Quora Partner Program and Here’s why it’s kicking people out

I was lucky to be invited by Quora to be part of their Partner Program sometime in 2018. It was simple, I ask questions then request answers, and get paid according to the ads although the parameters of revenues were never clear.

A question with 200 views and 8 ads and no answers could generate 2$ and the other with 50k views 15+ answers and 1000+ ads would generate only 0.08¢. One clear thing was that external traffic would generate more revenue than internal. After all, that, when you reach the 10$ mark you’ll be paid through Paypal.

I gladly joined the program hoping to make money but quickly lost interest as it kept generating 0.00¢ to 0.001¢ per day. I forgot about ever joining the program and kept using Quora as a normal writer. I developed a little but loyal following as my answers started generating 50k+views and 1k-4k upvotes. I continuously kept receiving praises through comments and messages from fellow members about my answers and it kept my spirit high.

Suddenly more than a year later my QPP earnings reached 10$ and I received the notification. I was ecstatic but skeptical as I had never in my life heard of earning money online other than in scam ads. Finally, I received the money which motivated me to ask more questions on the platform but It was the same. I wasn’t earning much, again I left it at the backside of my head, and again after a year, I received the money.

This was Sep-2020 when I received this money for the second time. A few months later Attack On Titan was released and I was genuinely confused about it so I asked few questions and to my surprise, it started earning 0.50¢-1$ per day. I was happy, this was the first time I received the money in a month and was more than 10$, it was 15$. It wasn’t much for a working person but was a blessing for a college student.

Now I had more than “motivation” to ask questions and I started earning too from 15$-30$. In the month of April 2021, I got paid 67$ and it was just amazing. I can not define the happiness of a college-going student.

Suddenly my Questions started getting vandalized by merges and Edits by third-party Quora members part of a Space who had a thing for Quora Partners. It was no big deal as I could always revert it and I did but the problems started when after the whole merge/revert procedures 3–4 times, the Quora moderation would pop in and merge the question doesn’t matter how out of the place the merge is.

Note: If your question is merged with the other question then you could no longer earn from it and you will also lose the payment you had of the question from the future earnings.

Quora moderation always would come back and revert its unnecessary merge but till that time the question didn’t earn and I might have lost the earnings made from it so I reverted it myself.

Then suddenly I received this notification:

Now to my surprise, the reason they cited was I was editing my questions to change their meaning. The editing and merging were done by third-party members all I did was revert it.

The questions they edited were “can visual studio code compile C" to “Can Visual Studio code compile C++” and then merged it with a similar question about C++.

To an experienced coder, this seems like a genuine edit but a person who has started learning C is most probably a newbie and doesn’t know that C++ and C are similar and a C++ compiler can compile C too.

I realized that this might be a mistake so I went to [email protected] and here, I got a different reply that I tried contesting merges with their bot.

They don’t listen to appeals, they don’t warn Partners for violating their “rules” but they surely do warn people who use a little bit of bad word in their comments that they might get banned.

Since then, I have sent them 3 emails asking them to look into space whose members go around vandalizing the questions of Quora Partners but there is no reply.

I guess it’s my foolishness to expect Quora to behave responsibly instead of like a Dictator. After all, this is the product they can do whatever they want and users are just people who come and go I guess that’s why even Quora’s Top writers are leaving the platform.

WHY DO THEY DO THIS?

Isn’t that the question? Why have they stopped the partner program for new entries and are getting rid of the old Partners?

Well, because Quora has introduced a new feature i.e., Space, where a person can share answers and earn with views, ads, etc. they get on it. It’s QPP with Space and answers instead of questions.

Although, I’m thankful to QPP that it helped me when I needed it I just wish that Quora had come out clean instead of being shady because this all procedure makes it feel like a bad break-up as I had become emotionally invested in it too.

Quora is focusing on being like Reddit and Medium combined but it might just end up being the next Yahoo answers with these kinds of policies.

Or maybe I’m just being a bitter Ex-partner who technically got fired.

Thank you for reading!