Running a business is hard. It takes cash. As others have said (and better) it is likely that they're doing this in the hopes of raising cash. Not because they

Running a business is hard. It takes cash. As others have said (and better) it is likely that they're doing this in the hopes of raising cash. Not because they are jerks, but because they need to. So they can eat. I worry this tactic may kill the golden goose eventually, though! Newcomers may be daunted by this experience, but I'm sure they thought of that and have tested it. Easy enough to pay some college kids for an afternoon. I suspect that SO is enough of a (hacker) "household name" that newcomers will already know the legends with no help from any marketing team. As others have said, primary access is by way of search engine results. It would be tricky to do it well and proper, but perhaps they could introduce monetary rewards for question. Take a cut of transactions, pass on cash to recipients. Could obfuscate the % of the cut by using tokens or similar. I've definitely received answers so good I'd have paid for them! I've also had questions that were difficult enough to warrant attaching a real monetary bounty. Perhaps another angle would be something like CodeMentor. A system where you could pay someone to mentor you, but buying from a user profile backed by the credibility of answering questions on the subject at hand.