I have written a lot about different medical expert platforms, such as Just Answer, as a platform for physicians to make some money. It’s great because you aren’t using your medical license to diagnose anyone. You aren’t writing prescriptions or managing disease, you are simply a medical expert.
As a medical expert you are offering expert advice. There are mechanics and lawyers on there as well, doing the same. As long as you don’t enter a patient-doctor relationship, you can serve as a medical expert for anonymous individuals.
In this post I’ll discuss my $5,277 income which I earned as a medical expert in just 22 days of work.
Medical Expert Platforms
You can pick up questions as a medical expert either from your phone app or from web browser. I prefer the laptop since I have a solid workflow which helps me maximize my income as a medical expert.
There are customers for all sorts of medical expert advice. Some want to get a second opinion on a treatment plan. Others have a picture they want to share with a doctor and ask their opinion about. Everything is anonymous so you don’t know the names or other identifying information of the clients.
The most interesting thing about such sites is that customers post questions from different countries. It’s fascinating to see how diseases are managed in other countries and what medications are used.
$5,277 of Income As a Medical Expert
During this time I replied to several hundred questions.
Most of the time I just click a button and I have my own tricks to not waste any time on a customer which may not convert to a paying customer.
I probably only went back and forth with 300 clients. Which might seem like a lot but the questions are often quite straightforward.
Question Types
The rest of the customer inquiries require some information gathering on my part and a few more questions from the client. Once they are happy, they rate me, and I get paid.
There are many questions which include a picture. I click on them and I answer a particular question, such as, “is this cancer?” or “Is this herpes?”. Remember, you’re not trying to give anyone a diagnosis. As a medical expert you are trying to help them figure out what to do next and offer them advice to empower them in order to have a better conversation with their own clinician.
Time Spent
On average I have spent 1 hour and 15 minutes per day answering questions, such as I have done since the beginning of this month, September 1st.
The longest I have spent answering questions in one day has been 2 hours.
I am very efficient because I pick the right questions and I use a voice dictation method in order to reply to customers. This saves me a lot of time and it means I can handle a higher volume of questions.
To give you an idea, as I’m working on this post I’m switching back and forth and I have already made $100 while writing this post. I have picked up another 8 questions to which I have only replied but haven’t gotten a reply back yet from the customer.
Customer Satisfaction
Most such companie want you to maintain a high customer satisfaction rating and they are pretty serious about that. In order to achieve this number you will need to pass on a few questions and partake in a few other tricks.
Most of your ratings will be 5-star and quite a few 4-stars. The 1-stars are usually customers who had problems with the site or had higher expectations.
Working from Anywhere
With these medical expert websites I’m allowed to work from my laptop anywhere in the world.
All I need is an internet connection. I usually have to look up a few things in order to provide the best answers to the customers. Drugs.com and uptodate.com are more than adequate for this.
Imagine living in a place like Spain where cost of living is low and earning your money in the US. It’s a great way of stretching the value of your income.
A Side Income
This is a great way to earn a side income while utilizing your medical expertise as a medical expert. You don’t risk your medical license because all customer interactions are anonymous. You don’t prescribe any medication and don’t build a patient-doctor relationship.
The key with such platforms is developing an efficient flow so that you can move through questions quickly.
If you have an idle 1-hour slot in the day then you can log on, answer some questions and wait for customer replies. Because it’s asynchronous, you can get back to the customer later in the day or even the next day.
However, ideally you would offer the right answer the first time so that the customer doesn’t have any more questions which is possible 80% of the time.
Physician vs. Medical Expert
A medical expert doesn’t care which individual or entity is on the receiving end of the information. The medical expert shares their expertise in the field.
The physician enters a unique patient doctor relationship and comes up with a diagnosis and treatment for a particular individual – their advice is rarely applicable to everyone.
27 replies on “$5,277 Income as a Medical Expert”
I’m really impressed with your JA numbers. I really liked that JA isn’t medical advice (so no treating or malpractice issues) and is completely on your own time, but I gave up after a few weeks.
I found the vast majority of questions to be potential rabbit hole time-sucks (“I’ve seen numerous specialists that I don’t agree with for a unique constellation of symptoms that I want diagnosed online” or “I see parasites no one else sees and my dermatologist says I need a mental health specialist but I’m definitely not crazy”, etc).
When I saw a more focused question and answered quickly with a high quality answer, 3/5 of the time they didn’t bother to rate (so they can get the answer for free). I gave up as I wasn’t going to spend even more time “begging” for ratings to get paid.
Until JA can figure out how to fix the ratings drop out rate better, I won’t be doing work for them as I am essentially providing a service, then it is dependent on the recipient to decide whether to pay for the work already done (of course who wouldn’t want it for free then?).
Obviously, you find a great way to make it work for you which is awesome – I just never figured out the system to payoff for me.
It’s definitely a consumer based platform where the customer is always right. I had my own level of frustration when I first started but have since figured out how to game the system. Also, I’ve answered enough questions that I have some authority on there.
I suspect there will be more websites like this in the future so keep an eye out for them. As telemedicine is becoming more popular and customers want more access to healthcare professionals we will have more opportunities to offer expert medical advice without having to establish a patient doctor relationship.
I just finished a 1 hour tutorial for JA which I’ll put up for sale soon. It would be a full how-to if you are ever interested in doing your thing. Or, if you have the interest, you could start a similar website and compete with JA and I’ll come and work for you ?
Great info! How long did it take for you to get credentialed through JustAnswer? I submitted my application and haven’t heard back from them in 2 1/2 months. Status shows “pending professional verification” and my emails to JA have not been responded. Thanks! Love your writing and blog!
I would check in with them to see what your estimated time is before getting credentialed.
It took me maybe a month to get credentialed. I’m sure there is a blog post about it back in 2015 when I started with them. Maybe it was 2016. Don’t recall.
I know another doctor on this blog got credentialed with them in less than a month so maybe they just lost your app in the shuffle.
This site is terrible at getting back to you about everything. Emailed, still in pending verification, no replies for months. Still not credientialed.
Are there other similar sites you could apply to? I’m not familiar with competitors but there must be some out there. Though the income potential is great, I’m sure even JA may not be around forever. I’ll ask around and see if similar opportunities are available on other platforms. It might make sense to diversify especially if they are displaying signs of incompetence with handling expert applications. Maybe they don’t have the capacity, maybe they don’t have enough employees, or maybe they are on their way out.
Not optimistic about it. I’ve sent 3 emails to their recruiting address and called on the phone and haven’t gotten any indication that they’re working on the application.
I’ve also been waiting to get credentialed with JA for over a month, and can’t seem to get a hold of anyone who can tell me anything about it. They won’t give a phone number to call about it, just the email which hasn’t responded.
The demand for the medical profession is high and they get a lot of foreign doctors applying so they have a lot to weed through because that’s not their first preference. I would continue contacting them, maybe add the recruiter into your linkedin account and ping them there. From their perspective quite a few docs get credentialed with them but only do a couple of shifts and don’t go back which might be another delaying factor.
I watched the video but don’t know how to use the platform efficiently. For instance, how do you set up the voice dictation and the auto replies?
I use google drive and google word equivalent which I show in the video. I use the dictation command and cut and paste. The dictation improves the more you use it. I don’t do a whole lot of canned responses because the dictation is so fast that I don’t have a need to. Let me know what else you have trouble with and I’m happy to help out.
I’m having the same issue as Anonymous, A C, and Dr. C. I’ve even applied multiple times, hah! And definitely not hearing back from anyone, despite my reaching out multiple times. Guess the ride is good for those who got on on time …
“I suspect there will be more websites like this in the future”…
Don’t count on it. Or, if they do pop up then, as you said they might be “on their way out” pretty soon thereafter.
I know, as I’ve worked in the “online Q&A expert” field for many years (since 2010).
There used to be many other general Q&A platforms back in the early 2010s than there are today (like eHow experts or JA’s spinoff Pearl.com that flunked)
All of them flopped within 2-3 years or went bonkers (like Keen…which now does astrology “experts” only).
The only Q&A websites that are popping up nowadays or are potentially doing well are the niche ones that are super-focused on one area like veterinarians, doctors, or lawyers. The general Q&A platforms just don’t come around anymore or don’t stay around.
Not sure why…
That’s great insight, thanks for sharing it. I agree, it’s a good idea to not rely on this sort of income too much since the whole space could suddenly disappear if there is any kind of regulation when it comes to experts offering advice. But with places like JA and clarity.fm, there seems to always be some sort of need for an expert to offer advice in their field of expertise.
The link to the JA Video did not vield anything……… is the video still for sale ? Thank you
The link works now but the price has changed. It used to be $20 but I didn’t have a lot of interest in it. I bumped up the price to $150 and got more interest. Then I bumped up the price to $300 and now I am getting the right individuals purchasing the product for the right reasons.
I’m thinking of doing this as a veterinarian, as a side gig for now. What do you think? Maybe in the future will launch my own.
Law and medicine and veterinary and…. I think tech support are the big money makers. As always, whatever you can do for someone else, you can probably do better on your own, as long as you passionate about it.
Do some more research on Justanswer. This is the only positive review I’ve found for it, and it sounds suspect. You don’t get paid if someone doesn’t rate the answer, and there are other red flags for Experts and users. Don’t take my word for it, do your own research and take this claim, and mine, with a grain of salt.
Agreed. Take everything you read with a grain of salt and a healthy suspicion. I’ve been reporting my income from JA for several years on here. But the results, as you guys can all read, are mixed for different physicians. Some report that they can’t even get credentialed. Others say that they don’t make but $200/mo and others like yourself report that you won’t get paid if you don’t get rated, which is accurate.
I ran across this as I was browsing JA reviews, just out of idle curiosity. I’m also an expert on there in a few car categories, and can attest to the potential earnings. I do this as side income as I do also own an automotive shop. There are some months that most of my free time is taken, but other months that I can really dedicate some time to the site.
My earnings can run anywhere from $1k/mo to $6k/mo, but it definitely takes some dedicated time to watching the question list. I’d love to say that I only spend 1-2 hours actually answering questions, but the issue is that in my categories, the questions get jumped on SO quickly, that I literally have to keep an eye on the question list almost full-time.
Agree, the downside to the JA algorithm is that it’s not optimized to reward those who are live, taking questions and those experts who have the most expertise and/or highest rating. It must be a good system however because it’s working for them. For me what has worked is being persistent. The longer I’m on and the faster I snag questions the more disheartened the other experts become. They then jump off and I get to take the next set of questions.
Yep, it can get a bit scrappy in there. I’ll say that my particular automotive focus is pretty narrow, so all of the other experts who are in my same categories are pretty decent. We at least have an accord.
How is it working nowadays Just Answers? I found today this service with your blog post, it has dubbious reports. Anyway, how long does an non-US doctor get into the platform nowadays in 2022 and how much income can we get? Thanks for sharing
I would recommend a different expert site if you feel that JustAnswer is sketchy. After all, you’ll be providing medical expertise on there and don’t want to feel like you are doing illegal work.
I’m not involved with JA in any way where I could comment on their physician onboarding times but the physician attrition rate is high so I suspect there are plenty of opportunities.
The income I think is the biggest detractor for most. Some are making $150 per hour based on their volume and others are making $50. It takes a while to become efficient on any platform. But you learn a lot about different specialties and different ways medicine is practiced in other countries.