Journalism training news

August 5 2008

Earn while you learn

The question and answer website AQA is recruiting contributors - and is offering journalism students a chance to earn while they improve their research skills.

People text their questions to 63336 at the cost of £1 and get an answer texted back in five minutes. The answers are delivered by the website's team of 1,500 self-employed researchers, who get paid 40p per question answered.

The site says researchers can choose to answer as few or as many questions as they want. It says researchers can work from anywhere they can connect to the internet, and can earn up to £12 an hour.

Spokesman Donald Parish said: "Some people view working for AQA as a full time job, but the vast majority are made up from mothers working from home, students earning some extra cash, retired people, it's a real mix! All the researchers however, choose to work for AQA because they love trivia and researching answers, and see it as a fun way to earn some money. There are even examples of City bankers earning over £100k p/a, who work for AQA in the evening."

AQA stands for Any Questions Answered. To find out more, go to the website www.aqa.63336.com and try out a free question. There are details on the site about how to join as a researcher.

In January the site answered its 10 millionth question and is answering 18,500 a day.