Clarification of Answer by
websearcher-ga
on
30 Jun 2003 14:38 PDT
Hello Henry:
Thank you for your interesting clarification request and also for your
kind words.
How much exactly to offer for a GA question can be a tricky thing to
judge.
The first thing I would ask is whether you have reviewed the
"official" pricing guidelines offered by Google Answers:
Google Answers: How to price your question
URL: http://answers.google.com/answers/pricing.html
Now, those guidelines are a good place to start, but they don't always
solve the main problem - how to know how long or how much effort
answering your question is going to take! Without actually doing the
research yourself, how were you to know that I would be able to find a
single site that listed the majority of information you needed? In
most cases, I think people have a pretty good idea of how much effort
(from an excellent searcher) will be involved.
Now, speaking to your $50 question - I grabbed your question
immediately after you posted it and posted my response one hour
afterwards. I worked the full hour on it, not just finding sites, but
composing the information, double-checking facts, and filling in the
blank spaces. That would, according to the guidelines, put me on the
borderline of a good $50 "effort". What I think you will find with GA
is that most researchers will either:
* Put in a fair amount of time depending on the question price, if at
all possible. They may search for additional info or spend more time
compiling the answer, if they feel the question was "overpriced".
OR
* Be willing to answer not-completely-related clarifications in the
case of a question where the price might have exceeded the effort
needed to answer the original question. (This clarification is an
excellent example of this!!!)
So, how to price your question to start with...? My advice would be to
ask yourself how much work you think it will be to answer it, then
consult the guidelines and price accordingly. If it's a case where you
think it falls between two given price ranges, pick the lower and be
prepared to tip appropriately if the service you receive calls for it.
As for requestion a specific researcher in the future, you may
certainly do it. Many of our return customers (and we have a lot of
them) do so. The typical way to do this is to put "(for
[researchername] only)" in the subject line of the question and also
to add a note to the question body that only [researchername] should
answer the question.
I hope this helps!
Thanks again.
websearcher-ga