Important and Exciting Announcement from Jason for Mahalo Contributors?

I personally just started at Mahalo a few months ago, but in that time I have dedicated over 50 hours a week to building pages knowing it would pay off in a few months. Just trying to learn the system and what was expected from me on pages took alot of time and dedication. I now have a large amount of pages I manage.

I personally am sad. As the first community member mentioned, I wish you could allow us to keep the pages we have already spent so much time on, and allow us to continue earning money on them. For some of us who just began writing many pages, we have put so much work into Mahalo pages and this just does not seem fair.

I understand your big picture, but in the meantime you are hurting members who may have put the most time and work into helping you build Mahalo. These should be the people your new system helps most. These are the people who should get rewarded, not punished.My plans were to make Mahalo my full time job and have dedicated the past 3 months to that.

I hope you can come up with a solution that helps the community but does not punish and hurt so many people that mean so much to your company.

Jason, I understand your frustrations with the flaws of the rev share system. The gaming, the low quality, the hit-or-miss on page revenues frustrating many/most members, etc. However, it appears to me the new system is throwing out the proverbial baby with the bath water. Personally, I'm one of those here who has not been managing pages full time.

However, I have built over 100 pages. It's true I picked up a handful of pages written by others who no longer managed them, but that was no more than 3 or 4.As for updating, I've tried to do that as needed, but frankly, with my other time commitments I knew my ability to do that would be limited, so I made sure to write "evergreen" pages that could live for several months or more with no updates, and still not be out of date. At the same time, I did make an effort to add new info, or make other mods on the high-revenue pages to make sure they stayed that way.

The new system does away with what was in my opinion your best way to assure members aligned with Mahalo. Under the rev share model, a writer who created a page that brings in a great deal of revenue to Mahalo benefited along with Mahalo. A writer who wrote on topics that did not generate income for you only received the upfront task payment.

Under the new system you have detached Mahalo's interests from those of the writer.In this model, the writer's income is guaranteed at a level slightly higher than minimum wage. This benefits those writers who cannot, or have no interest in, identifying high-profit topics and building them up as high-earning pages. At the same time, it punishes those who are interested in and are able to identify such topics and create them for you.

Perhaps it would be better not to make a complete break with the old system, as you've now announced. Perhaps it would be better to take away from PMs and VMs any pages they did not personally write, but leave those pages that are still managed by their creators to those creators. Then, set some standards for continuing to manage pages - some level of responsiveness, some level of updating time-sensitive information, etc.Otherwise you will probably lose your most effective writers in terms of increasing Mahalo revenue.

Certainly you will lose the 90% of writers who are not a good fit for Mahalo. However, you will also lose the entrepreneurial writers. The ones who wrack their brains to come up with the next Olive Garden Coupons and the thousands of dollars it brings in yearly.

Thus, you will also lose the top few % of writers. The ones who would make you more money. Just my $0.02 (now that M$0.02 is going away).

To be better for 90% of contributors, everyone would have the ability to earn the monthly rate for doing the monthly work. You’re limiting it to 60 people, so it’s only better for THOSE SIXTY PEOPLE, not 90% of contributors – it’s intentionally misleading and I’m not stupid. It’s really bad fuzzy math.

So what if one week someone happens to finish 22 pages and does 11 hours of updating and manages to get 12 questions asked and answered… They get nothing? They put in most of the work, but under the new system, if something happens in real life and they can't finish the 'goal', they get nothing and Mahalo gets all their pages for revenue, and yet, they put in all that work.It's not fair. It's not right.

100 (some months more) pages every month – that’s 100 minimum of 900-word articles every single month, and you think that’s going to provide quality content to the site? Really? That’s less than $8 bucks per article, with having to do the other stuff-assuming the average person can do one article per hour, that’s still below minimum wage!

Demand Studios at least pay $15 bucks per article and AC pays about $7-12 and has $2 per 1000 page views in a bonus. How exactly is this supposed to entice quality writers and writing? It won’t.

Just because we’re writers doesn’t mean we can’t do math. Haven’t you paid attention to the monthly how-to totals? How many people finish 25 articles per month, much less 25 per week?

Do you really think this is realistic for the majority of people? Do you really think you’re going to get 60 people willing to church out cut-rate content for so cheaply, with nothing in return if they don’t meet their quota? Piecework with a quota?

Isn't that illegal in the United States? Just sayin'.... I also hope Mahalo has consulted a legal representative to ensure that this new agreement doesn't constitute an employee/employer relationship, since they are providing a flat rate for a pre-determined amount of work and if they don't finish the total work they get nothing. There’s no way that sounds legal to me.

I'm not active on Mahalo much anymore anyway, and this surely won't entice me to do anything on this site. There are others like me that, when they have the time, they come and do a little something here or there, knowing that the money adds up in their account and they can eventually cash it out. Mahalo will lose all of the casual users that together could equal a large number.

There is power in numbers. Jason compared to AC, which allows people to write as much or as little as they choose. AC just sold to Yahoo!

For millions of dollars, in large part because they could say they had hundreds of thousands of contributors bringing in billions of page views per month. Mahalo now will only have 60 contributors - how is that growing? How is that increasing?

It's not. How can Mahalo grow by DECREASING the number of people who contribute to the site? It can't.... at least, not as quickly.

More of that fuzzy math.So what about the community? The community just shrank to 60 people, period. There are people who used Mahalo part time, and were very happy to do so and earn 300 bucks per month, or an extra 150 bucks to pay off one particular bill.

Those people will now no longer have any reason or incentive to write here and will go elsewhere, losing them to other sites where they can work part time if they choose to do so. I do not think this helps Mahalo grow. It shows no appreciation or support or loyalty to those who are only wanting to make a handful of pages per month and it sure shows zero loyalty to those who were building Mahalo up to be something more in the future.As for the amount of pay, it's slightly above federal minimum wage and below several states' minimum wages.

Do you REALLY think you're going to get the best quality writers when you're paying below or at minimum wage for the work? This won't improve overall Mahalo quality and it won't help Mahalo grow the same way an unlimited number or page managers and creators would.It takes time to build a site and traffic to the site. Mahalo is and was growing.

I feel that it will eventually stagnate under this plan and many will leave and eventually, Mahalo will once again 'pivot' and change the way they are doing things. Unfortunately, by then, Mahalo will have alienated so many people it will be hard to recover and bring back those who left hurt and/or angry or upset. Also, it's not a good bet that people who are/were burned in this or other 'pivots' will want to come back, because there's no guarantee Mahalo/Jason won't promise something and then change mid-stream again.

No trust. What happened to Jason's cries of, "I want there to be 50 people earning over $50,000 per month by this time next year? " There's no way that can happen now at all.

Broken promises, lies, sudden changes--not the best way to foster a business or a community.As far as the money already in a person's account, that money was earned and accrued under a system that said it was cash. The only right thing to do is to allow everyone to take that money as cash, even if they haven't reached the payout amount, since Mahalo is changing the rules mid-game. I'm sure that probably won't happen either.

Mahalo doesn't have a track record of 'doing the right thing'. Now, how do I go about getting my account canceled and having my name and such removed from this site? I don't want to be associated in any way with a site that I believe operates in such a way that it is illegal in its practices with its contributors.

Wonder how long this will stay up before it gets deleted...

Wow this certainly is a big change. Like you mentioned, this new system will be good for some writers but not for others. I think the new system is not fair to long time veterans who have built hundreds of good pages and are earning over $1,300 per month.

What will happen to the rest of the community who do not make the top 50 guides? I know there are a lot more writers on Mahalo. A lot of them are great writers but cannot write 25 new pages a week.

What will the page building process be like? Will there still be a QC system? Overall I think this standardized system may be ok for new writers who can work on it full time, but for veteran page managers and VM's, and those who can't spend so much time on the site per week, this is bad news.

I wish Mahalo could keep the current system, at least for those who are part of it now. Maybe use the standardized system for new writers. Personally I am not happy with the expected changes.

I have built and managed pages over a long period of time, and all of a sudden we are losing all of that? I'm sure many of the top page managers and VM's are going to be very unhappy about this. Why make the top members of the community unhappy?

I would like to be one of the new guides of course, but with a full time job, it will be very hard to make 25 new pages per week, plus 12 hours updates, plus 10 questions and answers. I really hope we can work something out that will make everyone happy.

All I can say is that I'm outta here. Working what would amount to something like 30-37 hours a week for $250 is ludicrous, and I won't be part of it. Jason, I've told you time and time again that you need to let people write what they can when they can, and you would do a lot better.

This need to control everyone and turn them into slave labor will be the downfall of this site. I'm very, very disappointed in this. It's been fun, it's been real, but it ain't been real fun, and this will be even less fun.

Jason, please, just do what every other reputable successful site does and set a price in real dollars on the articles and let people write when and how much they want. Pay them monthly if you want, but stop all this nonsense. Mahalo is just another content site.

Face it and stop trying to make it something it's not. You are going to lose all your best people, and be stuck with the dregs. Goodbye, Jason, and good luck.

I don't see Mahalo being the success your last two ventures were.

Ahn. No biggie, I got out while the going got going. Saw this a mile away.

I like you jason but you need to understand your actions (or whoever is pulling the strings over there at mahalo) (your investors? ) affect a lot more people then you realize. I'll stick around and help out .

But you just lost one hell of a writer. Looking at all of this in hindsight it looks like you are leaving a lot of people out in the cold. I might be wrong, however others might not feel that way.

Saying you will take peoples requests on a case by case bases is just more of the same. I can't with good conscious support your efforts any longer. I've made so many great friendships here, and I DO thank you for that.

And the hundreds / thousands of dollars mahalo HAS paid out. See you at the tables. Sorry but I stand with the little guys toe to toe.

You broke my heart jason. You broke my heart. It's been fun.David.

This is really sad. I was just considering coming back to Mahalo too. I had written answers on a question last week and then received an email to update one of my pages (that I built from scratch) the day before yesterday.

I don't think anyone saw this coming. I won't be back to Mahalo. The new Guide system/payment is ludicrous.About.Com pays their Guide's and contributors better with less expected work and they have The New York Times behind them.

I'm a writer. A damn good one according to the people I write for who have published me online and in print. I don't work for free and that is what Mahalo is expecting.

If I were to see into Mahalo's future, I would see a lot of people, just barely meeting the requirements and Mahalo taking all that hard earned work without a penny paid to the creators. And that is sad. I would like to know how to get all the content I have created up until this point back.

I don't work for free and a "gift card" is not what I signed up for. I expected to earn money off of all those pages, over time. Since that is no longer the case and I won't be paid for the content since it hasn't reached minimum payout, I want my content back.

As a writer, I get paid for my work. No money= No Content! The right thing to do is for everyone to be able to cash out their money earned, no matter what the amount, and start this new system without owing anyone any money.

That is the FAIR thing to do.

Being rather new to Mahalo, I can only share how I see this from my perspective. I do not know many people that can live off $1000 a month. People will have to put in the same amount of effort to receive significantly less.

I will not be striving now to do anything on Mahalo but asking and answering questions. Going to have to poke around Funny that I too am upset by the changes, yet I seem to be in the "new" category that the changes are supposed to be pleasing. With the old system I had hopes of building and managing awesome pages, with the new method, I have no drive to create any pages.

Why work my butt off to share the revenue? I think most of the people with skills on the site came here for the revenue sharing model. With this gone, I imagine a lot of the quality writers will be leaving.

Again, just a guess. Oh my, I just reread everything and it seems that I will be returning to my old "haunts" to pursue online earnings. If I cannot even cash out my Mahahlo $ from the Answers side of the site... I will post this for now.

I have more searching to do to answer all of the questions. I'm sad for those people that are losing out on lots of money. Imagine thinking you had a full time income and then the company you devoted your sweat, tears and effort now caps your salary at $1300 a month?

Pretty bad business. :( Not surprising though, most sites do this to their dedicated members. Having been earning online for a few years now, you get used to the noise.

That's why I tiptoe in and do a peak. I'm happy I wasn't here long enough for this to financially effect my family (that has happened to me once before and it is devastating).

Wow, talk about big changes! I'll admit that I got a bit of whiplash when I read @Jason 's email. Very interesting though.

I'm going to try to attend the conference this afternoon to learn more. I think I'll be interested in applying to be a guide, but I need to learn a bit more about it to be sure. One of the huge benefits of Mahalo to me was the ability to schedule work when I needed it.

Some weeks I did nothing as I worked on outside projects, other weeks I did a lot of work, participating on the GO team, etc. My concern is that this will be a big slam on the Mahalo community. With the page building crew being limited to 60 people, a lot of people who have a casual interest in page management will be turned off.

I'm pretty disappointed here. At least from feedback from your guides I am one your best how to writers. I have two young children and 100, or even 50 pages a month is far from a possible option for me.

Instead I get the well over 100 pages I've written taken away and a writing job I was enjoying and you were profiting from also taken away. Stay at home moms just got dumped by mahalo. Oh well.

Would have been nice to have a bit more warning about that tutorial as I didn't even know about it till it was over. Questions: 1. Since it's all the more I'll be participating from now on, you said answers will continue ad0-rev and I'm assuming answers will still reward tips as well as the guru and conundrum land team will still be paid.

Will that money be real, or mahalo dollars? If it's mahalo dollars, so long. I can do without a beach towel.2.

The pay out deadline was previously the 3rd I assume in July it is yet again the 30th?

I understand the need for quality. But to expect 1300 pages plus an extra 520 hours of updating pages, and 1300 questions or answers per year for $12,000 a year. I doubt you are going to have the quality you want.My estimate and I could be off is that's about 2000 hours or more a year for 12,000 dollars.

That's less than minimum wage plus the writer must pay their own social security and medicare. If you are trying to be like About.Com model you need to find people who are dedicated about their subject and pay them for the well for what they do. I wish you luck with this, but I think you will be sorry as time goes on because of how the "Team" wanted to deal with the problems revshare had.

You have bragged about how much Mahalo grew in one years time, and I think you just pulled the rug too quick. I think you will end up with a bunch of burned out writers in this new system without a pool to replace them.

A couple of questions from one who is a very, very part time page-writer. :) 1. The pages that I have already created will not generate any more AdSense revenue?

Are they essentially dead pages? How can I continue to profit from them - or can I? 2.

When I opt to write a new page, will I no longer be paid for it? Or will I be paid in "real dollars" instead? How will that work - direct PayPal payment for each page completion?

The amount of work expected from Guides is quite a lot. I hope you can find enough people here to step up to that challenge. For the amount of money earned, that is essentially worth a second job (granted, a second job at minimum wage, but that's still a bunch of extra money).

I can't say I'm a huge contributor to Mahalo, but it was in my plans. Now, I really don't know. Jason, you profess to make these changes to make Mahalo fair to writers, but from my perspective the changes are anything but fair.1.Compensation.

I do enjoy writing, but I don't have the luxury of writing just for the sake of writing. I have to use it for income to support myself, and when the site is making money off my writing, I want to be paid as well. The decision to write an article is based on the upfront payment as well as the anticipated rev-share.

$M 7 for an article that takes just 1.5 hours (a low estimate for me) to research, write, come up with links, videos, inlinks, etc, etc breaks down to just $3.5/hour (USD). I simply couldn't justify writing for that level of compensation; the only way I could justify the work I did was with the anticipation of recurring rev-share income. That was part of my agreement when I wrote, and I assume that was the case for a lot of writers.

Now, you say you won't offer rev-share, even on pages already written. How is that fair? That's like agreeing to pay a writer $10, having them write the article, use it and then tell them you've changed your mind and will only be paying them $4, even though they have lived up to all expectations.

There is nothing fair about that.2. Cash-out. For those of us that don't meet the minimum (I'll be at $M120 after this latest task), you're further telling us you won't pay them at all, except for some special considerations or for products and services that allow Mahalo to re-absorb some of that money.

For example, a $25 gift card that costs the purchaser $33 or Q&A that keeps the money strictly in the Mahalo world. I need money to pay bills, not buy gift cards or offer away my hard earned money. Again, there is nothing fair about this.3.

Guides & Senior Guides. The changes are supposedly purposed to create a universally fair Mahalo, and yet the second point made is limiting special positions to just 50, which newcomers have virtually zero chance of obtaining. Granted, there's not many other ways to address this, so although essentially stating "we do not see all writers as being equal", they really aren't and this is just a hiring process that we live with everyday.

But honestly, I don't know who'd want the job; I wouldn't. If it took you 1.5 hours to make a decent article, and just 15 minutes for a Q/A (most will just post a question they don't really care about), you'd be working 52 hrs/wk for about $233, which amounts to a salary of $4.48/hr. I couldn't live off of that and wouldn't have enough time to work another job.So if this works for someone out there and they're happy, more power to them.

SOLUTIONS FOR WRITERS The solution for writers is obvious, but it doesn't bode well for Mahalo. Writers have to make more money to justify time spent. There are several ways to do that.

1. Spend less time on articles. This is obvious enough.

If you could spend only 30-45 min/article, you'd at least make minimum wage, maybe even a little more. Of course, you'll have to cut out a lot of the "fluff", which means less time researching for accuracy, less time proofreading for grammar and spelling, less time with the Mahalo requirements such as videos, inlinks, references, etc.Basically, you'll have to lower your quality standards and produce questionable articles, but that's ok, because only Mahalo suffers from that; you'll make the same money. 2.Reprint.

Just take the articles you're writing for Mahalo, and submit them to the slew of other sites that pay upfront or rev-share, and your bottom line increases. Of course, this isn't good for Mahalo, since the same text propagating around the 'Net lowers SEO and reduces the unique content for Mahalo, but you're making more money to justify the time spent at Mahalo.3. Go elsewhere.

If you don't want to sacrifice your quality standards or integrity, then I'm sure you're talents will be appreciate somewhere else. I hope not everyone decides to go this route, though, because it would mean the end of Mahalo. I am being, or trying to be, facetious, but the above illustrates what will be the natural evolution of the writer's mindset.

A lot of writers are here to be a part of something great. A community of writers that are helping each other and treating each other with respect and fairness. That is no longer the case.

These changes are an affront to the majority of writers. EVERYONE that manages a page is being told their income is being reduced through no fault of their own. Most will be offended by this and have their Mahalonian loyalty shaken.

The only outcome of this is detrimental to Mahalo.So what can be done? SOLUTIONS FOR MAHALO First of all, you have to treat your writers well and honor your previous obligations.1. Rev-share.As part of the writer's expected return on their writing investment, you can't just decide not to give it to them, because you're essentially saying, "I'm taking that money for myself".

That rev-share was promised and needs to be honored; to do otherwise is dishonorable. Continue to give rev-share for existing pages managed OR settle with a secondary flat-rate payoff per page managed to compensate for the loss of rev-share. Mahalo would be nothing without writers, and your payment promise needs to be honored.

In the future, writers have an informed decision to make to continue without subsidizing from rev-share. Another option is to allow writers to enter their own adsense IDs and have an equal number of ad spaces go 100% to them. That would effectively allow them 50% rev-share, but without the requirements of Mahalo monitoring or paying them out.2.

Upfront payments. I would think these would l have to be raised to encourage the kind of quality that has come to be expected. Otherwise, the time is not justifiable and ways of cutting corners will be found.

This lowers quality, which in turn lowers the perception of Mahalo by its users. By offering a fair compensation, even without the potential of rev-share, you encourage writers to write quality articles without pushing them to your competitors for reprints or exclusivity. Most writers do not write to get rich, but they should be allowed a living by earning at least the minimum wage.3.

Payouts. As conditions have changed from when the writers first agreed, writers should have the opportunity to cash-out their money regardless of the current total.It's only fair. And you don't need to inundate Mike with approving each and every request...or denying those that will become disgruntled.

Anyway, that's just my random thoughts on the issue. I'm not hugely affected by this, because I've only written a relatively small amount (13 pages managed) and have not come to rely on Mahalo for a large chunk of my income. I can leave now without feeling the hit as bad as others (assuming I get my payout).

However, I would like the opportunity to continue and grow with Mahalo under a fair system with people who have shown a commitment and appreciation to their writers.

I can't really say that I have all that much to add to all that has already been said, except that I'm kinda disappointed by this turn of events. I had to leave Mahalo for a while to get my website together and also cope with two jobs, and before I had left, I had accrued an amount that was almost up there to where I could convert. Only, I don't have a Paypal account and before I can get one, I have to get a bank account, one of which I haven't had in years, because I find it immoral that banks reward people for being rich and penalize them for being poor.At any rate, I was planning on getting around to all that so that I could start earning Mahalo Dollars in earnest on Mahalo Answers, so that I could convert it to cash.

Now I find that Mahalo Dollars are going to be only purely virtual currency, that only buys stuff in the Mahalo Store? I find that quite disappointing. I worked for that money, answering a ton of questions, and throwing myself into answering them to the very best of my ability.

I was only here for a short time, but I spent many, many, many, many hours here, entire days at a time, doing my part. Now, the Mahalo Dollars I accrued are, if I understand correctly, rendered effectively useless unless I want merchandise at the Mahalo Store? I've looked at what's available, and I haven't really seen anything I'm interested in buying.

That means that there's not really any point in me spending my Mahalo Dollars. That said, it seems to me like, from my viewpoint, the financial compensation factor of Mahalo Answers is gone, and people no longer get the chance to earn real money for using their knowledge to answer questions. Years ago I thought about how cool it would be to have a human powered search engine, one where the average person would get paid to contribute their knowledge.

I was stoked that Jason had come up with it independently, and actually had the vision to make it happen. Mahalo Answers had taken that concept and made it a reality. Now Mahalo Answers has a virtual currency, though, so it's little more than a game, and I sadly find that there is little incentive for someone like me to participate for the sake of currency I have no real use for.

I might contribute answers here and there from time to time, but if I have no use for my Mahalo Dollars, I'll have to go ahead and think of a hundred dollar question or something, and give it all away to the person lucky enough to get the best answer. Hopefully, it happens to be a person who has a use for virtual Monopoly Money. I'm sorry.

I know that the people calling the shots on this issue are doing what they think is the right thing, and I have nothing but respect for everyone here, from Jason to all the Moderators and Managers, all the writers, all the questioners, all the answerers...all the thinkers. And this very well MAY indeed be the will of the majority. But I feel that I've been suddenly disenfranchised with this particular alteration of the way things are done here, and if I contribute any of my knowledge to Mahalo at any time in the future, it will be entirely for altruistic reasons.

I won't bother to participate in the virtual currency system. That's my two cents. Thank you to everyone who reads this, and to all who understand.

And the best of luck to all of you and to Mahalo.

Every "exciting announcement" ever has been about increasing profit margins. Period. People who tell you otherwise are trying to sell you.

Here, the idea is basically to take a larger cut of $M by making you cash them out to gift certificates that are worth less than what you're getting now. There's absolutely nothing we can do about it.

I currently don't meet the M$150 threshold, so that means I have to give up on the money that is due to me for the pages I built. Does not sound right to me.

If I haven't been here for a year or so building decent content, then I really don't see an incentive for me to try and compete against writers who are already established - perhaps I am wrong, but as a new member, even if I am wrong - it isn't obvious!

Wow. For this last July payout, would you consider lowering the payout min for those of us who want to cash out before the Aug 1st change overs? I can't wait to try to be a part of this new and exciting system!

What isn't addressed in Jason's summary is who will maintain the existing pages. My high traffic pages are updated at least once a week. I definitely spend more time updating pages than creating pages.It would seem that the topic pages - at least in technology and internet - will become irrelevant.

Mahalo will just be mostly outdated pages with a few new ones. Perhaps more details will be spelled out .. hopefully someone will post a synopsis of the town hall.

I am very saddened by these changes; especially the fact that Mahalo dollars will no longer be convertible for real cash. I joined Mahalo at the end of May because answers, questions, tasks, etc had Mahalo dollars that were convertible and payable in real dollars via PayPal. I could see where one could make some decent money by answering questions, depending upon how many one did.In my first weeks on Mahalo, I made more than I had on other paying sites in the same amount of time with the same amount of man hours spent.

I was jazzed and continued to participate. Now that this is being taken away (Mahalo dollars will not be convertible into regular dollars), how do you expect those who answer or ask questions to get paid for their time spent on what used to be a paying website? Where is the income revenue in this?

Will there be any real income for those who answer or ask questions? Or is that now a thing of the past once these changes have been implemented? As for spending my time answering or asking questions for the love of discussion and topic, come on, who are you kidding?

This author joined because I would be paid for my written answers which meant paid for my time spent on Mahalo. This meant, whatever I wrote on this site I would get paid for doing. I needed this website as something to supplement my income.

I already had one site lower the amount they paid me in half and when my friend (she’s on the Go-Team) referred me to this site, I thought I had found a home. What do you suggest we "new" people who are not up to speed for being one of those special 60 guides do? You have already indicated receiving enough Guide applications from those who do the How-To pages and so forth.

Any suggestions? Did I understand your post correctly that as of July 1st, those who do Q & A’s will no longer be paid in a way that can be converted to real cash? That we will only be able to purchase or donate?

Surely you jest!

I was having the feeling that I cannot get anywhere with Mahalo for the last couple of months. Anyway I am glad for people who can write nicely. Since I tried hard and failed on the go team, I am not seeing much future here for me.

I may have the time...but I am not sure of my future in Mahalo. Thank you everybody, especially to Budda. You helped me a lot.

Also my special thanks to Davepam. I learned so many things from your questions. Tried to answer some of those.

I would like to thank Jason for creating Mahalo and giving the opportunity to be part of it.

I have been away from Mahalo (and the internet for the most part) for awhile now due to illness and am just about to get back into things full time again. I "live" on the internet as I own a small website design and hosting company. So, I will be able to do the new Guides requirements with no problem.

However, like addressed above, for those of us who have not been "hot n heavy" into page management (for various reasons), will we be cut off? Will we have a chance at becoming one of the 60 Guides? I would love to become a Guide.

I was so happy to have found Mahalo last year and I was very active until I got sick. Now that I'm back, I want to be an active member, which includes my 2 pages that I manage. How do we apply to become a Guide?

I would like to know if these guides are going to be assigned by categories. Video Games, Pets, etc…I manage 284 VG pages, most of them updated at least 2 times/month, maybe often if something important happened. I’m not in the go team because I’m specialized in video games, not coupons.

I worked with my VM for 4 months to build pages for each and every video game that will be released. This project we started required more than 25 pages / month. And now… What happens to all of them?

I look forward to applying, this would be perfect for me, I think it provides more motivation for me to contribute more!

I'm kind of disappointed. I was just starting to enjoy it here. I've been answering questions, which is fun, and I just submitted my first page, which was published.

I thought the combination of upfront payment/revenue sharing sounded good and was looking forward to creating more pages. The new system sounds a lot like a traditional job and is not flexible enough for someone like me. I write at half a dozen different sites regularly, plus I have two blogs and am editor at an emerging ezine, so this really isn't going to work for me now.

Best of luck though! I know it's really hard to make a go of it with a site like this one.

(@jasoncalacanis previous response) "((users)) Claiming an unmanned page and seeing $1000 a year for no work" - But Mahalo is doing precisely that with every page we struggled to create. Easy solution: A voting system (you get belt-points, like the rest of the site) to decide if the page manager is providing useful updates. This should be simple to implement and free to Mahalo.

But I suppose it's too late to fix this. I really enjoyed writing detailed quality video game walkthrough pages and watching views trickle off GameFaqs, but I can't write 2 walkthroughs a month, let alone 25 a week. I look forward to updates from Mahalo and will watch to see if you change back, thanks for the memories.

Long time overdue. I had told the Mahalo team on several occasions that the way they were operating was completely unscalable. I had already decided that I was done authoring for Mahalo.

I'm taking my last cash out and heading out, respectfully. Peace, Mahalo, has been fun (in the beginning, before it started to feel like a crappily paying job). :).

You could have at least left a small credit somewhere on the page as to who the original author was. As professional writers, its important for us to be able to point to our work. Now, like so many others, I feel as if hours and hours of my valuable time was wasted on this site.It really puts a bad taste in ones mouth, which will discourage participation - even if the new model is stellar!

Yes you're right but I want you to notice that this is not fair: for those who managed the pages, for those who made better pages , for those who promoted the pages arround the web, who improved the ranking of the pages who improved the ranking of mahalo. Mahalo should remain a community based on the merit on the revenue sharing for these reasons, not for the personal reasons of each of the page managers or vertical managers. It should be a better alternative mantain both page manager , vm and guide?

We all want a better solution, I hope my answer is usefull.

I'm a bit late coming in on this, although I was aware of it the afternoon it was announced. My grandmother passed away that morning so I've been dealing with that. When Mahalo Answers first went public, my husband had just lost his job a week before, and I was an early adopter.MA was fun for me and let me feel like I was doing something, even though it didn't pay a lot at first.

When Page Management was introduced, the system was in such a state of flux, and I was so busy otherwise, that I had to back away in order to do something more lucrative with my time (starting my menu service for low carb/diabetic/gluten free eaters). At the same time, my husband was pretty busy over the summer, job hunting and taking care of his elderly grandparents, so I really was short on time. This winter, when he was home more, I could do more.

And once again, warm weather has taken him out of the house, leaving me in charge of 4 kids. And finally, he's going to start a new job just as soon as the paperwork's in place; Monday at the latest.So that means we've come full circle. With him completely out of the house all week, I'm not sure if I'll have more or less time, believe it or not.

But I know either way I can't spend the amount of time Jason wants; probably not even half time--I'm thinking 1/3 of the time might be workable.So, knowing Mahalo's continually experimenting, I'll just wait. I'll probably answer some questions just for the heck of it, and just because I like to be helpful. But nothing like the time I've sometimes spent on it in the past.

I love to write and have found out here that I'm pretty good at it and have a unique voice. That in itself has been a good reward. But to pull ourselves out of 20 months of my husband's unemployment, I have to pursue things that give me as much return for my time as possible, without having to hire a sitter for four kids.

That unemployment, incidentally, is why I've never been able to tip much at all. It has nothing to do with whether I've *wanted* to be generous or not, and everything to do with staying afloat. I've always felt bad about my inability to do a lot of tipping.

Finally! I've been saying this since it got started: vertical page managers and the revenue sharing model is a bad move. I would much rather do it for free than share my work with a vertical page manager.

I've seen them come and go and all they did was annoy me. What's confusing to me is what will happen to my Mahalo dollars. You want me to convert those dollars?

Why not do it for us? What's confusing to me is whether or not I will get to keep my 2 pages. And if that's not the case, how do you expect 50 guides to update pages when they have no knowledge about the topic.

Quality wise, that would be a bad move. What held me back was my 2 page limit. Had I been given more pages when I asked for it, I would have started more pages.

That's not to say I would update those pages on a regular basis. I've been asking for more tools to make the pages more interesting.

I have mixed feelings about this change to Mahalo. I found Mahalo about a week ago. I am/was very excited about the opportunity to write pages from home.

I manage two pages and am/was about to get my third page. I have been dabbling with answering questions and have been really enjoying the opportunities on this website. I would have loved to have made GoTeam but I need to practice making my pages in one hour.

How does a new member to the community practice their page management abilities if they won't have an opportunity to manage a page? If I could ever manage to get one of the 50 spots this change in the payment plan will give more incentive for quality pages. I will be watching the town hall meeting hoping that this is only the beginning of my time with Mahalo.

Wow, this is definitely interesting. I was planning on quiting my job in July to work on the Go Team full time. I guess that will no longer be an option.

I do look forward to being able to apply to be a guide as that does look like an interesting and exciting position.

Jason, Kudos for trying to make Mahalo go on revenue sharing and bigger kudos for seeing the need for a change. I am sure Mahalo will only grow with these new changes.

I personally prefer the freelance aspect about Mahalo. If you do not want to become a Guide, but just answer questions will you still earn the revenues? Or do you have to become a guide to earn any money on Mahalo?

I believe that this is an exciting opportunity to whoever wants to take it. I am very new with the company, but I want to continue to grow with the company very much. Upon a recommendation from my VM, I have emailed Mike Bracco about a possible position.Is this what I should have done?

I am willing to do whatever it takes to be a part of this company, and to continue making money (or building up my account so I can make money) here. If there is anything else I can do at this time, I am all ears. I had just been switched over to sports and I was ready to go into overdrive with creating sports pages.

I would love to continue to do this in any way that is possible. Thank you.

It's nice to see change, but I've only been with Mahalo four months now. I am on the How To team but not the Go Team. I was unable to work the sifts because I have a small daughter.

I don't know what all this means and I hope to find out tonight. I like freelance writing and although the $M is a bit odd I like being able to write what I can when I can. Will there still be a place for those of us who cannot write 25 pages a month?

I'm sad to see the independent community currency go. It's a concept which has liberated cities and towns around the world, but I guess the concept is still ahead of it's time here. Long live Mahalo!

(I wrote 19 and was on #20). Is it true the tasks are cut as of today or at the end of the month? I am in the middle of an article right now and don't know whether to finish it or not.

The constant control and emphasis on pages is so annoying. The bread and butter of Mahalo has been question and answer. Thanks Jasen for saving Rev Share on Q & A.

Hopefully, you not killing question rev share. I really liked the "My feed" feature and thought it was a great improvement allowing me to see questions that were of interest. The cost to share rev share with members seems be 50/25/25.

The maintenance on these questions should be minimal amounts of work. The randomness of which questions attract a revenue is baffling. I invested over 100 dollars in car questions to see if vehicles was a niche.It did not seem to work.

I found revenue in science questions answer over a year ago. @wy tried to explain what made a great question. I tried the formula but notice no increase in rev share.

Penalize the Pages rev share, and leave the Q & A rev share alone. Help us Q & A Ninja warriors gain more revenue to promote question stronger.

I'm glad to see the end of Mdollars, but I'm leery about what that means for the ones I have in my account, but haven't reached payout with. Also, I don't see me applying for a guide position...I mean, I'd have to 100 pages a month, plus 48 hours of go team, plus 40 questions/answers all for $1000? Assuming that I could do the q&a in two hours a month and that pages only took an hour, you;d still be working 150 hours for $1,000 or about $6.67 per hour --lower than minimum wage.

I suppose if you could build pages faster than one per hour this would be a great option.

I'm excited about this change and am looking forward to the working with the community as we continue to evolve. As Jason said, we'll be discussing the changes live on USTREAM at 11AM Pacific Time - ustream.tv/channel/mahalo-tutorials. We'll expound upon reasons for the change and answer any questions you may have.Mike.

I'm very glad you are keeping the Mahalo Answers revenue sharing. My one request is that the prices at the Mahalo Store come down. Paying M$44 for a $25 gift card is too much!

I'd also love to see iTunes gift cards up for sale, as well as electronic gaming devices (PS3, XBOX). Here's to the Mahalo Store!

I have just started with Maahlo. I love working on these pages, and would love to keep working on Mahalo. The thing is that I am disabled.

I use a communication device to operate my computer a. Doing one page a day would be a feat for me. I think I could work my way up to two or three a day given time and practice.

Are there any options for me? Am I going to lose the money I have made was?

Dear Jason, There's really not much to say about the changes occurring. I realize people don't understand it but I've been a business co-owner myself and I realize that business is business. And that as the boss, not everyone's going to love you.

Which brings me to the M$ for USD$ thing. I only joined the site a few months ago, and I've already taken one $M150. Now I've got M$91 + M$6 or so in revshare sitting there that seems useless.It would be great if you would allow people to cash out WHATEVER remaining $M they've got--mine came only in the last few weeks--the payment from Mahalo to my Paypal account was just 2 weeks ago.

By taking away the $M to $USD for $M ALREADY ACCRUED, and by not allowing the cashout of any remaining $M, I can safely say that you've really given incentive for people to stop answering questions. Full version to follow in a direct question--I'm not one to air dirty laundry in front of everyone.. I like to deal with the top people directly, without interference.

Thanks for the elaborate discussion & explanation. As a new comer everything here is new to me. But I am very much excited to apply as this would be perfect for me, I think.

I am among the disappointed writers. I had a few How To pages and such, and was trying to get into writing more, but gave up on it. There were several problems I had, such as not being able to update pages with new content, because there was NO new content to add.

Other times, when I claimed a task, I would only see it rejected, when I fixed it to order, it would simply be rejected again, until I abandoned the task, only to see it go to somebody else, in one case, it was the QC team member who rejected my task, only to put it up barely rewritten. So I gave up on it. It simply was not worth the effort.

I was spending sometimes upwards of 4 hours for 7 bucks. Then expected to keep it updated for free. On answers, it is no longer worth the effort.It was barely worth it before.

With less point to the M$, less people will bother with it. Oh, and those of you complaining about not having enough M$ to cash out.. guess what.. the value to real currency of M$ has always been fluid.It could be worth 70 cents on the dollar.. it could be NOTHING. Did you skip that part?

I enjoy the community here, and I hope not all of it goes away and finds something better to do. I wonder how much of the Ad Rev was actually just from members here viewing and clicking things. I wonder how much it will drop when there are several hundred less people here daily.

I wonder how much of a difference is made paying 50-100 people a grand a month in real money, vs paying 400-500 people 50-100 a month in money you will likely never have to cash out. Sure, for those who still get to write for money, it works out somewhat ok. If they have the full time job hours to dedicate to less than minimum wage.

But who does it really work out for? Jason Calacanis. If Mahalo is not working out as well as planned, this is a good start for an exit strategy.

Cut down on staff (writers, community). Reduce accounts payable (eliminate cash outs). Keep all content as it belongs to Mahalo.

Eliminate revenue sharing, and keep that money, increasing profits in the short term. Next would be eliminate office staff, and Mahalo becomes a server farm with a skeleton crew. It stays online as long as the existing content draws ad revenue.

When revenue ceases to exceed cost of operation, everybody has long forgotten about it, and the CEO has moved on to his next project. Not a bad plan if you sit in the bosses chair, really.

Here's a question: I have some change in my balance account now, and I have claimed 11 more tasks that should generate $88 once they are reviewed. The whole things adds up to around $121 which is less than $150. So, if I finish these tasks in next few days, what happens?

I cannot claim because I still have a few dollars less than $150 in my account. Do I have to write a couple more pieces to reach the $150 benchmark? Can I claim them in July at all?

-BrownEyed.

This makes me a little sad as I only found this site a few days ago, but still look forward to contributing to this site in some way!

I cant really gove you an answer,but what I can give you is a way to a solution, that is you have to find the anglde that you relate to or peaks your interest. A good paper is one that people get drawn into because it reaches them ln some way.As for me WW11 to me, I think of the holocaust and the effect it had on the survivors, their families and those who stood by and did nothing until it was too late.