Get paid instantly
The days of stuffing envelopes or selling seeds by mail and then waiting six to eight weeks for your check are gone.
A new search startup has an idea that it hopes will attract the new breed of stay-at-home freelancer — one who makes a living doing the web’s odd jobs.
ChaCha Search, a site offering human-assisted guided search, is introducing an instant-payment system that would offer its contracted guides the option of being compensated for their time immediately through debit cards.
Workers at ChaCha are experts in specific topics, and they help users of the search tool find information that, presumably, only somebody in the know would be able to uncover. The ChaCha guides earn between $5 and $10 an hour as a starting wage, and any money they earn can be dumped instantly onto a debit card and spent right away. The guides keep track of their earnings on the ChaCha site and can get their earnings by clicking a "Pay Me Now" button on their personalized page.
"I liken this to the way a day laborer gets paid," said ChaCha chairman and CEO Scott A. Jones. "They hop on the truck, do their work for the day, then they get paid in cash when they’re done. We let people work as long as they want, whether it’s five minutes or five hours, then instantly transfer the money they earn to their debit card."
