Million Euro Wiki: It’s Not Dead!

In September, I bought the Business Cards page from the Million Euro Wiki. It was a project from John Cow. The ideal was simple: make a wiki and sell a page for life for 75 Euro or $100USD. To be different from the Million Dollar Wiki(I have Technology), a person would be able to sell a page anytime. Plus, you can put Adsense on it and I did.

At that time, many popular bloggers(Cash Quest, John Chow...) started to buy pages and sell the ideal to other bloggers. For every 25 pages sold, you could even win an iPod Touch worth $400. They added a coupon so that buyers could save 10% with McGrathDotCA and added the affiliate program paying $30 in commission per page sold. That's a great way to easily make money!

So, I created a simple page with some related affiliates and displayed my other links.

And bang! it happen

In October, John Cow decided to sell MEW to Paul Hartrick and Neil Duckett in a private auction of current page owners. John was in his right to sell. They decided that they will continue the iPod Touch, affiliate program...and they did. Plus, they even gave a personal page to current owners as a sign of good faith. I have Steve McGrath and unlike others, I did wrote some information in the free page. My page does not have: this page is reserved for ...

I was also able to buy the Blogging page for $90 from another owner(no profit for him). In it, I added links to post I made about blogging and my link to my other sites.

It's Not Dead!

The last page was sold on December 2 thus 1 page short of the 75 pages sold and another iPod Touch draw.

The ideal is still sound and the possibility to make money($30 commission per page) with it's affiliate program and other sources like Adsense should be enough for people to start buying pages again. But for that, current page owners should promote it more like I'm doing now. Owners should add more links to content like I did and by pointing to their own sites.

Recommendations

My instinct would be to lower the price per page but doing this, I would not get the $30/commission, the chance to win an iPod Touch....

After sending a email to Paul Hartrick about my concerns, he convinced me that he and Neil are in it for the long haul. They even bought the iPod Touch for the next time they sell a page to get the magic 75.

I would, however, lower the price of the front page ad. $10/day is way too much at this time. They could add 5 Premium Listing for the month for that price and have site wide sidebar links or banners.

The price is to high

Yes, the upfront price is higher than usual but you are paying for a very long time. Plus, you save save 10% with McGrathDotCA. If they do what I was recommending above, how long the hosting would had really been covered for? As more pages are added, the higher the cost of the server. Part of the money will be use for publicity. Again, don't forget what they do give in return.

You only need to sell 3 pages to cover the cost of your page. Again, we need to think long term not short term.

Traffic, Traffic, Traffic....

If more traffic can convert to more clicks in Adsense/affiliates links, then the $90 and additional traffic to owners sites would then be paid off over time. They may click on an ad on your site but found you because of MEW. If we, as page owners, get 100 hits/year to our sites, the traffic alone would be paying for the extra traffic.

Take the 100 hits x 10 years = 1000 hits / $90 would be 0.09 per targeted visitor. Now, 100 is small and it should increase as more pages and more visitors come to MEW because of the content. I took 10 years but it could be longer.
All the "good" words are taken

That's the easiest excuses I ever heard. It's like saying that since Site A exist, we can't have Site B. You should not take a word and just add a "s" to it. That will devalue both pages and not be useful to visitors. I would discourage that practice all together if I could. Think of it like a one page site that could be also a jumping page to your site with even more information.

Right now, some keyword like DVD, Online rental, Olympics, Forex, Planet, Greek Gods .... are available. The last page was Jobs Dubai. It's not mine but last week I saw an hour long documentary about Dubai on TV. So, you could look outside common words, get one for your city or about your own site. Next year, it will be something new or a new class of technology. Think long term here!

One step better than Wikipedia

Wikipedia was a good ideal at first but it's strength became it's weakness by allowing anybody to change the content. But by controlling the content of your page, you can at least count on more "stable" content. You could create a gmail account just for that page so that people could correct you with proofs to backup their claims. The last thing is optional.

Also, you can make money from your page unlike Wikipedia. It's all on how you present it and if you want to make money. A few ads is not so bad.

Conclusion

I still believe that it can be used for "marketing" while offering content to visitors. Plus, the $30/commission is a great incentive to make money for those buying a page. If you make your money back in the first year, then good for you.

One more thing: I put my money where my mouth is and bought the page 1 Cool File yesterday to promote my site! Thanks to me, we will have another iPod draw.

One more other thing: the links don't have the nofollow tag

Plus, I will get the front page until 4 other pages are sold. Could it be your page?

Save 10% using coupon McGrathDotCA and buy a page now.