Before you think I’m bashing our scared wiki library, I want to show you that Wikipedia is stopping itself from saving the world.
We all know and love Wikipedia. It’s an amazing resource and even better, it’s an amazing experiment in online networking and collaboration.
And all our faithful wiki’rs will have had an experience of the dreaded “Donate Now to save Wikipedia” encounters. It’s embarrassing for both parties and we awkwardly avert our eyes as if we were being panhandled. Yes Wikipedia, I use you all the time. Yes, you’re worth some amount of financial compensation and if you were to forcefully charge me we both know I’d pay.
But you won’t. You’re free and because I don’t have to pay I won’t. But here’s my favorite part about Wikipedia–its the most valuable site on the internet. You see, the demographics of the traffic to Wikipedia is incredible. If Wikipedia has an internet marketing department and there is anyone on the aforementioned team that actually understands internet marketing then him and I are the only ones laughing when Wikipedia begs you for spare change.
You see, Wikipedia is the perfect candidate for a website that would make 6 figures a day with Adsense. Most people think the era of Adsense is over. Most people don’t understand internet marketing.
People are willing to pay over $3 a click for targeted traffic. Depending on what keywords we’re talking about it can easily be over $50 a click. The only stipulation is that the guy who clicks has to be looking for what the advertiser has. The traffic has to be highly targeted. The best indicator of intent is a search engine visitor. If a guy typed “where can I buy good X” and the advertiser wants good X related traffic then that visitor is worth a hell of a lot.
No search engine traffic? No Adsense money. This helps wikipedia–it’s actually profitable to NOT show ads to regular members. So they only show Adsense Ads to search traffic. Hell they could randomly only show it to 1/100th of visitors and still make Oprah money.
Now here’s the thing. Wikipedia ranks like crazy for millions of keywords. Most are worthless (think List of Dragball Z episodes) but some are goldmines. The Forex page alone could fetch thousands a day. Targetting the high paying niches, Wikipedia shows adsense to search visitors.
Wikipedia would make more money than you can imagine. Millions of targeted search visitors who are the non-web 2.0 crowed. This newbies aren’t ad-blind and can’t spot adsense from a mile away. They love clicking adsense. This is the perfect storm for an adsense site.
Here’s the catch.
Part of the beauty of Wiki is that it’s 100% free, volunteer powered and totally ad free. Why would I want to change that to make a few bucks?
This is where I ask you to think outside of the box. Who has more potential to help better the world — Wikipedia the Millions a day powerhouse or Wikipedia the Donate Now crowd.
Have you ever seen some of the things Wikipedia wants to do? They are truly looking to save the world. And now they have amazing global reach because of how big they are. But they’re broke.
The only thing holding Wikipedia back from being the next Oxfam is a lack of funds. A Not-For-Profit that makes crazy profit gets to dump it all back into saving the world.
New computers for African kids? No problem. Start funding reading initiatives? Easy. And helping build 3rd world infrastructure? All in a day’s work.
Wikipedia is not helping the world because they’re not greedy enough to throw up Ads. And too proud to even discuss it.
Hm. Who gets served ads? Us north americans and our friends in europe. Us white folk are the only ones that advertisers pay for. And where would wikipedia use the millions to rebuild? Africa.
Yup, Wikipedia is racist too. If us in the 1st class seats (think “globe as a plane” simile) would suffer the horror of seeing ads those hooligans in coach would stop whining about their lack of food and abundance of ebola.
The ethics of using advertising (especially Adsense) on something as pristine as Wikipedia will undoubtedly never let it happen. And so we don’t get to watch Wikipedia save the world.
But, would they even consider it? It’s possible Wikipedia has not given this idea reasonable consideration. They could easily test 1 in every 1000 visitors with a “faux Adsense” mock up on a single page and record the results. And if they ever did they’d realize how much they’re missing out on.
So stop being selfish Wikipedia. I don’t want to give you my money. Stop asking.
Just show me ads. Stop being so proud. I don’t care that people will call you a sellout. They’ll shut up once you start saving the world.
