Okay, before I freak out my co-workers, it's an additional job :-) In my ongoing quest to diversify income sources, I came across ChaCha, a new SMS search engine, where people with cell phones in the US can text a question and get an answer from a human being. I tried it on my cell phone ("Who owns IKEA?" -- it was the first thing to come to mind), and got an accurate, concise answer in about a minute. Until I get an iPhone at least, the next time I need to search on the go, I'm not going to bother with Virgin Mobile's crappy web browser, I'm using ChaCha (there is a small chance I've been turned into a shill for the company).

I signed up and was accepted as a guide (basically you have to go through a trivia test). Now I have to go through some training, which is fine. But the cool part of the job is just being able to look up stuff for people. I actually thought about this very thing a few years ago -- I love trivia and looking stuff up, and many people I've known are pretty inept searchers -- I always seem to find stuff others can't. To me, this is entertainment.

Anyway, the pay structure is way better than most paid writing/blogging gigs. It's by the search (paid for by SMS fees). I dropped my column last summer for a couple of reasons, but the awful $15/month (which worked out to pennies an hour, freaking slave labor) was a big reason to do so. The hours are pretty fantastic too -- whenever I want, for as long as I want.