The million-dollar homepage was a novel idea. Advertisers flocked to purchase pixels and the creator collected more than a million dollars. Now there is a gold rush to buy Wiki pages.
However, today the Alexa ranking of million-dollar homepage stands at 48,000. It will continue to decline. The same fate awaits the paid Wiki pages.
These type of web sites lack in sustained traffic for a long time. Why do you visit a web site?
You go to a web site for getting information or accomplishing some tasks, interacting with your online network or sharing your feelings, having some fun or making a purchase.
You do not visit a web site to stare at a page full of pixel ads or read a random Wiki page.
The Wikipedia has more than two million English language articles. It is full of comprehensive information on any imaginable topics. It is the largest information repository known to human race.
Ask a 12-year-old kid her favorite information source and her answer will be Wikipedia. There are niche Wikis on “how to”, travel, politics, space, etc. There is no reason for a web surfer to visit a paid Wiki site for anything.
The paid Wiki sites are not even Wikis. A Wiki is a collaborative tool for adding, editing, and sharing information by a large number of people in a single space.
Similar topics are linked together for easy navigation. The crowd intelligence makes it possible to record information accurately and completely.
However, credit goes to the paid Wiki developers for portraying free Geocities, not even MySpace, type pages as Wiki pages.
Advertisers fall into the trap and moron reporters tout it the greatest invention since the slice bread.
Look at a paid Wiki page. It is full of logos, banners, menus, color scheme, etc. of the site it resides on. Even MySpace allows you to customize your pages.
A better option for advertisers is to start creating Squidoo lenses or pages on any topic for free.
Squidoo provides you all the free pages you need to create contents on any topics you wish. You can also make money from Squidoo if your lenses are popular.
Another option is to get a 10-year lease on a domain and redirect Google Blogger pages to the domain. You collect money using AdSense.
If you pay for website pages, evaluate the system based on the following four criteria.
1. Customization:
You should be able to fully customize your pages, removing all logos, banners, menus, and color scheme of the site.
2. Traffic Model:
The site should have a web model to attract visitors for a long time.
3. Page Promotion:
You should have complete control of when and how your pages are linked on the homepage of the site. It should not be random.
4. The site should not monetize by placing ads on any pages.
Use these four filters to evaluate a site that sells you pages for traffic and fun.
