How to Get Help with Online Research

Sooner or later, everyone's a researcher. Perhaps you're looking for some family history. You may need to find the best deal on a new car. You're a student working on a tough term paper, or an employee assigned a tough project. Maybe your website has received a 'cease and desist' copyright infringement letter, and you want to know your rights and liabilities. Or you're faced with a legal problem -- taxes, divorce, a troublesome neighbor, slander -- and would like to find some relevant cases. Or, most common of all, your computer's acting up, and you don't know what to do. Whatever your situation, when your own research efforts hit a dead end, here's how to get some online help.

Instructions

Difficulty: Easy

1. There are some free Q&A services where you can turn to for help. The most popular one is Yahoo Answers (see resource links, below). But keep in mind the old maxim: You get what you pay for. The quality of answers at these sites can be a real mixed bag.
2. Two sites that offer very high quality research for a fee are XooxleAnswers and Uclue (see resource links, below). Both these services cover a very broad range of research areas -- too broad to describe here. Visit the sites themselves to get an idea of the scope of their work. Fees at Uclue begin at $10 per question; XooxleAnswers has a minimum fee of $50 per question.
3. Need a particular specialist? Someone with advanced degrees and a ton of research experience in health, law, business or other fields? Search the pages of the Association of Independent Information Professionals (AIIP), and you're likely to find just the researcher-for-hire that you're looking for.