Unless you're offering Jeopardy style prizes (or at least something worth paying attention to), I don't see how you'd get particularly well qualified answers in a short time period. Expertise isn't cheap, and expertise on call is downright expensive (when I was a consultant I charged an annual service fee just for the privilege of calling my cell phone number outside of business hours)...so if someone can make $100+/hour consulting with their expertise, or make $10 every few hours via your service, they're obviously going to spend more time consulting than sitting in front of their mailbox waiting for questions that match their expertise.

I'm not saying it can't be done effectively and profitably--it probably can. We used SitePoint for a logo contest recently and had a half dozen professional designers, and another couple dozen serious amateurs, who responded over the course of 10 days...the prize was $500, though, so not chump change. We were extremely happy with the resulting logo, and we all (designers included) had a lot of fun with the contest.

But you might consider focusing on a few niches to get started, and actually line up experts on retainer just to prove to people that you have a working system (we've seen Google, Yahoo, and a dozen also-rans come and go in this field...most people are not going to believe that a startup can make something work that all of the big names in internet tech have failed to deliver). I believe you're going to have to prove it, but I might be wrong...maybe you can just let it run and gather momentum slowly.

The other problem is that most of the high end questions and answers I've seen (the ones where you'll make your money) on similar services have been extremely vague and, in result, poorly answered. I got a strong feeling that the questioner probably wasn't going to be very satisfied with the answers. Quality is historically very low from these kinds of services, and it's hard for me to imagine how you'd solve that problem without a lot of (expensive) oversight.

I wasn't very clear with my point. We're not about professional services, but with something, which doesn't need a degree or special skills. Like choice between red or black shirt, one nightclub or another, how good is some idea, the best gift for the girlfriend, etc.

Ah. OK, then it's a terrible idea. ;-)

Can you tell me why? I'd really appreciate this kind of feedback.

Here's the harsh answer:

Why would I want to pay you to tell me what nightclub to go to, what color shirt I should wear, or what I should buy for my girlfriend?

Those are things that either a) I should already know or b) I would find out from my friends and family.

b/c if i want to ask those types of questions i can ask (in order).

my friends on gtalk/yelp/google

furthermore, i would never in a million years think of paying for the answer to a question such as "which color shirt do i wear" or "where do i shop for X".

i have a brain, and the internet offers answers to those questions for free, and it doesn't take an hour.

Well, #3 is not good choice. ;) That's even not a subject for discussion. Besides, our potential clients already gave up on Google when they are coming to us. #2 - well, maybe yes, maybe not. We make it easier. And #1 - not much people have hundred of friends on IM. And sometimes, it'd be nice to know 50 opinions, instead of 10 (someone's typical online IM active list). (And well sometimes you don't want you friend know that you're interested in SOME THINGS :P

Don't forget that if you know where is the best retail store close by, some people don't, and they are not that happy to invest hours looking for it.

Speaking about my example with shirt/club/etc, these are really bad examples, saying about paid questions; but they are good if they'd be free (and they would).

However, just a silly example. I'd like to buy a gaming console, but I don't know which one. I have close to 100 of active contacts in my IM, but barely few of them know something about gaming consoles. So I'm about to spend several hundred dollars, and (me, personally) would be happy to spend $10 or $20 in advance to gather opinion of 50 or 100 people about the gaming consoles before making a purchase. And I want it now. Not tomorrow. Not after the week of gathering all pros and cons.

To go further with what others have said, it sounds like you're putting strangers in charge of answering questions that only close friends have the knowledge to answer well.

What game console do I buy? Well, the one my friends have, so we can trade games and play against each other! What club? The one my friends go to...we like the same music (roughly), and have the same general style...we probably even like the same kinds of girls. So, IM is infinitely more valuable than the service you describe even if only one or two friends are active right now. If it's not expertise that you're brokering, you've got nothing of value, as far as I can tell.

A Google search about game consoles will turn up thousands of random opinions from strangers about just about any subject (particularly game consoles, but clubs also get talked about, etc.), so without some sort of expertise, you're just doing a really inefficient and slow Google search.

Now, I'm not saying brokering expertise is an easy business, but I can at least see value in it. I can't think of any good use cases for a dedicated "trivial questions with easy answers" system.

I'm happy to be wrong. Maybe you should build a prototype this weekend and see how people react...you'd probably be able to get some media for it, since all of the big answers services have been shutdown or shuffled off into a corner to die quietly. If it looks cool, you'd be able to get a crunch and maybe some hits from design blogs. If you use a funny language (Smalltalk or Erlang or something) you can get some hits from that. It costs nothing but time to try it.

But, it's not an idea I would be willing to invest any time in. (Although, I did just invest fifteen minutes or so in my various responses to your query about it.) ;-)

thanks for ur answer, it helps

swelljoe has great advice.

"trivial answers with easy questions" just sounds like a slow google, nothing i would be excited about using, and certainly nothing i would pay for.

that being said, i dont think your idea is horrible at all, but simply that i think you need to spend some time refining it.

someone mentioned a site that helps people answer very difficult, expensive questions, the exact opposite of what you're looking for.

explore that avenue. spend a day reading about google answers and why they died. really, if i were you, i would spend the next week doing nothing but looking at other sites that failed or are failing and ask 'why' and 'what can i do better?'.

it sounds like you've done that a bit, but as you can see from the wonderful amount of criticism you've received, you could probably stand to do a lot more research and thinking about the problem.

i personally think you're on to something, but just need to rethink it a bit.

and btw, dont write off google so quickly. search for "xbox 360 vs ps3" and within .5 seconds you'll have more information about which console to buy than your service could hope to offer in a full day of responses.

i don't see the value in this. informed shopping is done either with search (google, mahalo) or simply visiting a store. that's what they're for. if you're dropping 400 bucks on a video game console, most people go to best buy. if you're dropping 25,000 on a car, most people go to a car dealership.

even when it was paid, google answer didn't gain traction. you need an even more vigilant and coherent audience in order for answers to be replied to within 60 minutes. the technical challenges aside (which, really, this site sounds cloneable within a weekend), this is just a chicken and egg problem.

I would never pay for shopping advice from people who might be paid PR shills.

What's to prevent a guy from GM from signing on to answer questions and advising every single one of your questioners to buy a Chevy truck?

More importantly, if your site tells me to buy a Chevy truck, how do I know that I'm not a victim of product placement?

At least when I read competing ads for game consoles I know the bias of everyone involved. And reading ads is free!