You like to write. So drop your job. Hide out at home, chain-smoking by your terminal and writing answers to questions you know about or would like to look up. Hey! How about $10, $20, $50 and more per answer, and the occasional research and programming contract?

Well, it's an idea, and a couple of dozen sites keep trying to invent it. I've been looking around the web and here's my annotated list. It's easy to say "EBAY of Information" and hard to make it happen. The difficulty is that people want to withhold information until they've been paid. The actual content is delivered offsite by email, and what you see onsite is people with strange usernames trading hints and promises. EBAY is interesting because traders have an incentive to tell all comers all about their product.

It ought to be possible to market expert advice on the web. There's no such thing as free information. It costs uncertainty or time if it doesn't cost money. Barter markets evolve into cash markets. Eventually one of these sites will hit on the magic formula that makes the concept click.

Here's what I'm looking for anyway. The answer market is a database of links to home pages, small business and consulting pages. I want the answerer to come from someplace I can look up. The questioner pays cash up front to hold in escrow. The money is guaranteed to pay one answerer on the date of the deadline, so they compete to upload real information. We don't want to watch the negotiation. Just let the questioner notch up his offer till he gets his answer. With an incentive to publish, people don't pay over and over for things well known, as happens with telephone tech support. I want a site that builds knowledge.

The questioner pays for something bystanders will read for free, but he gets an answer tailored to his needs. Information is the answer to a question, and the question in the bystander's mind is at least slightly off the topic answered. The questioner buys a fresh answer. New news is worth money, while facts we know already are redundant information, however true they may be. All this is what strikes me as fair and right, but the problem is to find the magic formula that clicks for everybody.