How can Quora make money? China’s Q&A websites have the answer
Sites offering question and answer services have long been popular, but until now they have struggled to make money. Two Chinese portals – Fenda and Zhihu – may have found the solution
Life is full of questions for Zhu Ning, a business consultant in Shanghai who has signed up with Fenda, a Q&A website often described as China’s answer to Quora.
Having joined the service last month, Zhu can be called upon by any of the website’s members to answer their questions on his specialist field of sales and corporate management – provided they agree to pay his set fee of 27 yuan (HK$30) per question. He then gets 48 hours to answer their queries – via voice messages that must last no longer than 60 seconds.
If he is in luck, his questioner can choose to share the answer with others and earn them both some extra cash. Other users who listen to the answer must pay an additional one yuan, with the extra money being split between Zhu and the questioner.
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“I’m not taking these questions for money. But I’m interested in trying out how to turn knowledge into money,” said Zhu, who has already answered nearly 20 questions, ranging from his views on the finer points of China’s Belt and Road Initiative to whether people only take sales jobs because they can’t hack anything else.
The cash may be insignificant to a consultant like Zhu, but it represents a major breakthrough for Chinese internet start-ups hoping to solve a global puzzle – how to make money out of Q&A websites.
That question has for years evaded the industry’s best minds, despite the growing popularity of the services, with even Quora – which has more than 200 million monthly active users – having failed to find the answer.
