NEW Quora Monetization for Creators Using Subscriptions

On August 5th, Adam D’ Angelo, the Quora CEO, announced in a blog post that two new subscription options will be available for creators. Angelo states that they intend to “empower as many people as possible to share their knowledge.” Interested to know more about Quora monetization and the platform itself? Don’t worry, this article has got you covered.

What is Quora?

Humans seek knowledge in any way possible whether it’s from asking a friend, family member, or authority figure or scrolling through the internet in hopes of finding an answer. With Quora, you can find a solution to even the most random and serious questions from an active user base. 

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— Quora (@Quora) August 29, 2021

Here’s a list of what is available to you when you sign up to Quora:

• Ability to create social networks
• Follow specific topics that interest you
• Access high-quality answers
• Vote on answers that you think are accurate and logical
• Create your own question

Brief History of Quora

In June 2009, Quora was founded in Mountain View, California by Facebook employees, Adam D’Angelo and Charlie Cheever. Media reviewed Quora throughout 2010, which ultimately led to Quora’s public release on June 21st, 2010.

In late October of 2012, Quora announced the Quora Top Writer’s Program. Hand-selected individuals who contributed to Quora’s community were able to receive gifts and meet up with other top writers at exclusive events. However, after a drought of not picking new top writers, the English Top Writer’s was discontinued in April 2021.

In April of 2014, Quora was considered “a more organized Yahoo Answers” and was quickly gaining traction. Quora was notorious for being seen as a platform that didn’t gain much money, so two years later, Quora started advertising on their site. 

Their first advertiser was Uber, but Quora swore to keep advertisements at a minimum to provide the best experience for their users. This shift in Quora’s marketing strategy is a great segue to the current news on Quora monetization. 

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Quora Statistics

Now that you know a bit about Quora, here’s a list of some interesting facts and statistics 

• 45.5 percent of Quora users are between the ages of 18 and 24. while 32.5 percent of users are the ages of 25 and 34.
• Quora is ranked 80th for global traffic and engagement.
• Quora’s monthly active user count has been rapidly increasing, and as of 2019, Quora has reported having over 300 million active users.
• As of August 2021, Quora is ranked 14 on Top Charts for News on the Apple App Store.
• Data from 2017 suggests that over 300 companies have ads running on Quora. Now that it’s 2021, it wouldn’t be a surprise if that number sharply increased.
• According to FoundationINC, 27 percent of marketers were predicted to increase their budget for Quora Ads in 2020. 
• In 2018, some of the most popular topics on Quora were entertainment, travel, technology, everyday life, business, and marketing. 
• Here’s a little fun fact about Quora: the next-in-line name for Quora was Quiver.

How do you use Quora?

Want to use Quora yourself? Here’s a brief rundown on how to signup for Quora and what you can do once you create an account.

1. When you first go to Quora, you’ll have the option to continue with Google, continue with Facebook, sign up with email, or log in to your preexisting account. 
2. After you create your account or sign in, you’ll be asked to follow five topics of your choice to help personalize your timeline.
3. If you’re interested in creating a space, you can find the +Create Space button on the middle-left side of the screen. Here you can share your interests, start discussions, and monitor content. 
4. In the top right corner of your home page, you’ll find the “Add Question” button. When asking a question, you’ll be prompted with a list of tips so you can help diversify Quora and its accessible questions. 
5. Like an answer to a question? The up and down arrow icons give you the option to upvote or downvote the response. The more upvotes a post has, the higher up in the response feed it will be. The Quora algorithm values your input, and your feedback will better the content viewed on the platform. 

Quora Monetization Announcement 

Why Were Subscriptions Released?

Angelo states that this monetization announcement is meant to make creators more financially stable, so they can share more knowledge with the world. Think of this change as monetizing a YouTube channel so the user can become financially stable and entertain – or educate – people across the globe.

Angelo continues stating that throughout most of Quora’s lifespan, advertising provided all of Quora’s revenue. Advertising increased profit, however, advertising hasn’t supported creators. Quora monetization now exists to help support dedicated creators, so these users have an incentive to keep posting quality content.

Looking to support the creators on your campaigns? Check out this blog for a guide to working with influencers as a new business.

How Does it Work?

There are two options for subscriptions.

1. The creation of Quora+ will allow subscribers to pay monthly and receive access to all Quora+ content. Revenue is distributed amongst creators, but the proportion varies in various on the amount of traffic a user’s post receives.
2. Spaces come into play for this next option, which is why we mentioned how to create them earlier. Spaces help create communities with similar interests, so Angelo is now enabling subscriptions for Spaces. You can choose what price you want, and the subscription will take out a 5 percent fee.

Angelo doesn’t plan to increase the subscription fee because advertisements make a substantial amount of revenue. Quora’s algorithm will distribute creator content to Quora users so that creators can receive internet traffic.

It’s important to note that most Qurora+ content won’t be exclusive, so users still have access to quality content. Knowledge equals power in the eyes of Angelo, and restricting access to knowledgable content goes against Quora’s mission statement: to empower people with knowledge. 

Regardless, Angelo wants to give users an incentive for posting content as it might spark a new wave of writers. On every platform there will be trolls, so having an option to receive money for content might encourage all users to write excellent posts instead of unhelpful or harmful content.

What’s Not Changing

Angelo stresses that Quora’s that a majority of content will remain free and that if a user doesn’t want to pay for the subscription, they don’t have to. Ad revenue also won’t change, so Quora won’t be changing as much as people think. 

Angelo states that “there’s no one right way to use Quora, so whether you’re here to earn income, build a membership community, find or answer questions, or just have fun, we want you to find it on Quora.” So, though big changes may result in criticism, Angelo wants to tell the reader that things really won’t be changing after all.

Is Quora not your preferred content platform? Check out this blog and learn how to monetize on YouTube instead. 

Quora Monetization Breakdown

Another blog post written by Dane Clarke, an admin on Quora, gave an extensive breakdown and examples of what monetization and Quora+ look like to a creator. Before a creator posts something, they have the option to make their post exclusive to subscribers and Quora+ users.

For people that wish to make their content for subscribers and Quora+ users, the creator can enable an adaptive paywall. Users also have the ability to disable or enable Quora+ and subscriptions in case they ever change their mind, but a creator can’t change this setting for 24 hours after the monetization setting is changed.  

You can also disable and enable monetization in the post message or the admin dashboard. The interface is intuitive and helps give creators the option to freely monetize their content.

Source

The Future for Quora

You may be wondering what the future of Quora entails. Based on the blog posts from Angelo and Clarke, things won’t be changing as much as the community may think. Nicolas Cole, a writer for Ship 30 for 30, says that back in as far back as 2014, people were curious as to how Quora users could make money. 

Now with this option readily available, the incentive to write quality content is at its peak. Cole states that even the most successful writers on Medium make around 10,000 dollars a month, but Quora also has a much larger crowd of people in comparison. 

While that doesn’t mean Quora creators will make more than this, it does give users a goal to achieve. Independent writers can now receive revenue outside of their jobs, which is huge for the writing community, especially writers who may struggle to reach an audience. 

To our knowledge, pretty much everyone has access to Quora monetization, similar to writers on Medium. Medium and Quora monetization complement each other, but they also compete against one another.