and your experts can answer them. I hope it's making sense.

All you need is contents now and lots of contents I meant. You need some permanent dedicated users who had good technical knowledge and they will keep creating good contents.  

By the way, you also need organic traffic from search engines. So hiring an SEO expert will also help. When your hired writers will create contents your SEO expert will work with them with the keywords so that it easily gets ranked up in the search engine. You really need on page and off page SEO optimized site too.

I am interested  please send me the link 

Lulucrypto I sent you an email to enable your account from [email protected]. Did you get it? Please check spam.

Good valid points once again. I'm wondering if you had any ideas on marketing methods. I need to use my funds wisely so I can't do that much. Currently I just do google ads.

You are correct and I've revamped the look of the entire site. Tell me what you think.

Was supposed to say the same thing with having Stackoverflow i dont see for this site be chosen up instead.Im not concluding yet but this one still need some
polishing in terms of sites design.Currently they do still have few bounty post which is considerable for a new site.Good luck on this one.!

1. If you look at ebay the same problem could occur. And honestly I've had instances where I've been scammed but ebay refused to reimburse me. Regardless ebay still continues to do business. Well in similar fashion I have mechanisms in place to give question askers points based on whether they pay their bounty or not. Consider it their reputation.
2. Yes but if you think its not better that what you get for free that's clearly not true if you look at how our society runs. Additionally answerers compete with each other so there is an incentive for better answers, since it is not they who determine the answer but the question asker.

Hello,

I like the idea of the project, however, I tried to register, but it seems that the registration does not want to work :

When I try to register, I have this error :
- Registration failed: A error has occured.

Nickname used :
- Luluwebmaster

Email used :
- [email protected]

Bitcoin address used :
- bc1q7qgn8zw75n26hd60a8ay42482mukdjrdv3cyp7

Thank you.

I can not remember how was the last one but this one is looking good.
Possibly we can have a bit more space in the conversation (bounty) area.



If you make it full width then the middle area will have more space I think and also you can lower the right (3rd one from the left) column again to get more space for the middle column.

What I am saying is to have larger space for the main contents of the page will be better in my opinion.

The site looks a bit faster this time, if I am not wrong.

You have some valid points here. I really hope your sites picks up and with a good marketing plan you should find good traffic.

Royse777 thank you for your feedback. I've made some revamps to the site styles. Let me know what you think.

The idea sounds interesting! As others said you might need someone/something to handle disputes
Not sure if it would be worth the hustle ... but I would suggest making your own coin also.
BTC and "DHARR Coin" for bounties.
Airdrop a bunch so you have a user base and get them familiar with the platform and the flow of things.
Then add on exchange and keep on improving the platform.
It can be anything you dream. It's just code ! )))

Either path you take good luck with this. I'll bookmark it just in case

The Internet is full of sites that offer free information and therefore what will make people pay for such information, except that it is technical information and is not available on the Internet, and then what ensures that the questioner paid, I think that in this case the questioner must deposit money or Bitcoin in your account on your site, and this is also the problem of what will make the questioner trust the site and deposit it before getting the service. I think it is not easy and it takes time to gain people's trust first.

heavy moderation and centralization is not a bad thing for a website. it has prevented spams and repeated or even off topic questions/answers so the end result is a very clean database where you can easily find what you are looking for. i myself have found 90% of the things i want in programming, cryptography and bitcoin through SO.

don't be discouraged because of criticism though. try to take it and improve your service.
another new concern that i have is about payments. there is currently no guarantee for payment. the user asking the question has to have a history, so a new person would either not get any replies or will have a hard time because we won't know if he pays it or not. also will i get paid directly in my own bitcoin wallet or will i have to wait to reach a balance on website before i can withdraw? the later requires a strong site's security and a lot of trust.

Your concept is good one but i am doubtful if it will work because of two reasons.

First, there are many websites like these where you can get the answers to your questions for free. People will only come here if they have a very typical question which they cannot find the answer easily elsewhere.

Secondly, if A post question and B replies to it, the amount will go to B regardless of B not fully satisfying the A question ?
On other situation even if B answers perfectly, A denies it purposely to avoid the payment ?  Lots of things to consider on what will be a perfect answer to be paid and how the both parties will agree that B has answered and it helped A.

So you're targeting a specific niche of people? Specifically whose questions are not answered on the famous social programming networking sites? That is not a bad idea. By no way, I'm criticizing your project.

Whoa looks like you're far more experienced than the team that runs stack-overflow. Not going to agree or disagree with you. If you think your idea can replace them, go for it!

If 10-15% seems like a decent business to you, you're on the right track I suppose.

Can a user still ask a question without putting up a bounty offer for their question? If yes I think this would be a bad idea for a website that mainly runs into bounty rewards for the best answer since they will lack interest on questions without bounties so maybe the website should be the one setting up a default bounty for questions without bounties by this users. Because I doubt people will really have an interest on paying/ setting a bounty for their questions in a website where they can post the same question on another forum or any of your competition for free.

I’m positive you Would get traction soon, because there’s a thinking that if you tag a bounty to a task, it gets answered faster and more professionally. I think professionals would visit yours more often than SO. Since the user asking has to pay some money, it’s very much likely that questions asked on the platform won’t be repeated, easy or unnecessary questions. There’ll probably be more interesting and intelligent questions, therefore create information a resourceful platform. And If things goes well, it might go on to be the best resource on the internet to learning to code.

I think Reddit and Bitcointalk UI would be great, because this is community oriented. Other than the UI issue, you’ll have to come up with a plan to build a community of coders. Anyone asking a question would want to be sure he’s going to get a good answer real fast. Thirdly, what’s the payment process going to be? ETH, BTC or ? Would you be using lightning Network?

I have to say I thought about suggesting you work to towards integrating (like a userscript/add-on) it on Bitcointalk (or the new Epoch software). It’s a financially better way to reward an reply than the merit system in some cases where the user can afford to reward the reply. Secondly, There’s a community here already, a Large focused technical crypto community and a good number of people ask technical questions here (among other newbie questions) everyday, but that’s if your platform is just for blockchain related coding and even if it’s broader, I’ll like to see a Bitcointalk grow.

Stackoverflow and other free platforms will quickly answer simple questions, but anything more complex tends to stay open for long periods of time, or have insufficient answers. SO has incentives system in form of reputation bounties, but those are just "fake internet points". So, I totally see how OP's platform can work - not being as popular as SO, but a good place for hard questions. However, for that to happen, the public should be aware of it, so marketing is extremely important here.

The idea looks good to me. I mean, the questions and answers don't have to be centralized on 2-3 websites. The more the merrier.
Some bugs/improvements/ideas though:

1. You break the browsing history. If I press back after opening a question/thread, I go to main page instead of the list of questions.
2. You need a better UI for displaying the "short view" and the "full view". Also I agree with @pooya87, that text-box looking part invites you edit instead of reading
3. It could be useful to have a way to get the link to one of the questions without opening it. You'll also need to offer direct link to each answer.
4. I think that the main page should already show the newest questions, else some may think that they have to create an user in order to see them. That "let's go" link may not be enough (and also may not be visible enough).

So I'll take a stab at your criticism. Stackoverflow does not always provide the answer. Sometimes the answers are weak or there is no response given at all. In those cases, what does one do when they need the answer for work? Give up? In addition to this predicament there are many countries with strong technical people but poor jobs. For us in better developed countries getting a few bucks may not be enough motivation. But how about this, spending a few bucks to get a good answer. Could that be worth it to some? And then again for those in poorer countries receiving a few bucks for their knowledge would be very welcome.

Additionally people speak as if Stackoverflow can do no wrong. Stackoverflow has many strong points but some flaws. The one already mentioned I think is a critical flaw, but also their search results are poor as well and they have heavy moderation and centralization. I intend to be more loose with what is allowed. Users should decide what and how to post.

At the end of the day there's mcdonald's, wendys, chickfila, burger king, etc. And also many other similar competitive situations, why not have some in the tech forum space? Since stack alone serves millions seems like taking even 10-15 percent might be a decent business?

If you are the lead developer of the site and only focused on functionality then I would say you really need to find some front end designer. May be you can post a contest to see a good design and pick the best guy from there. You can do it in this forum or in any freelancing site out there.

You will achieve three things from it:
1. A good publicity before you even to start
2. New users in the site since yours is the niche of tech industry
3. A guy or group of guys who are really creative to help you in designing the front end for you.

@OP, here you already have some hints from ETFbitcoin but I would like a new and unique idea of design. It will be up the that front end developer who will execute it.

that was my concern too. platforms like this which have a method of earning money, attract "earners" not "experts" and even a small amount of spam could end up discouraging the "experts" to come around too. having already good and popular alternatives doesn't help either.

---

two suggestions:
1. when clicking on each question, the opened page looks like as if i am about to edit the question body because it loads in some sort of text box rather than a block that looks more like a comment.
2. add more formatting tools, maybe markup that reddit, github, stackoverflow use so that it would be easy to write comments and format them. for example the codes shouldn't look like normal comments.

It always good to see implementing a project that will boost and expose the use of cryptocurrency but I believe the OP is still kind of haste cause the site needs to be more unique and concrete than the previous site we have in the field or else people will find the site useless.

What sort of tech questions are you planning to target? There is StackOverflow which does exactly the same except anybody is free to post questions and get them answered without putting any real money on it.

Might work out if your tech questions are related to crypto but other than that I don't see anyone ditching StackOverflow.

Thank you Royse777. Could you give me an example of a site that both looks good and can function as what I am intending? I'm thinking maybe reddit? But I'm hoping the professional nature of the questions will make people focus more on functionality as I'm not a web designer and don't have that much time. If the site makes money I could certainly hire someone later.

I got a link in my PM from OP as I asked him for it. I visited the website and the idea looks very good. The site itself needs a lot of work to do in terms of designing. I hope dharric will focus on the interface for the time being.

The person asking questions preloads some credits into their account. Then when they write their question they determine a specific bounty for that question. When someone answers the question and the question asker likes the question they select it as answer and the system will take that bounty from the question asker and give it into balance of answerer.

Additionally everyone has a bounty payment percentage score. If you don't pay your promised bounty people will know and not answer your questions.

Once answerer get's a minimum balance (I'm trying to avoid people asking to be paid 23 satoshi) they ask for payment and are paid in bitcoin.

The users that want a good answer for their questions.

From the homepage of his website:

And now that I answered your question, that's going to cost you 0.0005 BTC.

Who is paying?

You, or the people asking questions?

I don't like websites which ask you to register before being able to find out what they offer.

Hi guys thank you all for your interest. The site is https://dzhaven.com. Please note its just started so there's not much traffic. But what I would like is feedback in terms of updates to features and bugs.

Both bounty setup and answer payout are working. And all posts can be done with youtube video as well as text.

Its been my experience that sometimes I ask questions and I dont get any response or the responses are not what I need. I figured since this is usually for work people would have an incentive to pay if they get good quality answers.

As for differentiators my site will allow posts to be done in both video and text. Since some answers will work better explained with images and sound.

questions like what we find in technical discussions and support in the forum are answered well, i'm sure a lot of the people will try to help as long as there is a guarantee those who asks questions will come back and pick the best post that answers his question. i wonder how is this programmed. does this mean the user who post the question is bound to first send BTC (as the reward) for the question will be posted?

I think if you don't have enough marketing programs or any incentives, people won't be willing to give others amount of Bitcoin just to ask questions.

I used to have a similar idea, but with a translation platform.

Interesting but the point for people asking questions is why should they pay to ask something if they can get it for free on other platforms. What will attract them to your site? Is there a way for askers to earn free points/coins so they can use it later to ask for example?
Getting people to reply won't be difficult but getting people ready to pay to ask a question will be a lot harder.

you didn't provide that much information apart from saying it is like stackoverflow in which case if it is questions and answers kind of website, i don't think it could succeed since there is already a very good platform for that (SO) and you can also ask a lot of the questions on Reddit too and all for free while there are lots of experts already there answering them for free.

however, i would be interested if this were more like asking for "help". you didn't mention what topics the site would cover but if it has what SO has, from a coder's perspective i sometimes want to have some code reviewed, or some specific problem in that code be solved and i can't get that help on SO or that many other places and it would require a lot more effort since it requires code review,... so a place for that would be nice.

You only asked if people were interested in a website that did this.

I mean a thread where you actually introduces your website, puts some details about it, screenshots, etc... and obviously a link.

Forgive the newbie ignorance I thought this was a thread I created. I will be releasing the url soon but wanted to gather some more feedback and perhaps make changes based upon that first.

Make a thread for your website and post its URL. There are many people here which are eager to help (even without getting paid).

Good point. What I can say is my site is more like a stackoverflow. In other words its not really a bunch of professionals like angie's list or just answer. Its supposed to be more community driven and IT specific. The sites you mention are business to consumer. Mine is more any IT person to any IT person. Not sure this is enough of a difference for you, but thanks for the feedback nonetheless.

Sorry one more thing on my site the question "fees" paid are bounties and the question asker sets them, not the site. So there's more control, and of course the responders will determine if whatever that bounty is sufficient.

Also all posts can be done with video as well as text. I think this is a nice distinguishing feature as well.

So it's something like Quora, but people can post a bounty for answering the question?

Aren't there already a few identical platforms like Just Answer, Experts 123 and Wonder?

What separates your platform from these? Some of these platforms already allow users to provide payment in cryptocurrencies.

Shoot me a link in my PM or in here. Let's see what you have.

Hello I've created a website that allows people to ask tech questions. The question asker sets a bounty for the question and the person that best answers it takes the bounty (paid in Bitcoin).

This is currently a small site with almost no traffic, but I'm hoping the premise is valuable to people and they'll give it a try. If anyone is interested please let me know and I will provide the link here.