Mahalo Review

Class Action Lawsuit Against Mahalo

2010-09-22T14:01:00.000-07:00

There is a potential class action lawsuit against Mahalo.com and founder, Jason Calacanis. This lawsuit is in response to Mahalo's recent action in which all pages were confiscated from Mahalo page writers.

I have read several outcries against this lawsuit. I don't know if these outcries were written by Mahalo cronies or by misinformed Mahalo members. But whoever those people are, they really should get their facts straight before trying to make it look like ex-Mahalo writers are just being vindictive and are just trying to get money. Because that is not the case, and I'm speaking as an ex-Mahalo writer.

The reason for this lawsuit stems from the misrepresentation of Mahalo/Jason Calacanis to its writers as it relates to "page management". Mahalo's Terms of Service clearly stated "you own your content". There is no way those words can be misinterpreted. Even if Jason didn't mean for those words to be there, the simple truth is that they were there. So when Jason decided that Mahalo's business platform wasn't working, and decided to go a different route, they had no right to confiscate the content that the writers (aka "page managers") had created.

If this lawsuit were to go to court and the plaintiffs were to prevail, it would be a great precedent for all freelance writers. It would serve as an example that content sites cannot steal from writers without there being some kind of legal recourse.

Jason Calacanis can learn a thing or two from the content site, eHow. When eHow changed is business platform last April, it did not remove the pages that it's writers had created. All writers retained ownership of their work, can still edit their work, and continue to receive revenue share from that work. This is what Jason should have done when he decided to change Mahalo's business platform. He should have allowed the "page managers" to keep their work or he should have offered to buy their work. He should not have been allowed to just confiscate it, and then try to cover his ass by changing the Terms of Service.

I just don't understand why anyone would defend Mahalo/Jason Calacanis for these reprehensible actions.

To learn more about this potential class action lawsuit or to contact the law firm involved, please click here.

Mahalo Changes TOS to Cover Its Ass

2010-06-25T09:28:00.000-07:00

Can Jason Calacanis get any more evil? Jason has gone ahead and changed Mahalo's Terms of Service to state that Mahalo now owns all the content that its subscribers write. This is as a result of Mahalo's recent "important and exciting" announcement that they are taking revenue sharing away from Mahalo pages, and will only be hiring a limited number of writers to continue writing Mahalo pages for a flat fee. Everyone else will be losing their pages and will receive nothing further for their work on those pages. But of course, Mahalo/Jason will continue to benefit financially from those pages.

Mahalo's original Terms of Service under Proprietary Rights read:

"You own your Content. We claim no intellectual property rights over the Content you provide to the Services through your Mahalo Account. Your profile and materials uploaded remain yours."

Mahalo's new Terms of Service state:

"All content you write and submit to Mahalo in exchange for payment in Mahalo Dollars becomes the intellectual property of Mahalo. This includes questions and answers on the Mahalo Answers system, submissions to Mahalo Tasks and changes made to the content of Mahalo Topic Pages. Edits and text added to your personal Mahalo user profile remains yours."

Like I've said in previous posts - Mahalo is a shady company that shouldn't be trusted. They do not have their writers' best interest at heart. It's just sad that we all had to learn this the hard way. And even sadder that people will continue to believe in Mahalo/Jason Calacanis just to get screwed over in the end.

What Mahalo Needs To Do To Succeed

2010-06-24T09:01:00.000-07:00

Jason Calacanis has described Mahalo as a "human powered search engine" -- but isn't Mahalo just another glorified content mill? How does Mahalo really differ from sites such as Squidoo, HubPages, eHow (now Demand Media), FireHow, BrightHub, Associated Content and all the rest? Well, it really doesn't.

The problem with Mahalo is that much of the content it produces is just SPAM. Mahalo seems to have focused on creating pages that will produce good Ad Sense revenue (coupon, sale, and product pages), instead of actual, useful content. I realized this when, months ago, I mentioned to my teenage son that I was writing for Mahalo, and he said something along the lines of, "I hate that site. Mahalo sucks." And this was because Mahalo pages kept coming up when he would search for something, but the page never quite gave him the information that he needed. Which is true about many of the pages that are being generated on Mahalo.

Let's take coupon pages for example. What is a consumer looking for when they search for coupons? Well, they are looking for actual coupons - a place where they can print coupons or get coupon codes - but Mahalo pages don't give them that. All Mahalo coupon pages give them is a 400 word description of the coupons and the products they are searching for. And maybe, if they're lucky, there might be a link to another site that might give them what they are looking for.

Experiences like this just turn people away, and once they realize that this Mahalo site isn't going to give them what they want, they will not even bother to click on links to Mahalo pages anymore (just like my son, who now ignores any Mahalo pages that show up in his Google search results).

So what does Mahalo have to do to succeed? Well, first of all, get rid of all the spammy pages. Leave coupon pages for coupon sites, and stick to creating useful content. BrightHub is one of my favorite sites to write for. They don't do anything "spammy" from what I can tell, and their content is very useful and well-written, and best of all you keep your content. Under no circumstances do they revoke your pages and give them to someone else (and neither do any of the other sites I write for).

Which leads me to my next suggestion, which is to hire freelance writers, but give them ownership rights to their content. Most freelance writers want to write for sites where they get to keep their content. People are proud of the work they do, and want to be assured that their work belongs to them and won't be taken away for mundane reasons like not having enough words in a video description. "Stealing" content from writers is not a good way to do business. You can't put the words "You own your content" in your Terms of Service, and then turn around and take it away.

People also like the idea of residual income from their work. It's great to get that upfront pay, but it's even nicer to know that you will earn income from your writing for life (or until the site shuts down). So whether it's from sharing ad revenue, affiliate revenue, or page view revenue, some type of residual income should be implemented to keep writers motivated.

Most importantly, don't harass your writers to the point where they become fed up with the whole thing! The Vertical Manager thing may have been a good idea in theory, but all it did was cause (1) a loss of revenue to writers; and (2) constant harassment. This method does not exactly instill motivation. You should have some faith in your writers that they know what they are doing without having to be "nudged" everyday. I've written a lot of articles online, some of which haven't been updated in months (or years), and they still show up on the front page of Google. So having to update constantly is a ridiculous requirement.

Also, the whole "25 pages a week" requirement is way too demanding and will most likely result in poorly written content. Quantity over quality is never a good thing. You can't expect people to be able to produce 25 pages a week (plus the other requirements) without getting totally burned out. These type of requirements and deadlines are going to turn people away. They may put up with it for a month or two, but eventually they're going to realize it's just too much, and will move on. And what happens when a writer doesn't meet their 25-page goal? Do they then not get paid? Mahalo really needs to rethink this part. Instead they need to hire more writers, but let people write as many or as few pages as they can (no quotas), and pay them a flat-rate per article. Anywhere between $10 to $15 is the market rate right now on other content sites.

And that brings me to my last suggestion which is to hire freelance writers who are experienced in writing. Have they written for other sites? Can they produce examples of their work? Do they understand SEO? Can they write with proper grammar and spelling? This was Mahalo's problem from the get go. They just let anyone create, claim, and manage pages. The whole "human-powered" thing was also a great idea, in theory, but you can't let just any "human" create pages.

Mahalo Ends Ad Revenue Sharing and Moves to a Flat-Rate Payment System

2010-06-23T10:59:00.000-07:00

Jason Calacanis announced on June 23, 2010 that they will be doing away with revenue sharing on managed pages, and instead use a flat-rate payment system to pay it's writers. I wonder if this change has anything to do with Jason Rapp coming on board as President of Mahalo? Hmmmm.

I guess everyone should have seen this coming, especially after the way Mahalo has been "revoking" (I prefer the word "stealing") pages from writers over the past few months. Mahalo has no regard for its contributors. All of the Mahalo writers have created thousands of pages and have made Mahalo a lot of money, and now all that content will be taken away from those same writers. And under the new policy, if you are one of the (dare I say "lucky"?) few who gets accepted as a Mahalo Guide, you will be paid $1,000 per month (plus possible bonuses) and will be required to produce 25 new pages every week - and what happens when you don't make that quota? Say you write 20 pages - do you then get paid nothing for that work?

My first thought when I read Jason's announcement was that it was a move in the right direction. And I mean that in a sense that profit will be equal amongst the writers, and that writers can focus on writing pages that they are passionate about rather than focusing on what will generate the most Ad Sense revenue. However, when you calculate the numbers, you see that it really isn't that profitable. When you consider the amount of time that will have to be devoted to writing 25 pages and spending 12 hours doing updates, and answering/asking 10 questions a week, it seems more like Mahalo will be turning into a "human powered" sweat shop. I wonder if Jason can write 25 pages a week?

Anyway, here is the announcement that Jason Calacanis made on Mahalo Answers:

Important and Exciting Announcement from Jason for Mahalo Contributors!

A message to the Mahalo Community,

Our goal at Mahalo is to build a high-quality content and community destination – one that delivers information our consumers can trust. To do this, we need talented, motivated writers.

For the past year, we have experimented with a writer-compensation method that shared revenue from our pages. While the revenue sharing system seemed entrepreneurial and fair in theory, after careful examination including getting your feedback, we've concluded that it failed in practice.

We heard your feedback about huge variation in writer compensation that was not directly tied to quality, and about the confusing nature of Mahalo dollars. In short, the system created a happy few and a frustrated many.

So, starting on July 1st, we are moving to a more traditional flat-rate payment system, with incentives based on quality and traffic.

Here's how it will work:

1. On July 1st, Mahalo will stop revenue sharing on topic and "how to" pages, and shelve the concept of vertical and page management. Revenue sharing on Mahalo Answers will continue.

2. All Vertical Managers will be offered Guide or Senior Guide roles based on their tenure and performance as Mahalo consultants to date. Guides will receive $1,000 a month for their content and Senior Guides will receive $1,300.

3. Page Managers and Go Team members will be given the ability to apply for one of 50 new Guide positions, paying $1,000 per month.

4. All Guides will be responsible for 25 new pages, 12 hours of updating (i.e. on the GoTeam), and 10 questions or answers weekly. You will be able to do this work whenever you like so you can easily schedule it around your other writing obligations!

5. NEW FEATURE: We're moving payments of Guides to – wait for it – weekly! The week after you perform your work you will get your PayPal payment. This was one of the most requested features from our writers and we're thrilled that our new flat-rate system will make this easy to implement.

6. NEW FEATURE: Mahalo Dollars will be removed from page management and creation. You will not have to worry about the conversion ratio anymore! Mahalo Dollars will be limited to Mahalo Answers where folks love them and the fun stuff they can buy with them. You've told us that real writers wanted to be paid in real dollars and we've listened. No more conversions! Everyone will have 31 days to cash out their Mahalo Dollars (cash outs can occur anytime in July – no cash outs as of August 1st).

7. Mahalo Dollars will only be used in the Mahalo Store going forward. No more cashing out for real dollars (gift cards and donations will still be available).

8. NEW FEATURE: A group traffic incentive of $100 each will be shared between Guides for every month that Mahalo breaks the previous month's traffic.

9. NEW FEATURE: A group revenue incentive of $100 each will be shared between Guides for every month that Mahalo breaks the previous month's revenue numbers.

10. NEW FEATURE: A quality incentive will be given to a selection of pages and Guides each month based on our Community Team's judgment.

There are going to be many questions and comments on these changes I'm sure. The small number of folks who had the killer revenue pages are going to be disappointed, and the majority of folks who were not breaking $500 a month are going to be excited.

We understand change is hard, but our intention is to build a system that creates a vibrant, fun and profitable experience for everyone. I'm sure there will be some issues we have not anticipated, and you can expect us to pivot, as all start-ups must, if something isn't working. Mike Bracco and I will be discussing these changes in a town hall meeting today, Wednesday, at 11AM Pacific time (2PM eastern).

Mahalo Review: Cash Out!

2010-06-17T08:04:00.000-07:00

If you are going to stick with Mahalo, my advice to you is to cash out every chance that you get. Don't wait to accumulate a large sum before cashing out. Because if they find a reason to ban you from the site, they will not pay you the money that you have accumulated thus far. Just like in my case. All the money I made in March and April was never paid out to me because they banned my account for speaking out against page revocations.

Mahalo Erases My Existence

2010-05-20T15:51:00.000-07:00

Wow, I guess I really made the people at Mahalo mad! I have discovered that they have removed all of my Answers from Mahalo Answers. That's over 900 Answers that have been removed from Mahalo Answers, and that includes over 300 Best Answers. How is removing helpful answers from the site supposed to be in the best interest of the Mahalo community?

Mahalo Denies My Payment

2010-04-25T19:45:00.000-07:00

Mahalo has refused to pay me the money I am owed. Mahalo owes me almost $500 ($329.86 for March and approximately $150 for April). I have sent them emails and even sent Jason Calacanis a "snail mail" letter to his Santa Monica office, but have yet to receive a response. I'm sure I never will.

If you are thinking about joining Mahalo and writing how-to articles or topic pages, I am warning you now that if you say anything negative about Mahalo, they will take your content from you, give it to someone else, and refuse to pay you for it. If you want further proof of the type of guy that Jason Calacanis is, just read this: How Not to Handle a Resignation Gracefully

After I read that, I couldn't believe that Jason Calacanis actually had the nerve to call me "unprofessional". That post shows an email exchange between Jason Calacanis and one of his employees who was giving his two weeks notice. The employee's email was sincere and polite, and even thanked Jason for the opportunity to work at Mahalo. And Jason responded very unprofessionally by saying "good luck being employee 4,367 at a dying company" and telling him not to bother coming back because today is your last day.

Who does Jason Calacanis think he is? He treats his actual Mahalo employees like dirt, and gets away with stealing money from the freelance workers who are building and promoting his site. But of course since the majority of the people freelancing at Mahalo are too afraid to speak out for fear of retaliation, no one will ever know just exactly how despicable he can be.

I'm glad I spoke out against Jason Calacanis and the rest of his cowardly Mahalo staff and kiss-ass vertical managers. I was making pretty good money at Mahalo, and yet I risked losing that because I really felt the need to speak up. They shouldn't be allowed to steal content from hard-working freelancers. They are actually taking content away from people for neglecting to do something that is not even listed as a requirement on the page management guide. Mahalo is also not following their own Terms of Service with regard to page management (see my previous post).

And the reason is because Jason Calacanis doesn't think that most members of Mahalo are "real" members. He has mentioned on numerous occasions on Mahalo Answers that the "real" members of Mahalo are the ones that give back to the community; the rest are "takers". Jason Calacanis thinks that "real" members of Mahalo should be putting money back into Mahalo by tipping up questions, tipping other members, and paying to vote for best answers. And since my focus on Mahalo was more on page management than it was on Mahalo Answers, I was not a "real" member, so therefore I was expendable. So if you are planning on joining Mahalo and creating pages to supplement your income, be prepared to spend some of your hard-earned money on Mahalo Answers, otherwise you're not a "real" member of Mahalo.

So let this be a warning to anyone looking into Mahalo for freelance work.

Mahalo Violates Its Own TOS

2010-04-23T08:53:00.000-07:00

Some people might think that I'm just being bitter for being banned from Mahalo, or having two of my pages revoked. Well, maybe that's true. But how would you feel if you were in my shoes? The reason this whole situation made me so angry was the way that Mahalo was revoking pages. Not just mine, but the way they were revoking pages from everyone on Mahalo. They were not even following their own Terms of Service. This is Mahalo's Terms of Service regarding page management as of the time that I was banned from Mahalo:

As you can see from Mahalo's Terms of Service, I should have received an email reminding me to edit my pages. And then, if 15 days pass without an edit (there is a typo in Mahalo's TOS), then the page would be revoked. This was not being followed by Mahalo staff nor Mahalo vertical managers, which is a direct violation of Mahalo's own Terms of Service.

In addition, there is no mention in the Terms of Service or any Mahalo page management guide stating a minimum word requirement for video descriptions, which was the reason given for Mahalo revoking one of my pages.

And most importantly, the Mahalo Terms of Service under Proprietary Rights state:

"You Own Your Content. We claim no intellectual property rights over the Content you provide to the Services through your Mahalo Account. Your profile and materials uploaded remain yours."

How can content that belongs to you be taken away? Even if you failed to update it, since the TOS stated that you own your content, how can it ever be taken away? So that is why page revocation made me so upset, and is why I made my complaint public.

Mahalo's Unrealistic Page Requirements

2010-04-22T14:19:00.000-07:00

Most of Mahalo's page management requirements are are pretty straight forward and reasonable. However, there is one requirement that I feel is overly burdensome and unreasonable. I am going to assume that most people have lives outside of Mahalo, at least I'd like to hope they do. We all have family obligations, jobs, or even friends we want to hang out with. So how can Mahalo require its page managers to devote so much time to Mahalo?

These were the Mahalo page requirements as of April 6, 2010 taken from the Mahalo Page Management Guide:

1. Mahalo pages should have over 300 words of original text, written by you.

2. Mahalo pages should have at least 5 Fast Facts (How To pages should have at least 3 tips).

3. Mahalo pages should be objective, written from a neutral stand point. They are not written in conversational style but as encyclopedia entries.

4. Page managers should edit their pages on a regular basis every 7 to 10 days, making essential updates and otherwise improving the quality of their pages.

5. Mahalo pages should include citations to specific and detailed information not generally known.

I honestly think that No. 4 is absolutely insane. I don't know if any other site that forces its writers to edit their pages every 7 to 10 days. Can you even imagine how much time that would take you? There are Mahalo page managers that are managing hundreds of pages. For example, lets say that you are managing 200 pages. If you were to spend 5 minutes editing each page every 10 days, that would take you 16 hours every 10 days, or 50 hours per month. Do you really have 50 hours to spend each month editing your Mahalo pages?

Banned From Mahalo

2010-04-19T13:24:00.000-07:00

Mahalo's manner of banning people from their site for speaking out against policies they are not in favor of is outrageous. People should have the right to disagree with Mahalo without fear of retaliation and banishment. This is people's income that they're dealing with, and they do not care. All Jason Calacanis cares about is how fat his bank account is getting. He just wants his "sheeple" to keep pushing out pages so that he can make another million dollars.

Just to sum up what I've posted so far . . .

I became one of Mahalo's top earners as a page manager.
I belonged to Mahalo Mavens, the How To Team, the QC Team, and Sports with M.
In February 2010 one of my pages was revoked for failing update it in time.
In April 2010 one of my pages was revoked for not having enough words in the video description, even though this requirement was not mentioned in the Mahalo Page Management Guide.
In April 2010 Mahalo bans my account after I make a public complaint against Mahalo for revoking pages.

I did not violate Mahalo's Terms of Service. There is nothing in their TOS that says you cannot make a public complaint against them or say anything negative about Mahalo. They simply banned my account because they were butt hurt about my negative comment. They also removed my post from Mahalo Answers, when is why I decided to send an email out to the various Mahalo email distribution lists that I am a regular recipient of. I wanted to make people aware of what Mahalo was doing to its members. So on April 6, 2010, I sent out the following email called "Shame on Mahalo" to Jason Calacanis, Mahalo staff, and Mahalo team members:

Wow, banned within an hour of disagreeing with how Mahalo does business. Maybe you should add that to the Terms of Service. Don't disagree with us, or we'll ban your account.

Well, for those of you who don't know what I'm referring to, I posted the below message on Mahalo Answers, and Mahalo banned my account for it. I have been a trusted user on Mahalo for quite some time, and in fact, I was included in Mahalo Mavens, the How To Team, the QC Team, and even the Sports with M team. But by disagreeing with Mahalo, I am now the scum of society.

Well, all I have to say is "shame on you Mahalo".

(See my previous blog post for the Mahalo Answers post that was removed.)

Jason Calacanis's reply to me:

The staff has decided that they are not interested in working with you going forward. Good luck in your future efforts.

My reply to Jason Calacanis:

The "staff" decided, huh? How coincidental that it happened right after I posted my disagreement.

Jason Calacanis's reply to me:

According to the team your performance was very low compared to other members of the community.

Additionally, your lack of professionalism and responsiveness to their requests for updates resulted in your banning.

We wish you well in your future projects.

My final reply to Jason Calacanis:

You should really just admit that you banned me because I disagreed with Mahalo and called you out on it. At least that would be the "transparent" thing to do. Because I have all my emails with direct questions and my direct answers to show that I have always responded to my direct questions. I have an Excel spreadsheet with all my managed pages to track my word count and updates. And the only "lack of professionalism" that you would be able to point to would be that fact that I disagreed with the great and powerful wizard.... I mean Mahalo. And if voicing your disapproval of something is considered unprofessional, then I don't know how we got as far as we did in this country.

After sending that email, I was surprised by how many responses I received from people that had had similar experiences, or that felt Mahalo's treatment towards me was wrong. Many members asked that their emails be kept confidential, for fear of retaliation from Mahalo, so I will not disclose who the emails are from, but here are just a few quotes from the emails that I received:

"I'm sorry to hear about your problem with Mahalo. I know you are one of the top page managers in terms of earning especially when it comes to the earnings/page ratio. I am always sad when one of the top users or staff leave Mahalo."

"I've seen some of your great work.... I just claimed [some of your pages] as I saw that they have no manager, but I feel dirty after all the hard work the [you] put in!"

"How does it work exactly? Technically, I thought you own this content."

"Best of luck going forward. You seem to be a great writer - there must be other opportunities for you."

"It has become evident how trigger friendly Mahalo has become at banning people."

"Four of my pages (coincidentally some of my top earning pages) were also revoked without warning."

"To BAN someone because you're criticizing Mahalo? That's outrageous!"

"What has happened to you is extremely unfair."

"I no longer act in the 'best interest of Mahalo'- I act in the best interest of myself. Why? Because Mahalo has proven they do not have our best interest at heart, and they have not treated us with the proper respect."

"Mahalo has a lot of outrageous practices, if you ask me."

After receiving these emails from other Mahalo members, it made me feel a lot better that I made my complaint public. I only wished there was a way to notify ALL Mahalo members instead of just the few that I was able to reach. Also, after searching online, I found out that I am not the first to be banned from Mahalo for speaking my mind. Read Rebelling Against the Vertical Manager on Jason Calacanis' Mahalo Collective Farm.

Mahalo Pages Revoked

2010-04-15T09:25:00.000-07:00

February 2010 is when it all went down hill for me on Mahalo. On February 23, 2010, the Vertical Manager for one of my pages asked me to update my page or it would be “removed from the system”. I wrote her back and told her that I would update it. I had every intention of updating it, but, as what usually happens when you plan something, “life” gets in the way and I neglected to get my page updated. So, without any additional warning, my page was revoked two days later and given to another Mahalo member.

So, yes, I was upset. I wrote the page; I promoted the page; and now it has just been handed over to someone else to profit from. So I contacted the Vertical Manager, sent an email to Jason Calacanis, and even posted a question on Mahalo Answers….

Here is my Mahalo Answers post:

Here is my email to Jason Calacanis:

My page, Hunger Games Movie, was recently taken away from me because I did not get a chance to update it. I was about 50 words short of the minimum requirement. However, I have done a lot of work on this page as far as promotion goes, and as a result it ranks very high on Google (first page). There has also not been anything new on this topic (I have this on Google Alerts) in quite some time. So though I understand that this page needed more words, I don't see why it was so critical to the point where you had to take the page from me. It is now being managed by someone else and that person did a piss-poor job on the synopsis. The grammar is horrendous and it was obviously written by someone who never read the book.

So you have taken this page from me only to have it managed by someone who obviously cannot write. And now this person is going to benefit from my time spent promoting this page. And now I'm going to be embarrassed when people click my links to this page and read this awful content.

Is this the future of Mahalo? Quantity over QUALITY? If this is seriously what I have to look forward to, then I'm really not sure I want to be associated with Mahalo. I don't mean any disrespect to you, but I just feel completely wronged by this situation.

Jason Calacanis responded that he would have Lon Harris look into it and added that, “We only take pages away when someone really doesn't respond for a long time (like days) and there is a breaking news.”

I then received a response from Lon Harris to the question I posted on Mahalo Answers:

This is the first time that I heard that VMs were having an “issue” with my pages. Not one member on Mahalo, including Vertical Managers, had all of their pages updated. Believe me, I checked because I wanted to make sure that I was not the only one still updating my pages. So for Lon to say that my pages had become an issue was news to me. I had been working on my pages, and made updates when requested to by a VM. This was the first time I wasn’t able to get to it. And for one missed deadline to negate all the work I put into the page is unacceptable. I spent a lot of time promoting that page by joining forums about the topic and other Q&A sites. And because I was 50 words shy of the new page requirement, they just up and gave it to someone else.

So anyway, I got over it, and even apologized to the Vertical Manager for getting upset. So I moved on and continued even more diligently to finish updating all of my pages. I put in countless hours and I believe that by the end of March, I had finally met the requirements based on the Mahalo Page Management Guide: I had least 300 words on every page I managed, including at least 5 fast facts and credible citations. So it came as a big surprise to me when I found out that another one of my pages had been revoked.

Lon Harris revoked the Foot Locker Coupons page from me. This page had over 400 words, and all the other requirements as outlined in the Mahalo Page Management Guide. So I sent Lon a Direct Question asking why it had been revoked. He did not respond, but the Vertical Manager did. She told me that the page was revoked because I failed to include the minimum number of words in the video description. I only had 24 words as opposed to 50 words. So I went through the page management guide again looking to see if I somehow missed this requirement. And it was no where to be found on the guide.

So, how can this be right? Revoking pages for something that is not even written in Mahalo’s own page management guide? So, yeah, this time I was really pissed. If this video description requirement had been written in the Mahalo guide, I would have made this update. So after receiving the message from the VM, I posted my situation on Mahalo Answers to get some feedback from the Mahalo community.

I was not able to get a screen shot, since Mahalo removed my post, but this is what I wrote:

I know I'm going to get blacklisted for this, but I am so pissed off that I don't give a damn.

I was managing the Foot Locker Coupons page, and forgot to put 50 words in my video description (it had 24 words). But the page over all had well over 400 words and was a very well-written, informative page. But because I had only 24 words in the video description, the page was revoked.

I am absolutely outraged at how Mahalo is treating the people who put their time into this "community" trying to make it better. There are far worse pages out there!!!

Here's a snapshot of my page when I managed it - what the hell is wrong with it!!?? Do you think it deserved to be revoked? Let this be a warning to you all --- the Mahalo Gestapo is out there!

About an hour later I found out I had been banned for a Terms of Service violation. WTF!?

Vertical Managers and New Page Standards

2010-04-14T09:44:00.000-07:00

In November 2009, Mahalo launched “Vertical Management”. Vertical Managers would be appointed to oversee pages by category. Vertical Managers are responsible for making sure pages meet with Mahalo standards and that they are being regularly updated. Vertical Management also changed the revenue share from being a 50/50 split between Mahalo and the Page Manager, to 40% to Mahalo, 40% to the Page Manager, and 20% to the Vertical Manager.

This new revenue split reduced the Page Manager’s earnings by 20%. For example, if a page earned $100, before Vertical Management the Page Manager would receive $50 Mahalo Dollars. Now, if a page was also being vertically managed, the Page Manager would only receive $40 Mahalo Dollars (a 20% drop).

Mahalo also began implementing new page requirements. This was actually a much needed change since many Mahalo pages lacked useful content or were badly written. To help with quality control, Mahalo made a call out to the Mahalo community asking for people to join the Mahalo QC Team. This team would be responsible for proofreading all new tasks (pages) and approving or denying submitted tasks. So I replied that I would like to join the QC Team, and was quickly invited to join. Here is the email I received from Mahalo Staff Member, Anne Keehn, on 12-3-09:

You've been a great page manager... and we'd love to have you on the QC team!!!

Mahalo put together some pages to be used as guidelines for managing Mahalo pages: How to Write a Mahalo Page and Mahalo Page Management Guide. So I used these guides when updating my pages to make sure they met with at least the minimum requirements. Per the Mahalo Page Management Guide (as of 4/6/10), these were the page requirements:

1. Pages must have over 300 words of original text.
2. Pages must have at least 5 Fast Facts.
3. Pages must be objective and neutral.
4. Pages must be edited every 7 to 10 days.
5. Pages must include citations.

I started going through my pages as quickly as I could to get them up to these new standards. I also responded as quickly as I could to requests from Vertical Managers to update pages. There were times when it got pretty overwhelming, but I did the best I could to keep up. I even put off doing any QC’ing for the QC Team because I wanted to get all my pages updated before taking on any additional work. For a lot of pages it’s hard to come up with 300 words. For example, many of my pages are coupon pages. So really, how much can you really say about a coupon? So it did take me a lot of research to try to find out what else I could add to the page. I also checked other top users’ profiles to see if they had all of their pages updated, and they did not. So I assumed that my progress was sufficient and that I was not behind.

Now from what I have written here and in my previous post, it is plain to see that Mahalo considered me to be a dedicated and trusted Mahalo member. So what caused Mahalo to do a 360 and start treating me as if I was not a good page manager?

Joining Mahalo

2010-04-13T10:09:00.000-07:00

Now that I have explained a little bit about what Mahalo is, I'll give you a quick summary of how I got started with Mahalo.

I did legal transcription from home for about five years before discovering freelance writing online. I have been doing freelance writing for about three years now and have written for Bright Hub, eHow, HubPages, Associated Content, Bukisa, and more. Then I discovered Mahalo Greenhouse.

I joined Mahalo in November 2008 when their writing platform was called "Mahalo Greenhouse". I didn't quite understand this platform because of the type of "code" that you needed to use, so I never ended up writing anything through Mahalo Greenhouse. Then in December 2008 Mahalo launched Mahalo Answers, which is Mahalo's Q&A site and that is when I started actively participating in Mahalo. Mahalo Answers was a fun way to earn a few dollars answering questions from a community of Mahalo members. It is similar to Yahoo Answers, which I was also active in at the time, but with Mahalo Answers you could make some money too. I never made a whole lot of money through Mahalo Answers, but I still enjoyed answering the questions. From December 2008 through April 2010 I answered 901 questions, 311 of which were chosen as the Best Answer. I also earned 8435 points, and a purple belt with brown tip. (You earn belt levels similar to martial arts belts by earning points in Mahalo Answers. The higher the belt level, the more privileges you receive.) Here are my Mahalo Answers stats:

In June 2009, Mahalo 2.0 was lauched. Mahalo 2.0 gave Mahalo members the ability to create Mahalo pages and earn ad revenue for managing them. At the end, I was managing around 90 Mahalo pages and earning about $400 to $500 per month (U.S. Dollars) in ad revenue from my managed pages. This was amazing and I was loving Mahalo. Whenever I was asked by anyone how they could make money online, I would always referr them to Mahalo. I loved Mahalo so much, that I pretty much stopped writing for other freelance writing sites and put all of my focus into Mahalo.

I quickly became one of Mahalo's top page earners and was a respected and valuable member of Mahalo. I spent a lot of time creating, updating, and promoting the pages that I managed, as well as occasionally sharing my knowledge on Mahalo Answers.

On August 5, 2009 I was invited to join the Mahalo "How-To" team for creating how-to pages. This is an excerpt from the email I received from Mahalo Staff Member, Eric Chao:

I just got the chance to look over the two sample pages that you sent to me the other week. They look fantastic!

Tech-related pages can be tough to write clearly, but you've got a good knack for how to break things down into component steps. Great work with the embedded images too. They add a lot of value to an already very good page.

If you're still interested, I'd love to have you join up with the How-To Team on Mahalo Tasks.

On August 24, 2009, I was invited to join Mahalo's elite group called Mahalo Mavens. I received this email from Mahalo Staff Member, Lon Harris:

We have an e-mail list called "Mahalo Mavens" that allows our site's top users to have off-site, more private, conversations with one another and key members of our Mahalo staff. It's also a great opportunity for us all to share links that we need help promoting, to assist in getting pages to rank higher.

Current membership includes a lot of top Answers and Tasks writers, along with Mahalo's CEO, Jason Calacanis, myself, and our Director of Product, Mike Rhoads.

Because of your impressive contributions to the site through Page Management, Answers and Tasks, I wanted to invite you to join the group. Let me know if you're interested and I will add your e-mail to the list.

Wow! I was really moving up in the Mahalo world and receiving much-deserved recognition. I was so excited about being a part of such a great group of people and a fun community. And on top of that, I was making a good amount of money.

So how did it all go so horribly wrong?

What Is Mahalo?

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My Mahalo review will begin with a brief explanation of what Mahalo is. Mahalo was founded by Jason Calacanis in 2007 and is referred to as a “human-powered search engine”. Basically, Mahalo consists of web pages that are built by people about popular search terms. In addition to Mahalo pages, there is also a knowledge exchange in the form of a Q&A area called Mahalo Answers. You can make on Mahalo by writing pages for upfront payment as well as ad revenue and by asking and answering questions on Mahalo Answers. Many freelance writers have flocked to Mahalo to write topic pages and how-to articles. Keep in mind while reading this Mahalo review that Mahalo's policies and procedures are constantly changing.

Mahalo Dollars: Your earnings on Mahalo are given to you in "Mahalo Dollars". Each Mahalo Dollar is worth $0.75. You can cash out your Mahalo Dollars after you reach a minimum of 150 Mahalo Dollars. Payments are sent to you through PayPal on the 15th of the following month.

Mahalo Answers: This is Mahalo's question and answer site. You can earn money here by asking and answering questions. If your answer is chosen as the best answer, then you receive the "tip" that is offered on the question. The tips are either funded by the person asking the question, or by Mahalo itself. So the tip amount will vary on each question. Also, in February 2010, Mahalo launched ad revenue sharing at Mahalo Answers. Now the person asking the question and the person who receives the best answer will earn ad revenue as well. However, the ad revenue is capped at $100 for each question on Mahalo Answers.

Mahalo Pages / Tasks: Tasks is Mahalo's platform for creating Mahalo pages. This includes topic pages as well as How To pages. However, you can still claim already built pages that do not have a page manager. As described above, Mahalo pages are written by Mahalo members and can be about any popular search term on the internet. Mahalo pages can be about celebrities, current events, popular products and coupons, video game walk-throughs, step-by-step “how to” articles, and more. Mahalo pages consist of written content, links sections, and videos and images. A Mahalo page is intended to be the sole source for everything you would want to know about a particular search term. Managing Mahalo pages is a profitable way to earn money on the internet so long as your pages are well written and promoted.

More About Mahalo Pages

When you create a page, or claim an abandoned page, you become a “Page Manager”. Mahalo Page Managers are paid ad revenue for the pages they manage, plus upfront payment if created through Mahalo Tasks. Mahalo’s ad revenue is paid out 50/50 (in Mahalo Dollars) between Mahalo and the Page Manager unless the page is under “Vertical Management”.

Mahalo launched Vertical Management in November 2009 and assigned Vertical Managers for each category. It is the Vertical Manager’s job to oversee assigned pages and to make sure those pages meet the minimum requirements and are being frequently updated. If your page has a vertical manager, then the ad revenue changes from a 50/50 split to 40% to Mahalo, 40% to the page manager and 20% to the vertical manager.

How to Make Money on Mahalo

Earn tips and ad revenue through Mahalo Answers.
Earn money by creating pages through Tasks where you earn upfront payment for creating pages, and then ad revenue for managing those pages.
Earn money on Mahalo by becoming a Vertical Manager and earn 20% of the ad revenue on pages you vertically manage. In addition, you can still have a limited number of pages that you can directly manage and earn ad revenue from.
Earn money on Mahalo by joining the QC Team. The QC team is responsible for quality control. They review pages created through Tasks and have the power to approve and deny the task. QCers receive 50% of the upfront pay attached to the task they review.

My Thoughts About Mahalo

Mahalo is a great way to earn money online, especially if you are a good writer and page promoter. Mahalo prides itself on being friendly, helpful and transparent; but I have a lot of issues with the way they are handling the revoking of pages. I totally agree that pages need to meet high standards. The content should be well-written, current, and helpful. However, Mahalo is not very clear on what exactly the guidelines are for creating and managing pages. In addition, Mahalo staff and vertical managers do not even follow Mahalo's Terms of Service or page management guides. And this is the area that gets me so upset. Keep reading to find out how Mahalo violated its own Terms of Service.