Mahalo

My apologies for my absence, I've been testing out a website and I wanted to make sure I had a pretty thorough idea of how the site worked before I went and wrote about it.
I was originally planning to write after my first cash out, however, due to some people scamming them, their minimum cash out price changed from $40 to an amazingly high $150. Ouch.

I, however, decided to stay despite this, as I think there could be some serious possibilities here - if you've got the right kind of drive.

I originally went to Mahalo to apply for a position, however, when I got there I found a minuscule message in the FAQ stating they were no longer accepting applicants. The rest of their site for accepting applicants was still up, however, so if nothing else, they're not great at e-housekeeping. I stayed originally intending to merely cash out what I had and leave, until I dug deeply into their new system in place which replaced the position I was applying for...

When you go to Mahalo, the first thing you may notice is their mainpage is just a collection of recent or popular news posts on certain topics. At the top, however, you see things like "How to" and "Answers" and notice that answering the questions under "Answers" earns you Mahalo Dollars, M$. Interesting, but looking at the amounts given for answering a question, not a fast way to get rich, and certainly not passive. I did play with it for a little while, and though I didn't treat that like a job, I still made M$6 in about a week or so, so for people who like answering questions anyway I suggest it. For those who just want money, however, now may be a good time to follow your passion - especially if you can write.

The main amount of income, as I see it, from Mahalo comes from two spots. One, being in someones "Vertical" which is a fancy way of saying working 'under' someone (I use that term pretty loosely, as they are not your boss, but they can reject your article if it's not up to par.)
What you do here is you make any pages that you request. Usually there's a default 2 page limit on your account, but being in a Vertical allows you to bypass it without requesting for more. The downside to this is you now only make 40% instead of 50% of the ad revenues. The plus side is you get someone to help make sure your articles are what would be looked for, and thus should hopefully be more likely to generate income.

The second way, which I find to be far more interesting even though I have not done it myself, is BEING a Vertical manager. You see, a vertical manager makes 20% of the revenue's of the articles they helped come into existence by being a vertical manager, is allowed to keep a good portion of their own articles, and can make money on up to 3,000 of other peoples' articles.

While you can't just waltz in and become a Vertical Manager right off the bat, it could be as easy as posting 100 articles or so. You may stop and say, hold on, 100 articles? That's HUGE! Well, it may not be.
Mahalo articles tend to be short, sweet, and to the point. Usually about 300 words unless the topic demands it, and often with a video attached from Youtube or Hula. The hardest thing is using their text formatting for inlinks and whatnot properly.

So, 100 articles may not be so hard to get to. I myself am planning on being at 90 by the end of January of 2010, since my particular subject I've been given is very much so up my alley - I get to write about a video game I'm very much so addicted to.

There's something else I didn't mention so far about writing articles. Not only do you make money over time from each article, but you get paid up front when the article is accepted in M$. So far, the vast majority of my articles give me M$3 right off the bat, though they can go as high as M$10.

But with all this talk of M$, what makes them different from regular money? Simply, conversion rates. A single M$ is worth $.75 USD right now. So M$3 is $2.25. M$300 becomes $225. The management of Mahalo reserves the right to change the conversion rate at any time, so there's a possibility it wont stay at $.75 - if it gets lower, it's likely I'll come back and rewrite this post to say that Mahalo may no longer be worth it, but for the time being, the payment is pretty fair, and can make you money passively over time, or very near passively.

You can, though, lose management of your articles. Mahalo wants the information to be up to date, so there's a chance you can lose ownership, and thus ad revenue's, if you don't keep them fully up to date. My particular subject doesn't change too much, and when it does, changing the information will be pretty simple.


So, there are pro's and con's, but for both a quick hit of cash, and perhaps some long term passive allowance, I personally am going to try the risks for now. If I find it gets a bit stupid, then I'll take my money and run.

I'm curious to hear what anyone else might think of the place, so feel free to comment.

-Billy