I still get paid by Quora but I don’t spend much time there anymore. Some writers enjoy Quora but the site has left a bad taste in my mouth. You see, I did not use Quora as a funnel for ideas or to answer questions. I was a paid writer for the website but left them earlier this year.

Sarene B. Arias read my article I Left Quora After Painfully Making $1,000 and asked for a follow up on what exactly is Quora? This article will cover the purpose of Quora as well as my role as a paid writer.

Many writers on Medium use Quora for two purposes. Some writers use Quora to share their articles on Medium. This gets more views to their work.

Another group of writers use Quora to get ideas. You can search to see what the trending topics are on this website. One of the questions you see could turn into an article on Medium.

As for me, I have not down either of these. Maybe one day I will but not anytime soon. I have a running list of topics I plan to write about and the list continues to grow.

What is Quora?

According to Quora, the mission is to share knowledge with people. When you think about it, one person knows something that other people don’t. The goal for Quora was to connect these people and to spread knowledge to benefit people.

The top Quora writer of 2017, Josh Fechter, wrote that Quora had over 3 million questions as of April 2019. Then each question could have dozens of answers.

After a question is asked, people will share their answers. If the question is open-ended, many answers become opinions. Then the question becomes longer and gets more viewers on the page.

For paid writers on Quora, they earn income from users who click on the advertisements on the page. Even if someone views the question, you may not earn any income from that. You only earn income from people who click on the advertisements.

How I’m earning passive income from Quora

If you don’t find a way to make money while you sleep, you will work until you die.
Warren Buffett

There are three types of income, active, passive, and portfolio income. You should be familiar with active income which is the means to earn income from working. The different types of active income include salary, tips, wages, and commissions. This is the most common form of income.

Passive income is the ability to earn income while doing a lot of work in the beginning to eventually earning income without much effort.

Portfolio income is the ability to earn income from capital gains, investments, dividends, and interest.

Money I earned from Quora is considered passive income. Most of my initial work was coming up with questions that readers answered. I rarely had to do much else after this unless someone asked me a specific question in the thread.

Investopedia defines passive income as:

Earnings derived from a rental property, limited partnership, or other enterprise in which a person is not actively involved.

To date, I have earned $1,341.21. Since early spring this year, I have stopped using the platform as much as I did before. Since I started writing on Quora, I have asked 788 questions. These questions still draw interest and I earn income every month. The income isn’t a lot but sometimes a few dollars a month. In October, I earned $14.36.

Screenshot from Quora

Most of my questions revolved around things I was interested in. I would ask questions involving money, investments, sports, as well as a few others. After I asked questions, I started to see a trend and started to game the system.

Issues paid users run into on Quora

Created on Canva

Quora does not like it when you ask the same question. When one question that is asked and is similar to another question already asked, the question will merge with the older question.

Asking the first question is important otherwise your question could be merged with the older question. When that happens, you will not receive any more income. You only receive income from the original question that was asked.

When your question is merged with an older question, you get a notification on Quora that your question was merged. This was Quora’s way to prevent your question from earning income from a question that was already asked.

Insider tip to game the system. To ask a new question, sometimes I added the year. This was a way to ask new questions and make income from the question. After all of these years, a lot of questions get asked repeatedly. The Artificial Intelligence (A.I.) bot that screens the question will see the question as new.

Many times the A.I. bot will merge your question with a similar question. The questions are similar but not exactly the same. I had to request to unmerge the question. Sometimes this happened immediately or had to be reviewed by someone who worked at Quora.

The A.I. bot did not always see the difference. in similar questions. Then a few times, Quora users will request to merge your question. This is another way Quora works to prevent the same question from getting asked.