6 Easy Ways I Made Money as a Freelance Writer on Quora

What you need to know about my 6.71 million views

A little over two years ago, I didn’t have a job. So I was in limbo and looking for a job. During this time I had recently finished an interview with a government contracting company and just getting on board. One day I found Quora or Quora found me. I don’t remember the exact details.

On Quora, I was answering a few questions that I came across. Then I found a page where Quora was accepting applications for new partners to ask questions or maybe I received an invitation to write for Quora. I really don’t remember exactly how it went.

I remember thinking to myself it would be cool to write for this California-based company. I had taken a few classes to improve my writing in college, now I was going to actually get paid for what I had learned.

How I Made Money on Quora

Making money as a freelance writer has changed drastically over the years especially with the emergence of the internet. Before the internet people made money writing books or articles for different news mediums. Now you can write online and make money. That’s what I did as a writer on Quora except I got paid to ask questions. Many people today still don’t know about this little secret on Quora but it is possible.

Over 300 million people use Quora monthly either asking questions, answering questions, viewing questions, or trying to find an answer about a hot topic. It sounds like a great place to find answers to your need to know questions such as can a person get the corona virus a second time? I made this question up but you may find out that someone may have already asked this question.

Quora only allows one person to ask a question and they don’t allow questions to be repeated. When a question is repeated, it may get through but then another user or admin will merge the question with the previously asked question. So two of the same questions will not be found. This also allows the person who created the question to get paid.

Paid to Ask Questions

My first payment from Quora was $33.05 just for asking a few questions. This wasn’t a lot of money, but I thought this was cool. I spent ten or fifteen minutes a day each week asking a few questions. I was getting hooked on trying to think of more questions to ask.

One day, a Quora administrator published the top earnings. I noticed some writers were making thousands a month. I wanted to be a top earner as well. It became my new goal. I started to think about what I needed to do to scale my monthly earnings.

Make Money Tagging People to Answer Questions

I started to see that I could tag up to 25 Quora users on questions I asked. After a certain point, Quora puts a limit on the maximum number of questions you can ask. I never figured out the total number of questions I could ask per day but continued to tag as many people until I reached my limit. I didn’t do this every day because it takes a lot of time to do this.

I started to experiment if I could tag more people while using my desktop or from my phone. Each system has its pros and cons. I finally figured out I could tag more people faster on my phone as compared to my computer. On some days when I took my daughter to tennis practice, I would tag Quora users as I watched my daughter play. I usually had 90 minutes to 120 minutes until her practice was over.

On these days, I was trying to do two things once. My daughter didn’t play the entire time as she took turns with the other players. So I was able to watch her play and make money on Quora.

Other Things I Tried to Boost My Earnings

Ads

Quora partners generate income when readers click on the ads that are on the Quora site. This option is not 100% clear to me but there isn’t a site on Quora that shows what ads the readers clicked on. So I cannot tell you what ads did better than others. I normally didn’t see the ads as I was too busy asking questions.

I started to read under a Quora update, that some questions earned more money than other questions. I assume it was similar to other sites where some information earned more money than others. One day I should do some research to see what ads, in general, do better than others.

Trending Topics to Make Money

I started to see that the trending topics did well in terms of user response. Everyone likes to find out what is going on with trending topics each day. Sometimes these hot topics can last for weeks. If I asked a question on these topics, they could generate a $1.00 over more very quickly. Several questions made over $10.

I asked some questions about money or investing which usually did well in terms of income generated. Then I asked other questions about NBA basketball which also did very well. I was never able to precisely figure out what questions other than money did well on Quora.

Retweeted Questions on Twitter to Make Money

You can use social media to generate more income with Quora. Sometimes when I asked questions on Quora, I retweeted them on Twitter. This got more eyes on my questions. A few times this also generated a response on Twitter from my followers or random users.

I started to purposely retweet some questions especially if they were a trending topic or if they dealt with cryptocurrencies, an area I am familiar with.

What I Liked About Quora

At first, when I started using Quora, I liked it. A few times I made over $100 just by asking questions. I was spending a few minutes a day asking questions or tagging users while getting paid.

Compared to writing, I wasn’t restricted by an editor as long as I followed some basic rules. For the most, I had to ask new questions which sometimes generated money, some earned more money than other questions. I was able to spend some free time and make a little extra money.

Why I Left Quora After Two Years

After making a total of $1296 with Quora, I let the platform go. I still generate a few cents in passive income every day even though I don’t ask questions anymore. Last month, I earned $1.32 because of the questions I had previously asked.

Over the past year in late 2019, I was getting more views on my questions but my pay was a lot lower. I couldn’t figure out what happened. I thought that Quora must have changed their pay scale even though they never officially mentioned it.

During the summer of 2019, I reached a new high of $154.34 but I could never come close to that again. To break this level was tough. After a while I got bored tagging people and then sometimes I ran out of questions to ask.

Boredom was quickly settling in for me asking questions day after day. I realized on days when I didn’t tag people or ask new questions, my income was low for that day.

Plus for the time I spent writing questions, my return on investment was quite low. Overall I averaged, a $1.00 per question asked. When I thought about it, writing for Quora wasn’t worth it.

As 2020 began, I was looking for a substitute for Quora. I was looking hard for another writing system, blog, or site that I could trade my Quora time for another platform.

I follow Neil Patel on YouTube and I asked him on one of his videos if I should create a blog or start an affiliate site. He recommended starting a blog. I didn’t start my own blog but remembered I had a Medium account from two years ago and had barely used it. So I started to write more and found my Quora replacement. In a sense, Medium was my blog.

My Final Thoughts on Quora

I think Quora is a good platform but it’s hard to really scale your income. There are some users who do very well and I figure they ask about 10 new questions a day. Some of these users also may have been a part of Quora program early on, so they may have a good system working for them.

The last time I asked a question on Quora was three months ago when I had to make a decision to keep wasting my time writing for Quora or to finally let it go. I made the right decision and everything worked out very well.

Check out this other article that I wrote about Quora:

Have you ever used Quora before?

Tom Handy is a top Investment and Bitcoin writer on Medium, and the father of two kids. He retired from the Army and sits on several non-profit boards. He’s on several social media channels and you can find him on Twitter @tomhandy1 and Instagram @tomhandy1.