The free minute sounds like a really good idea to me - there might be twenty seconds or so of introduction which younger folks will tend to view as unnecessary time-wasting and older folks will tend to view as necessary pre-connection and the free minute allows these greetings to go uncharged and be mostly uncontroversial. I think it both counters the greeting time and also serves as a pretty good PR move. Also, if I can answer your problem in less than a minute then you didn't even google it.

I am sure a bunch of these sorts of questions will roll in and, if you're trying to continuously get answers within the free minute you're probably going to end up accidentally paying them a good portion of the time.

> Also, if I can answer your problem in less than a minute then you didn't even google it.

Don't undersell this ability, it takes years to develop, and honestly is part of the value a "senior" person brings to the job. If you don't believe me, just watch a beginner searching for the answer to their question on their own. They'll use overly-broad terms, click irrelevant links, and spend several minutes looking at non-useful answers.

As someone more experienced, you can look at StackOverflow answer and instantly see it _was_ the right answer in 2012, but is no longer compatible with some other thing and trying to implement it is going to result in a world of hurt. You'll also know what search terms to use, what to avoid, and little tidbits like "SQL Server" refers to Microsoft's, or that the answer involving a sysv script probably isn't relevant to your issue with Debian Bullseye.

> Also, if I can answer your problem in less than a minute then you didn't even google it.

And so the person who has to field this call shouldn't get paid?

Actually looking at the model setup by the site for contractors to grab questions on a voluntary basis - I sorta doubt anyone would actually take your question.

The site design is pretty opaque so I imagined you had some SMEs out there that a call in would be automatically connected to but the contractors can view a list of questions and pick and choose ones they think they're a good match for.

I think that makes it a valid question to the site designers if there should be either:

1. Some level of payment for the first minute of calls to make sure those dumb questions get answered

2. Some feedback mechanism for contractors to mark specific calls as googleable and for the site to send back a "Did you try googling it buddy?" response via email (though in much more diplomatic terms)

It sounds like this service might actually struggle with questions that are too easy - I'm also really wondering about the unpaid research time potential. Will it be a faux pas on this service to call up the client at the point where you think you know the answer reasonably well but may need to do some on-the-phone research for their specific details or would the expectation be an expert ready to answer your question specifically for the Sun Sparc 8 architecture?

Presumably it works like the rest of the gig economy: if anything goes wrong, caveat contractor

45$ an hour isn't bad for a side gig.

I personally don't need the money , but if you have tons of student loans, an extra 1k a month isn't bad.

$45/hr _does_ seem cheap, however, you don't have the upfront sales cost that comes with consulting. You don't need to maintain a relationship with a client. Hopefully cashflow and payment would also not be an issue with an intermediary guaranteeing some kind of payment (but it is a new startup so who knows...)