A Questionable Way to Earn Money Answering Questions

I recently read a story that contended you could make money answering questions on HelpOwl — a site I’d never previously heard of. Believing that this might be a viable alternative to JustAnswer, where you can make six-figures answering questions, we decided to check it out.

So to quickly cut to the chase: Can you make money answering questions on HelpOwl?

Yes. But not much. Here’s what we found out.

What is HelpOwl?

HelpOwl connects people with questions about companies, products and cars with freelance experts, who can answer their questions for points. Once you accumulate enough points, you can convert them into gift cards.

How it works:

If you want to ask a question, you first look through the drop-down menu to say which company or product you’re interested in. Then you type your question into the appropriate box.

Those who want to answer questions, do much the same thing. You select the company or product that you want to answer questions about and then type in a keyword. Relevant questions pop up below.

You pick the question or questions you want to answer. And, assuming the question hasn’t already been answered sufficiently, you can receive points for responding. You can also receive points for uploading product manuals.

HelpOwl review:

You get a relatively high amount of points for each answer — 100 to 1,000. But those points are worth almost nothing. Indeed, HelpOwl is where you would go if you wanted to make the expression “let me give you my 2 cents” literal. The site’s pay works out to roughly 2 cents per question.

The site tries to make that sound cool.

HelpOwl says that it works a little like Skee-ball. “Who doesn’t love skeeball(sic)?” the site asks. “You earn tickets that can be redeemed for prizes…We have adopted the same model on HelpOwl.com! You can earn points for a number of things throughout the site, and then use those points to receive gift cards to leading merchants like Amazon and Walmart. It’s that simple!”

Skee-ball style

Let’s run through the HelpOwl math.

You get 100 points for answering a question and 1,000 points for providing the “first accepted answer.” But it takes 50,000 points to get a $10 gift card. So the 100 points you get for answering a question are worth 2 cents.

In other words, to earn a $10 gift card at HelpOwl, you’d have to answer 500 questions. That’s a lot of answers for very little money.

Comparatively, if you were to answer questions on JustAnswer, you’d earn at least a few dollars per question and potentially $20 or more for a few minutes of work. We’ve interviewed freelancers who earn six-figure incomes on JustAnswer. That would be mathematically impossible on HelpOwl.

What type of questions?

It’s worth mentioning that the questions posed on HelpOwl aren’t necessarily easy to answer, either.

When we reviewed the site, the questions you could answer included how to deal with a faulty refrigerator, when both the manufacturer and retailer fail to respond. One asked how to fix a poorly installed speed governor in a car. And another asked about the value of Aflac insurance.

Most of the answers required multiple paragraphs. However, the answer on Aflac simply linked to a review on NerdWallet.

Accumulating points

Other activities that could earn you points on HelpOwl:

• Uploading a manual of 1-10 pages (that isn’t already on the site) gets you 250 points. (Worth 5 cents)
• Submitting a manual of 11-50 pages, that they don’t already have, gets you 500 points. (Worth 10 cents)
• Submit a manual of 51-100 pages, that they don’t already have, and you get 750 points. (Worth 15 cents)
• And, if you submit a manual that is more than 100 pages long, you get 1,000 points. (Worth 20 cents)
• If you’re the first “accepted” answer to a question, you get 1,000 points (Worth 20 cents)
• If someone upvotes your answer, saying that it’s “helpful,” you get 10 points. (You’d need five upvotes to earn a penny.)

Take-aways

But, not only do you earn a pittance on this site, the site gives itself the right to take your points away.

If one of your answers is marked as “unhelpful,” the site deducts 10 points from your total. In addition, the site can take away your points if a question you answered has been removed from the site. Or if one of your questions or reviews was removed.

And then there’s the blanket statement in HelpOwl’s terms that says: “We reserve the right to change anything related to Points at any time.”

Worst of all possible worlds

So, where the complexity of the questions you’re answering on HelpOwl is similar to the questions you’d answer at JustAnswer, the pay is not. The mechanic that earns six figures on JustAnswer, for instance, would probably earn a few hundred dollars — working full time — if he answered questions here.

In fact, the pay offered through HelpOwl is even less than what you could earn answering questions at survey sites like Qmee, Swagbucks, and SurveyJunkie. Most of these sites pay 5 cents to 25 cents for each survey response. And, with survey sites, you’re answering questions about your personal preferences and purchases, which is easier than giving car repair instructions or uploading a 100-page repair manual.

Survey sites also often allow you to make money by playing games and watching advertisements, which is not available through HelpOwl.

Redeeming points

But let’s say you answer questions here anyway and you want to cash out. On HelpOwl there’s no cashing out until you accumulate at least 50,000 points, which will get you a $10 Amazon or Walmart gift card.

If you do manage to build up that number of points, you simply click on  “redeem points” and follow the instructions.

Points can be redeemed for one of three gifts cards — Amazon, Walmart or an iGift card. However, the iGift card, which can apparently be exchanged for individual store gift cards, will cost you more points — 69,500 to be exact. And it has a $3.95 service fee.

Recommendations

There are far better places to make money than HelpOwl. For instance, if you have knowledge about law, medicine, appliance or car repair — or dozens of other topics — you can sign up with JustAnswer and get a reasonable payment for each query you respond to.

If you have deep knowledge about any topic, from consumer products to health care, you may also want to check out some of the focus group and armchair consulting firms that pay generously for advice. These include Maven, Respondent, UserInterviews and Rare Patient Voice (for health care-related questions and medical research).

But you’re completely satisfied earning a few pennies an hour for your time? You can sign up with HelpOwl here. But don’t say we didn’t warn you.