I remember I spent several months being an active contributor to Answers.com, giving real answers to real questions, and feeling good that I was able to help someone somewhere. I did leave a link to one of my websites in each of my answers – after all, I did want to increase the traffic to my website. It was all fine until I received a warning a few years ago to stop “promoting” my own websites. Huh? So the folks at Answers.com think that they want to make money from their hard working users (I was replying to 30 questions nearly every day) without giving something in return?

That was back in 2008-2009. In 2010 I created another account and started doing the same (yes – it was a mistake), and I received the same message after my contributions were nearly a thousand on that account (again, all my answers were real). I have stopped using Answers.com ever since.

Fast forward to one month ago, and everyday I receive literally a hundred emails from Answers.com that states “Hats Off – You’ve Been Recommended” or something similar. I used to get one of those every 3 or 4 months. I can’t remember. But now to get a 100 a day means only one thing, they are tampering with this. They have most likely created a script that will send this email to each and every person depending on his recommendations – this way they think they’ll be getting their money generating users to slave for them again for free, thinking that they can buy them with some fake points on their website!

The thing is Answers.com is no longer a public company (it was a public company before with symbol NASDAQ:ANSW) and it’s now a private company owned by (most likely) a single person. That person might have thought – “hey, how come my revenue from this website is dwindling every month? Let’s do some measure to increase the traffic shall we? And let’s get some idiots who have already worked on our website and we kicked them out to slave on our website for free again!” and that’s how I got bombarded with their “Hats Off…” emails for the past month or so.

Answers.com makes money from Google ads and other ad networks, and the more traffic they have the more money they’ll get. But in order for them to make money, they must think about giving something in return to their contributors – although I think that they’re beyond redemption at this point and there are better options out there for people to help and get help.

Answers.com, these are bankrupt measures that you’re taking! Why don’t you be a pioneer and offer some kind of real reward to your contributors instead of creating scripts to fake that all of a sudden “they’ve been recommended”!

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