The Cheapest Paid Wiki On The Net
Another day, another paid wiki. That was my original reaction to this review request. From the same people that brought you the Five Dollar Wiki and the One Buck Wiki comes yet another paid wiki site and this time, it’s even cheaper. If you can’t afford to pay a full dollar for a wiki page, then you might want to consider the Quarter Wiki. You can probably guess where this is going.
Is Really a Quarter?
The Million Dollar Wiki sold each page for a hundred dollars. The Five Dollar Wiki started out selling its pages for five dollars each, but this price rises quickly with every 1000 pages sold. A similar scheme was implemented at the One Buck Wiki, except the first 999 pages were sold for — you guessed it — a buck.
The Quarter Wiki does not make use of this escalating price scheme, instead selling all of its pages for just a quarter. They guarantee that the site will stay alive for at least fifteen years, meaning that each year will cost you less than 2 cents. You’d be hard-pressed to find a cheaper paid wiki site.
Extra Features
The provided FAQ and purchase page already tell you about why you should purchase a wiki page, so I’m not going to do that. The Quarter Wiki is fundamentally identical to every other paid wiki site on the net, but the developers have tossed in some extra features that might entice you even more than the 25 cent asking price.
When you hop over to the QuickStart Guide (which is a good idea, in and of itself), you’ll discover that this paid wiki allows you to embed videos, integrate RSS feeds, implement Google ads, and even include frames that will display full websites within your paid wiki page. I imagine that many future Quarter Wiki pages will get very spammy with flashing animations and frames all over the place. Implemented properly, however, these pages could prove to be real money-makers.
Instead of a list of categories, The Quarter Wiki features a category cloud, not unlike the tag clouds you find on many blogs. Another added bonus is the user list. Each person who purchases a page gets their own user page to further promote products, services, websites, and so on.
193 Pages Sold And Counting
When I wrote the review, The Quarter Wiki had sold a total of 193 pages to date. With some quick math, this works out to $48.25. If these guys want to make money with this site, they’re going to have to sell a heck of a lot more pages. Don’t forget that a paid review on John Chow dot Com goes for $400; they need to sell 1,600 pages just to cover the cost of this review! If you’re wondering, the page for “Johnchow” (one word) has already been purchased, but not “John Chow” (two words).
In wiki we trust? Seeing how this is (at least) the third paid wiki site from the same team of guys, they must really trust the power of the wiki. The “buy a quarter page” is worded poorly, though, because it makes me think that I’m going buying 25% of a page.
How Much Cheaper Can It Get?
The Million Dollar Wiki and the Million Euro Wiki both sell pages for $100 each. Many people thought that the price was too high and that’s where sites like the Five Dollar Wiki and One Buck Wiki came into play. Now that they’ve pushed the price down to just 25 cents, you’ve got to wonder if the developers are simply cannabalizing their own sales. Why would someone buy a five dollar page when they can spend the same amount of money and buy 20 pages on The Quarter Wiki?
Knowing them, they’ll probably come out with yet another paid wiki site in a couple of months. Can the One Penny Wiki be far behind?
- Posted in Reviews, The Net
- 142 comments what's your take?
I’ve had enough of these wikis.
Reply to this commentI can’t agree with you more. Should have told this chap to hang on to his review money for another venture.
Reply to this commentAh, we do have http://EntreWiki.com too. We should order review soon…
Reply to this commentInsane! Why would you pay for a single page when you could write a Squidoo.com lens for free, host a free blog all to yourself at WhyDoWork.com, and put up an entire site with free hosting at any number of free hosts?
The first paid wiki worked because it was new and had a lot of hype. Take a look at the Alexa graph for milliondollarwiki now. Where do you think it will be a year from now?
Reply to this commentAh, great question. If you look at Squidoo.com, there’s over 40% of spam. By charge a small fee, we have eliminated spam all together. And our policies state that your account and pages will be permanently removed if you start spamming. I remember first finding out about Squidoo because someone left a spam comment on my blog here: http://zedomax.com
Reply to this commentOk you got a point, but how many paid wiki’s can we keep on looking into. I’m not even going to bother open this site up. In my opinion you threw away $400.
We’re no longer hyped up about the idea of a paid wiki.
Reply to this commentWho’s “we”? Do you speak for the whole world?
Reply to this comment722 pages sold!
Reply to this commentToo many wiki, i am just going to stick to wikipedia for the information.
Reply to this commentAt a quarter, you can really lose here. Put one AdSense + one click = you made your money back.
Reply to this commentit’s definetily you have too many money to waste dude.
Reply to this commentor let me guess, you didn’t do this for -selling page- money? what is your plan? are you going to monetize the traffics or the pagerank of the quarterwiki site it self?
smart idea anyway, it’s just.. i don’t know, does it worh for johnchow $400 reviewMe review?
Hmmm… our plan is to become bigger than Wikipedia if that’s what you are asking. That’s our plan. So a reviewme on Johnchow is worth it to send out a buzz for this site. Otherwise, no one would order a review on John Chow dot com
Now, let me ask you, what is worth a $400 review? Is there such thing as what websites are worth a review for $400? I think that’s matter of personal opinion and in this case, we simply thought JohnChow is the best bet as far as sending out an initial buzz to the money making blogsphere that “we are here”.
Reply to this commentWait, seriously…your plan is to become bigger than Wikipedia? Seriously? You think a paid wiki full of affiliate links will ever become bigger than Wikipedia….the Zero Dollar Wiki?
Reply to this commentBigger than Wikipedia!? Haha, clearly you have never seen their statistics page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Statistics
You have no chance.
Reply to this commentWikipedia will always require millions of dollar to run itself, using all that money to hire thousands of moderators and staff just to fight spam. The Quarter Wiki needs no moderators so we are able to grow exponentially once we reach a certain point since we can put that money back into advertising. Besides, who likes entering text into those annoying CAPTCHAs everytime you edit something? Wikipedia will always live but it’s not fun anymore for most people since they block out your edits, URLs, or whatever.
I even tried to make a new page on Wikipedia, they said it was “spammy” and delete it right away. How will they grow if users can’t even make new content? On the bright side, the Quarter Wiki let’s you buy your page , your have the right to write on your own encyclopedia for just a quarter and no moderators that’d bother you.
Now, let me ask you, does stats tell everything? Did Google ever think Wikipedia would be this big today? (No, it was more like a slap on their wrists, Google didn’t know how Wikipedia started taking over most of their search terms.)
Reply to this commentEverything you said there is why Wikipedia is so good. When you created a page and they deleted it because it was “spammy” …. well, it probably was. Any time you have a site where people can post whatever they want with no moderators (not even self-moderation) you’re going to get a ton of junk. I’m not saying that the wiki’s are a bad idea (I think the first was was a brilliant idea just as the first million dollar homepage was), but to think that it will be better/bigger than wikipedia is just foolish.
Reply to this commentWell, once a American President said, “What you think is what you get”. If that’s true, what we think is what we will get. Did you know every human being can fly if they jumped off a 30 story building? But the reason 99.9999% fail is because they can’t believe 100% in their heart that a human being can fly. If you believe 100% in your goals, you will likely achieve them no matter how hard it may be or even impossible.
Reply to this commentWhat are you.. seven? Honestly, reread what you just said. This isn’t preschool buddy. Quit dreaming.
Reply to this commentWhy, what pre-school did you go to?
Reply to this commentAh, here’s John’s advice we took to our hearts:
Reply to this commenthttp://www.johnchow.com/the-art-of-the-ramp/
1,600 pages which is what this chap have to sell to break even on just john’s review, his hosting and misc is still not included.
Reply to this commentYes, we are not trying to break even with one review on John Chow. BUT, we’ve notice that every John Chow review has the John Chow effect. Besides, John Chow readers are our best customers.
Reply to this commentYou can refer to our FAQ here:
http://quarterwiki.com/The_Quarter_Wiki:FAQ
Same, at first it was OK it is old now!
Reply to this commentHey, we are just tryin’ to spread cheap wiki pages, didn’t mean to offend you.
Reply to this commentWe need a Wiki about paid Wikis…when will the madness end??!
Reply to this commentOh great idea! Wiki about paid wikis! You know, there’s digg about paid wiki already, http://pwigg.com LOL…madness will continue thanks to your new idea!
Reply to this commentHow could you possibly become bigger than Wikipedia?
Reply to this commentBy showing up right next to them:
Reply to this commenthttp://www.google.com/search?q=digital+camera+wiki&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a
Oops, you shouldn’t have posted that, now a human reviewer will check it out
Just kiding, thats actually impressive.
Can the pages be re-sold later?
Reply to this commentThat doesn’t make you bigger than Wikipedia — not even close.
Reply to this commentSure, pages can be sold at anytime. Values of pages can be worth hundreds or even thousands within weeks depending on whether you put great content on it and Google ranks you next to Wikipedia. I am sure a search term like “iPod wiki” or “iPhone wiki” could be worth at least 20 grand if you show up right next to Wikipedia.
Reply to this commentHi Angel. Yes, we didn’t say we “were” bigger, we “will” be bigger and that’s our goal. Every man in the world is free to choose his goals regardless of how hard they may be. I wouldn’t tell you to become the best Golf Pro in the world or that you can’t become one either.
Reply to this commentProblem is people search for “digital camera” not with the wiki at the end. Wikipedia comes up for “digital camera” which is where it really gets the hits.
Reply to this commentThat’s true but there are thousands of words ending in “wiki” that can get thousands of hits everyday and the SEO value for showing up for those words can be much valuable than just simply traffic.
Reply to this commentAwaiting next original idea patiently.
Reply to this commenthttp://EntreWiki.com still in beta… FREE pages for bloggers!
Reply to this commentThat is an interesting wiki, since it is free for now.
Reply to this commentI STILL haven’t received my page on the Million Dollar Wiki and Graham hasn’t answered any of my emails, and completely ignores the forum.
Horrible, horrible service.
Reply to this commentYea and it took him a week to approve my EntreCard ad.
Reply to this commentBTW, we are not affiliated with Million Dollar Wiki in anyway except Graham is a good friend of ours.
Reply to this commentThey might be too busy for now, it always happens
Reply to this commentHow about Pixel Wiki, or Shoe Wiki, or John Wiki, or Emoticon Wiki, or Affiliate Wiki, or Frickin’ Wiki Wiki. Enough of the wiki’s already!
Reply to this commentGreat idea, we will have to make one of those wikis soon. You know, paid wikis are the untapped Web2.0 market. This might just be the start of our new Web2.0 dig.
Reply to this commentI knew I shouldn’t have given away my secrets.
Reply to this commentThis guy is absolutely clueless.
Reply to this commentWell, we will keep your idea reserved for you if you are going to followthrough with it.
Reply to this commentSame here. The milliondollarwiki is even for sale now on sitepoint!
Reply to this commentWiki Wiki Wack!!
hope their intention is not to rank as high as wikipedia in the serps, or that that wasn’t a reason to start a wiki page.
Reply to this commentWhat the heck is all this paid wiki stuff anyway. Sounds like some Star Wars thing.
Reply to this commentpaid wiki collectors edition. The wiki effect
Reply to this commentLOL…that is great.
Reply to this commentHi Steven, Paid Wiki can get you on the first page of Google for “Some Keyword Wiki”. The reason behind is that Wikipedia has no real competition other than us paid wikis.
For an example, a lot of people will type “wiki” after they type something they want to find on Wikipedia.
Type, “Digital Camera wiki” on Google, and you will see Digital Camera page of OneBuckWiki show up 3rd right after Wikipedia’s results. That pages is probably worth hundreds of dollars already to say the least.
This traffic can be monetized easily through advertising on your page. You see, it’s an untapped market noone has really exploited yet.
I hope that clears things a bit.
Reply to this commentNice thinking! It does have some great advantages.
Reply to this commentHey thanks!
Reply to this commentAnd that really works? If I typed “wiki” after a keyword in Google, I would make sure that I clicked on the Wikipedia result. And if I accidentally went to another wiki, I would click “Back” and then click on the Wikipedia result.
Maybe it’s just me, but I don’t see how it’s worth “hundreds of dollars” to have a result underneath Wikipedia for a search term that implies that someone is looking for Wikipedia.
Reply to this commentIt could be worth if that certain search term receives 3,000 visitors per day. Advertisers and SEO companies pay thousands of dollars for high volume niche keywords. We know this since we are an SEO company too. Heck, a keyword on Google AdWords at 50 cents a click, that means it’d cost you $1,500 for such a search term DAILY! Now, we are talkin’ hundred grand for that search term.
Reply to this commentWow… It’s funny how the original paid wiki, million dollar wiki, has been sold while all these other wikis keep popping up. Good luck recovering the money you spent for this review.
Reply to this commentWell I guess the copycats are coming out of the wood works…
Reply to this commentHey, we are providing services to make them here:
Reply to this commenthttp://zedomax.net/paid-wikis/
this is a horrible idea. in my opinion the layout of the site doesn’t even look appealing.
Reply to this commentYou can check out some of the SEO benefits already showing up with One Buck Wiki here:
Reply to this commenthttp://onebuckwiki.com/blog/
What’s the point of SEO if no one will stay and visit. Any good marketer knows the web isn’t just about SEO. I agree. It is a horrible design.
Reply to this commentActually, the growth of traffic on One Buck Wiki has been steadily growing, you can check our Alexa stats if you doubt us.
Reply to this comment“You walk into a video store, you see One Buck Wiki sittin’ there, there’s Quarter Wiki right beside it. Which one are you gonna pick, man?”
Reply to this commentHey, at least you are pickin’.
Reply to this comment“you’ve got to wonder if the developers are simply cannabalizing their own sales.” - We are really building a new network of paid wikis, thousands of them!
Reply to this commentPhew, that was a lot of questions… gotta go work on http://FiveDollarWiki.com now…
Reply to this commenthey you miss the halfwiki?
Reply to this commentWhat’s halfwiki???
Reply to this commentHalfDollarWiki.com ? Darn, we did forget a step there…oops.
Reply to this commentSecond a wiki comes out that pays ME to advertise on them, I’m not going to buy anything more
Reply to this commentSign me up lol. I wouldn’t even be surprised if/when someone comes out with that lol. Actually, with some incentivized offers as payment that could be a plan…doh lol.
Reply to this commentYes!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I know where this is going! There will be a wiki website for all wiki websites because the wiki sites are gonna go on forever!!
OK OK, I never want to advertise on John’s site, or any site for that matter, but I created a video and I’m competing in the Aquafresh competition and I need ratings and views. Please check out the video and tell others about it to.
Tools used : sony handycam, iMovie (apple software), and garage band. Time used: 7 hours. haha . please enjoy!
Reply to this commentWhat is the URL? (not that this is related but I might as well get my comments up)
Reply to this commentOn the side note, we’ve brought pages down to a dollar for just the month of December on http://OneBuckWiki.com. Prices will go back up to $10 or more by January so.
Reply to this commentP.S. We’ve are also expecting PR5 on the OneBuckWiki so it might be a great chance to get in before the next Google update.
Meh, not gonna lie, I bought 8 pages on the quarter wiki. Sure this is getting out of control, but what does $2 hurt me? Lol. The first wiki I participated in..guess I’ll see what happens.
Reply to this commentYey, we got new evangelists for our site! Thanks again Jason for helping promote our new site.
Reply to this comment300 pages sold! Wow… 100 pages gone in just last hour!
Reply to this commentJust bought 4 more…..this is a bit addicting actually. Like putting a quarter in the prize machine….lawl.
Reply to this commentyeah we got taken for a ride with the millioneurowiki
Reply to this commentThe first thing that comes to mind is, well, three wiki sites all competing against each other?
It must be working somehow to be ordering repeated midas touch reviews from John Chow but it’s hard to see how. Google probably hates the scheme by now so is ranking on wiki sites even possible?
Reply to this commentYes, it’s possible, look here.
Reply to this commenthttp://www.google.com/search?q=vancouver+olympics+wiki&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a
Google is only penalizing Wikipeida mainly since they are taking over all the search terms.
I just bought 4 myself, at 4 pages per dollar… there is no harm. I’m thinking that my account and the pages I picked up would be worth something as a package if this site even remotely takes off.
Pages owned: SEO + Search Engine Optimization
I have an SEO related site launching in early spring that I want to leverage then… but any good offer before then will take these off my hands I’m sure. Business is business afterall. At a quarter per page, the price can’t be wrong.
Reply to this commentWow, you spent $400 for a negative review. That has to be the worst return on investment.
Reply to this commentHey, we love good or bad publicity, it generates more buzz. If you weren’t interested, you probably didn’t even bother to leave a comment.
Reply to this commentAnd also - creating a .25 wiki when you have a $1.00 (or whatever it is) is punching yourself in the face with your own fist. Like the guy said earlier… you have .25 wiki and $1.00, which are you going to choose? (if either) So you’ve pretty much killed your other one.
/me shakes head
Reply to this commentActually, contrary to your personal opinion, http://OneBuckWiki is predicted to have PR5 on the next Google update, which IS more valuable at this point in time than the QuarterWiki. (Well it predicts PR7 actually but we doubt that on the first update)
But we believe the QuarterWiki might eclipse the OneBuckWiki simply because prices are lower and we will have more content sooner.
We are adding new features to all the wikis we run, we don’t kill them, sell them, or auction off on eBay. Basically, we stand strongly by our sites so we will be around for next 15 years.
Reply to this commenthorrible idea
not only that but it’s probably the ugliest of all the paid wiki sites
Reply to this commentCare to entertain us on better idea Mr. Anonymous?
Reply to this commentWikipedia isn’t advertising space, it’s for informative purposes. Paid wikis seem to be advertising space. So how are you creating competition for Wikipedia?
Reply to this commentHi Ben,
Here’s the answer to your question. Wikipedia currently does not make use of RSS, videos, or anything really Web2.0 for that matter. By making use of new features and technologies such as RSS, users can create far more dynamic and interactive pages that can be pinged all over the blogsphere and the internet.
Our goal for the Quarter Wiki is to provide interesting information including advertising, cartoons, movies, etc…etc…
Who likes reading the boring Wikipeida all day anyways? Users only use Wikipedia whenever they have a need for definition or want to find out if it exists on Wikipedia.
We are making a new paid online encyclopedia where you get to control content and does not have to be strictly informative. The content on your page can be simply interesting to bring more visitors to your page.
It will take us at least a year to catch up to Wikipedia but once we sell about 1,000,000 pages, we should be able to be a good contender for Wikipedia.
Reply to this comment“Who likes reading the boring Wikipedia all day anyway?”
Wikipedia isn’t supposed to be an entertainment site, it’s meant to be informative. In a similar way, if you look up a word in a dictionary, you expect to find a definition - not something that the author included because it was “interesting”. Some Wikipedia articles are actually very interesting indeed - however, there is a requirement to link to sources for certain things, e.g. how many registered users are on a particular site. Also, Wikipedia is meant to be neutral without a lot of marketing spin. If this makes it “boring” then so be it - at least it stops people hyping up or dumbing down articles simply due to their personal preferences.
Personally I dislike the term “Web 2.0″, but Wikipedia’s ability to be edited by anyone is immediately a “Web 2.0″ thing. You seem to be restricting users so they can only edit the pages they buy - is that correct? If this is the case and you’re also encouraging use of media (such as videos) then it sounds more like you’re trying to compete with MySpace than Wikipedia.
Is each paid wiki separate from the rest? It sound like this is the case, if so then I would ask why are you setting up multiple wikis that may end up with a lot of duplicate content? Doesn’t that just confuse the reader?
I think the burning question is this: who is the target audience for these paid wiki sites, i.e. the READERS rather than the people purchasing the pages? Who will read the pages? Why should they read them?
Reply to this commentHi Ben,
Nice set of questions.
First of all, you may be right, we might be in for something like a MySpace/Wikipedia combo technology. Regardless, it’s something new and that does separate us from the other folks.
As for the number of wikis we have, we are starting a new network of paid wikis, perhaps thousands of them. BUT, each will have a different niche. For example, you can take a look at http://EntreWiki.com.
FYI, these paid wikis are the untapped Wiki market. It could confuse the readers but by building a large network of thousands of wikis, we are building network power. With network power, we can promote all the wiki sites since we have multiple sites instead of just one.
We’ve done this network experimentation with about 25 blogs that we run and it’s always good to have one great blog but even better if you’ve got bunch of them to inter-link each other.
This may confuse the reader but that’s the work we do. We create paid wiki sites and link them together so they will never fall apart. If you want more on this, we can talk in private as this is some of our “classified” info we are talkin’ here. My email is zedomax [at] gmail.com.
Ah great question, our readers compose of visitors from Social Networking site such as StumbleUpon (we get about 500 visitors per day from them), visitors coming through Google search terms, and other more “classified” ways we bring readers. The reason why readers would read the pages would simply because people are in general interested in interesting content. Our goal is to provide interesting content and we hope our page-owners do that but that’s something the page-owners get to control.
Reply to this commentOne Buck Wiki has spammed his own review, seriously … enough is enough.
Reply to this commentDo you really expect anything more? He ripped off an original idea.
Reply to this commentPersonally, I believe JC should blog keyword rich names….
Reply to this comment