Making It

A government employee discovers that being a know-it-all can be lucrative

David Sarokin loves research. "It's a combination of detective work, treasure hunt, the thrill of discovery and the pleasure in finding out something new and interesting," explains the biologist and environmental protection specialist. When the Internet, which he calls an "electronic library on steroids," become widely available, he and people like him were thrilled, he says. "Our lives weren't really complete until the Internet came along."

In 2002, the federal employee by day took a part-time job on nights and weekends doing research for a now-defunct service called Google Answers. "It's a type of activity I love doing and might have wound up doing anyway if they hadn't paid me, but getting paid was just icing on the cake," says David, 56. Internet users would post questions and how much they were willing to pay for answers, ranging from $2 to $200. The Google researchers would pick the ones that interested them or pertained to their area of expertise and would receive 75 percent of the fee, as well as tips. David worked about 10 hours a week, answering questions about subjects mundane (mortgages) and exotic (female vampires) and by the end was making $15,000 to $20,000 a year. "It was just a blast to be part of the whole Google enterprise," he says.

But in 2006, Google shut down the service. "Google never explained quite why they shut it down; it was just a decision somebody made that broke all our hearts."

David, a Brooklyn, N.Y., native who lives in Tenleytown with his wife and two sons, had become hooked on both the work and the income. "That experience kind of educated us and taught me a lot about the power and the beauty of having a continual small stream of income," he says. While he was working at Google Answers, his wife had lost her job, so it was important that he continue to make extra money. He began to do some writing for a similar site called Uclue, established by former Google Answers researchers, and started his own online research business called XooxleAnswers.

But David really hit the jackpot when he found eHow, which works differently than the other sites and now accounts for half his income. Instead of answering questions that people post, eHow authors -- "anyone who can write a coherent sentence," David says -- write how-to articles about anything they happen to know. They are paid a share of the revenue that an article generates when users click on the accompanying ads.

David joined eHow last February and has written how-tos on finding the best of various consumer items at the best price, as well as entries such as "How to Get a Bird Out of the House." His income the first month was $1.93, but by December his library of articles was producing $1,000 a month. Added to the money from the other sites, he's making about $25,000 a year.

David doesn't intend to move to the Internet full time. "I love my government work," he says, and "I like having this mix in my life." He plans to build up his research business and continue writing for Uclue and eHow. So far David has contributed 400 articles to eHow. "I would like to increase that to have several thousand before I might say, 'All right, that's enough; I've written everything I know how to do.' " But he doesn't think that would spell the end of his online career. "As the Internet changes, who knows what other opportunities are going to open up?"