MillionDollarWiki kid makes $8000
By John Pospisil
Ten days ago we reported the story of 21-year-old Graham Langdon, a student at the University of Connecticut, who dreamed up and implemented a plan to make one million dollars through his new website, MillionDollarWiki.com.
Million Dollar Wiki is similar to Wikipedia; however, each page can only be edited by its owner at the cost of $100 per page. Langdon said his goal is to sell 10,000 pages to achieve one million dollars.
The purpose of Million Dollar Wiki is to help pay off Langdon’s enormous college debt; extra money earned will then go towards his dream of owning “the best bar in the known world.”
Langdon has just announced that he has sold 80 pages since the Wiki’s launch on May 29, which means that he has generated $8000 of revenue in less than a month. That’s a lot more than he would have earned working at Longhorn, for example.
“The whole thing is picking up speed even faster than I had anticipated,” said Langdon, “At this rate, all of the premium pages will be sold within a month.”
The site does seem to have excited naive speculators, with some customers buying up to fifteen pages at a time, according to Langdon. Pages have even been traded, with the “business” page selling on eBay for $6100.
Langdon believes his wiki pages are popular “because of the freedom they afford”. People have used their pages to set up forums, post their blog feeds, display YouTube videos, sell art, and put up their own google ads, for example.
“Every day someone is doing something new and innovative with a Million Dollar Wiki page. It’s very exciting,” said Langdon.
While I applaud Langdon’s entrepreneurial spirit, it’s important to realize that the value of pages on MillionDollarWiki.com are underpinned by novelty and naive speculation.
If you do register a page on MillionDollarWiki, do so on the basis that you’re helping out a student, rather than because you’re going to make money.
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June 26th, 2007
John,
I think you’re overlooking a very important aspect in the Million Dollar Wiki equation. The more people buy pages, and the more people are on the site, the more hits people’s pages are going to get. And the more hits they get, the more valuable the pages become. It all comes down to traffic.
Did you know that if a business wants to advertise on the “wiki” page of Google search results, it costs 5.00 per click? Thats 20 clicks for $100. I can’t help but think that an entire page in my Wiki for life is a better deal than 20 clicks from Google. Our one week Alexa rank is 124,000 and our website has been up for less than 30 days. Most sites are around 5,000,000 within the first month.
And I think you are also wrong in you assertion that it is a short-term idea that will eventually fizzle. We work with every page owner to make sure they understand why they should keep content fresh and advise them on strategies such as how often to update pages, what type of content to update, and the concept that current and relevant content will drive returning visitors. And if visitors keep returning because they enjoy the content on a certain page, that idea can last for an indefinite time. Dynamic content is the reason it won’t fizzle out.
If you have anything to promote, a website, a service, or a product, I think a Wiki page is an excellent way to invest $100 for long term exposure and presence. Of course, you could always go with 20 clicks from Google instead…
June 26th, 2007
Graham, I think what you’re doing is fantastic (assuming you’re the real Graham Langdon), but the key question is whether you can maintain the momentum, and whether your site can move from novelty to permanent fixture.
I do hope you make it, but obviously there’s a risk that you won’t… and I guess that’s where the speculation comes in…
Good luck with it!
July 13th, 2007
I recently bought a page on the Million Dollar Wiki. I bought the “Marketing” page and it seems to be that it was a smart decision. I look forward to the success of Million Dollar Wiki and I will be constantly adding more Dynamic Content to the Marketing page. I also hope to purchase a few more pages soon. To the success of MDW, I surely toast…
Rob
The Marketing page can be viewed at: http://www.milliondollarwiki.com/Marketing
August 16th, 2007
I wrote a bulk word availability tool and put it at http://www.milliondollarwiki.com/Search . I think as people start snatching up more words, it’s going to be harding to decide which good words are left. I will also begin adding lists of available words soon, just like I do for domain names at http://www.regfee.info I think this site has a wonderful concept, and just needs more exposure to succeed.
August 30th, 2007
My acquisition of http://milliondollarwiki.com/branding was motivated by: desire for referrals, and possible speculative value. I run a new, fledgling design shop and plan on running a great promotion on my MDW page. Now, I’ve been tracking the traffic to MDW and the build isn’t nearly as dramatic as MDH (the original million dollar site). Still, I think given the higher user/customer engagement at MDW, that there could be a stable build in traffic to the point of which I could sell my page to a richer agency looking to get in on the action.
October 11th, 2007
Hey guys,
This is shameless promotion:
We just launched http://FiveDollarWiki.com where you can buy links for 5 bucks!
The only difference is money here, the content would be about the same.
This is top secret:
On the sidenote, we are working on our Top Secret, http://OneBuckWiki.com which we will launch in few days but don’t tell anyone yet. Shhhh….
We are also looking for couple people to build content. Basically we will hook you up with free pages and you have to put some good content right away.
You can email me at max [at] fivedollarwiki.com
October 15th, 2007
the site seems to be doing darn good! :)
i was late for the milliondollarhomepage.com, but here i just had to pick up a page! and i picked up 2!
i bought http://www.milliondollarwiki.com/Web_Applications
and
http://www.milliondollarwiki.com/Resorts
lets hope it’ll be worth it :)
January 19th, 2008
MDW isn’t exactly a new concept… or the finest implementation. I remember a couple of years back one othe Million Dollar Homepage copy cats used keywords instead of images. Anyway a new site recently went up called fameword, which is practically a cross between MDW and Wikipedia. It lets you set up free pages along with paid pages. It could’ve been implemented better, but its definitely the most “Open” one around.