What is Quora? How Questions can make you Money

Quora is a question and answer website that organises information into categories. It is built upon a community of people who ask questions, hoping they will get a consolidated response from self-proclaimed experts. These responses can come in two main formats, written responses or video responses. Over the years Quora has been quietly rated as a fantastic source for answering life’s biggest questions. However, just like with any platform, Quora has been spammed by amateur marketers who respond to questions in an unorthodox way. This is nothing to worry about because the quality on Quora still outperforms this lousy way that these people market. So the big question is:

How do you use quora to make money?

You can do this in one of two ways:

Check all the questions asked within your niche area and thematically rank what the biggest problems are so that you can create content, products and services that help solve it
Create content regularly that answers people’s questions in the form of written text or video

Setup your Profile

You can sign up to Quora using Facebook or Google, or simply create a new account. Once you have done this you’ll be prompted to choose topics that you know about or are interested in. Select as many relevant topics as you can, as this will determine what is on your feed, as well as what questions Quora prompts you to answer.

Like any online platform, you must set up your profile. Add a professional or compelling photo of yourself to your profile. Upload your profile credentials (just underneath your name) and add a description about you. Be clear as to who you are, what you do and how you do it. You also need to add your experience as well, just like you would if you were on LinkedIn. This gives your audience an idea of your expertise.

Look for Questions in your niche

Go to the search box at the top of the page and type in a niche topic such as weight loss and press enter (it’s really important that you do not select any of the options auto-suggested). A whole list of questions will appear regarding weight loss. You can filter this list by different categories like questions, answers, posts, past year, past month etc. I would categorise it for questions and past year, and highlight and copy 50 – 100 questions pertaining to questions asked on weight loss in the past year.

Next, you want to paste these questions into a spreadsheet and neaten it up so you can clearly see the questions asked. You may also want to put in the number of “follows” a specific question has got in another column, however, this may be pointless, as Quora gives users the option to follow privately. Then, you need to create some common themes emerging from the questions selected. Keep this high level and don’t do any more than 10 themes if you can help it.

Once you have created your themes, count how many questions are in each theme and determine the results. You’ll be able to clearly see what people want to be solved. This will inform what you need to focus on. This is very useful because if you wanted to create a book or course, you’d be able to come up with chapters pertaining to the themes you have identified. It’s user-focused and not based on your own ideas, which is one of the biggest mistakes that entrepreneurs can make.

Answer people’s questions

Quora is a huge question and answer site that gets a lot of organic traffic. You can take advantage of this because people have intent, i.e. the intent to get an answer to a question they have asked. This means you can position yourself as an expert and draw a potential audience to you. If you followed the exercise above, you’ll already know what questions to answer. I would start answering these questions as often as possible, sharing your expertise where you can. If you feel like you have already answered this question on your blog post, you can refer to this blog post or use elements of it. I think it is very important to answer questions in context to the question being asked. This way when people are reading your post, they will feel like it is congruent to the question being asked. I would avoid spamming posts and leaving a link that says “Find out more here.” You can, of course, do that at the end of your post, however, you need to prove your expertise first by properly answering the question.

It’s all about positioning

I would do an exercise and read as many answers as you can to questions that fit in your niche. The aim of this exercise is to get a feel the quality of their response, as well as the formats used to answer questions. I have seen too many lazy responses, done in a format that is not appealing. Here are some key things of note when developing your response to a question:

Have a compelling image that is related to the question being asked. There are too many posts on Quora that are text-based only. An image disrupts attention and allows your post to get noticed amongst the rest
Create a video of yourself or a presentation that answers the question. This is useful because it gives people the option to watch a video, which is better for some people’s learning and development. I would still recommend accompanying this video with text that supports the response
Breaking up your response into key sections. This is dependent upon the question being asked and how you answering it. It is a good idea to have bolded headed sections that clearly identify parts of the answer. This creates clarity and structure, something that is severely sought after
Create a call-to-action. At the end of your answer give them a link that will help them even more in some way. This may be to offer a lead magnet (free gift), or a YouTube video explaining the answer in more detail, or even a link to your blog post. It is all dependent upon your end goal

Final Words

When you get into the swing of things, you soon realise that Quora is a fantastic way to:

Understand your audience better
Create evidence-based content, products and services
Demonstrate your expertise
Increase traffic to your website and online platforms

I hope I have answered the question “What is Quora?” to your satisfaction, and that you can see how useful it can be to grow your business as a personal brand. I would sign up for a Quora account today and put it into your content strategy.