Wanna get paid for answering questions? Join Mahalo and start typing.

Peter Kafka wrote a post about it in the All Things Digital blog yesterday, in which he explained how Jason Calacanis’s search site is changing. Unlike most search engines, Mahalo provides search results compiled by people, rather than from computer algorithms. Until now, Mahalo employees and other people online working as volunteers have been writing up search results pages. Now, however, Mahalo will let civilians take responsibility for results pages and split whatever money the page makes through advertising, 50/50.

As Erick Schonfeld at TechCrunch points out, you can go to Mahalo and claim pages for yourself. But don’t expect to get paid just like a regular employee — you’ll be paid in Mahalo Bucks, which can be traded in for American dollars, or you can spend your Mahalo Bucks on the site later. The exchange rate for American currency is 75 cents to the dollar. So, as Kafka points out, an even split of 75 cents means you’ll make 37.5 percent of every dollar your page earns.

Calacanis told Kafka that some Mahalo pages earn as much as $10,000 per year, though that’s the exception rather than the rule. Schonfeld said you’re more likely to get $20 to $50 per page, per year. And the more you do, the more privileges you get. You may even be able to sell the pages you’ve claimed at some point in the future.

As Schonfeld said, topics are first-come, first-served, so even though you may be an expert on particle physics, if the particle physics page has already been claimed, you have to find another site on which to share your knowledge. There’s also a possibility that spammers could misuse the site, but Schonfeld said Mahalo is committed to monitoring pages for that sort of behavior.

For more on Mahalo and related topics, surf on over to these links:
How Mahalo Works
How Wikis Work
How Internet Search Engines Work