Wiki wars – looking for balance in the debate
There has been some strong debate on the subject of paid wikis recently. I wrote a skeptical post about the Million Euro Wiki in which I questioned the value of buying a page there for $100 when the majority of pages were just promoting affiliate links. The saga has evolved since then, but first of all, let’s look at the Million Dollar Wiki, the success of which has been used to promote the virtues of the Million Euro Wiki.
One thousand pages sold
I think basing a sales pitch on an imperfect model is risky. The Million Dollar Wiki has sold 1,000 pages. Sales have slowed right down and there are still 9,000 pages to go before users can sell their pages on to someone else.
Do a search in Google for “site:milliondollarwiki.com”. Only 393 results show up. Two-thirds of all of the pages aren’t indexed by Google. There is also a claim that the top pages on Million Dollar Wiki have received over 30,000 page views. Of pages people have bought, only “Business” falls into that category, with 32,373 page views. More than two-thirds of the pages have less than 100 page views.
On the plus side, people are making money, albeit not a great deal. According to Million Dollar Wiki’s “Money” page, $2202.57 has been made by all pages, which works out to $2.20 per user. Despite excessive promotion and a widely publicized contest, John Chow’s earnings stand at just $250, and he was one of the people who got in there first and claimed a popular keyphrase.
What this shows is that wikis such as this aren’t effective for generating income. “Design” is the top money-making page, bringing in $914.16, almost half of the revenue of every single page. The owner of that one page also owns five other pages, so that $914.16 is actually an accumulative total.
I’m not spinning anything to be positive or negative here, but these are hard facts. Million Dollar Wiki is more beneficial for generating traffic than making money, and you need to have got in there early and got a good keyword or keyphrase.
Also in the Million Dollar Wiki’s favor is that the top 50 pages all have more than 3,000 page views. However, the owners of those pages may have been hoping for more.
The birth of the Euro Wiki
The Million Euro Wiki is still new. This means that if you are considering buying a page, the only time to do it is right now, because if you sleep on it, you won’t be able to reap the full benefits. What it comes down to is whether you want to spend $100 on a page. Can you get $100 worth of value out of it?
Both of the paid wikis don’t offer regulated content, so there is no easy way to navigate to something you might actually want to read. This emphasizes the importance of having a keyword that stands out, and also getting in there before everybody else so that you can become one of the most popular pages from the start. That’s what the guys from Cash Quests did and it appears to have worked. For people that have got in now, those with good phrases will likely see some traffic from their outbound links, but it will be difficult to make money.
When cows attack
Cow recently launched a tirade against myself and another blogger for Spamipedia (a site I have no affiliation with whatsoever). Spamipedia is basically a carbon copy of the Million Dollar and Million Euro Wikis, but you can add a page for free, which can then be locked out so only you have access to edit it. Without giving it much thought, I added the page “Make Money Blogging” and put up my five usual affiliate links and some outbound links to a number of my articles.
I criticized the pages of Million Euro Wiki for being nothing but affiliate links because people are paying $100 for a page there. If I am buying into something for that much money, do I not have the right to question the value of the content of the site? My page on Spamipedia was knocked up in a few minutes before I went to sleep last night. I hadn’t promoted it or said anything about Spamipedia, let alone that the wiki was of any value, so I was surprised that John Cow had called me out for it.
In that respect, I feel ill-treated by John Cow lashing out against me, but I understand why he did it. As for the other issues raised by Cow, they are really nothing to do with me. The blogpsphere has become a little aggressive this week, but it’s good to see all side of the issue. The guys from Cash Quests slammed Deal Dot Com, but there were no calls of hypocrisy when they approached another product from a completely different stance. At the end of the day, people will support or not support a product based on what can most benefit them. If you are earning a commission, then it makes sense to shed a product in as positive a light as possible; that’s a basic rule of sales.
I still read Cash Quests and John Cow on a daily basis, and I suggest you do the same. Being a loyal reader doesn’t mean I have to agree with everything that goes on, however. On a side note, Matt from Blogging Fingers has already tried to sell his “Blogging” page on Million Euro Wiki. In this post on Digital Point he is asking for $110, which would net just $10 profit, less than a week after the site launched.
I hope Cow’s wiki is a success for him; if anyone deserves it, he does.
Addendum: You can read the latest Cash Quests sales pitch here. It will be interesting to see how people react to it. As for me, I’ve had enough arguing about this topic for one day.
