WebAnswers: A Great Concept Ruined. Though Legit, You Won't Earn Much

To be honest WebAnswers is an ingenious concept. Basically you ask and answer questions and then you get to share in the revenue of the site. This model worked so well for so long but its really gone down hill fast. I'm no longer recommending the site.

Since this is a blog and most people can't be bothered to read a long series of paragraphs ranting,  I will give you a top 6 list of the reasons that WebAnswers is broken.

The Problem with WebAnwers

1. People don't award best answers. So you've done your research. You've worked really hard and crafted the best answer to the question that you can. Google agrees and pushes the page up the rankings so it gets a ton of traffic. However, the author (often a bot) doesn't bother to award the question to you (or anyone at all) so you will earn very little revenue from your question. 
2. The questions are awful. When you look down the list of questions most of them are junk questions created by bots. The questions they ask are not going to be searched for so you won't make very much answering them. You will not get awarded a "best answer" and all of your earnings will be indirect (i.e. just through participation). 
3. Google probably looks down on WebAnswers. If you want to rank well on Google then you need to create compelling, high quality content. However, the bot generated questions (with exceptionally bad grammar) are pulling the site down. 
4. Lack of transparency on quality score. The detail given about how the quality score works is very thin. In order to tell exactly what you should be doing you need to be told. For example if a question needs three sentences to answer perfectly will I get hit by a penalty for a short answer? If I answer a question with lots of jargon or weird words will I be hit for bad spelling? 
5. All the best people have left. Many, many of the most active people on the site "the brains" are no where to be seen. Many have deserted the site which is not a good sign. 
6. Your earnings only last a year. Once a question is over a year old you will not get any revenue from it. Hence you cannot earn any recurring income from Answerers. You must be active at all times answering stupid bot questions to keep up your earnings. 

I really hope they can turn WebAnswers around. In order to do this they need to get rid of the bots completely. That includes deleting all of their questions. Furthermore, they need to extend the life of the best answers to last indefinitely. Until these changes are made I will not be writing there any more.