• Mortgage Loans is one of my favorite examples of a MDW page.  It has several things going for it.  First, it makes excellent use of the wiki space by providing helpful information to its visitors that seamlessly integrates the advertising for its page owner’s services.  It also utilizes the MDW  branding by using a custom logo for their page that incorporate an MDW style.
• The Stock Picks page is another great example of a wiki page in action.  I like how the page owner has incorporated relavent images into the information to draw readers interest.  This page also uses Amazon associate links to related books.
• The Email Marketing page is a fine example of a MDW page being used as a directory.  Directories like this can be an excellent resource to page visitors and give the pagemaster an opportunity to earn income through affiliate links or generate traffic to their own related sites.

Would you like to see your page featured here?  I’m reviewing the list of all pages that were worked on within the past week, so if you make regular changes to your wiki page there’s a good chance of it showing up here soon.   Also you can email me anytime at pages@milliondollarwiki.com with suggestions and success stories.

Ron

This is the place for wiki page owners to interact with each other: The Million Dollar Wiki Forum

Being new, the forum is sorely lacking in content at the moment. Please stop by and introduce yourself and showcase your wiki page. I’m sure we’ll have it hopping in no time.

One of the new areas you’ll see on the forum is a Million Dollar marketplace. You are welcome to list your wiki page for sale in this area, or advertise services that may be helpful to wiki page owners such as content creation, web design, or promotional services.

“How can I promote my wiki page?”

This is a commonly asked question. There are many ways to promote your page. I’ll touch on one common method today - social bookmarking sites.

Four website stand out for their ability to get good content in front of thousands, potentially hundreds of thousands of people. They areDigg: http://www.digg.com

Reddit: http://www.reddit.com

Furl: http://www.furl.net

StumbleUpon: http://www.stumbleupon.com

Each of these websites have millions of users, and they all have voting systems whereby people vote for pages they like. It’s very easy to submit your page, and if enough people vote for it, you could be seen on the “Most Popular” page. If you’re not already a member of any of these sites, I would encourage you to join them and try them out for yourself. The four I mentioned above are a good start.

New Social Bookmaring Feature on the Million Dollar Wiki

A new feature on the Million Dollar Wiki is the addition of new “Bookmark” icons at the bottom of all pages wiki-wide. These are to make it easier for you and your visitors to submit your page to these social bookmarking services. A thank you to Max Lee of Zedomax for the wiki extension to do this.

BIG ANNOUNCEMENT COMING THIS MONDAY!

Please excuse the excessive use of CAPS, but I’m very excited about a new development. While I have to keep the details under wraps at the moment, I can say it will be very exciting news for those who own a MDW wiki page. Please check this blog on Monday for the scoop.

Tech Updates

We’re currently working on the new login/members area. The goal date for completion of the new features is February 1st. I will keep you posted.

Page Sales Update

1,093 pages sold. 8,907 to goal.

Keep on trucking!

Ron

[edit - fixed the typo in the forum URL  ]

It’s been awhile since there’s been any activity on the MDW blog, so I felt it was my duty to sign in here and give everyone an update on what’s going on.

The obvious big news here is this blog post is not being written by Graham Langdon.

“OMGWTF!”

No no, calm down.  I’m not a hacker/cracker, and Graham is not dead.  And neither is MDW for that matter.  In fact I hope you all receive this post as good news.   My name is Ron, and I am the new owner of the Million Dollar Wiki.  It is a pleasure to meet you all!

“So what happened to Graham?”

Well, Graham is hard at work developing the next big thing in Internet marketing, namely Entrecard.com.  If you haven’t discovered it already, it’s like a online business card system for blog owners.  You can sign up, create an Entrecard and drop it in the box of other bloggers when you visit their sites.  It’s pretty cool!  Check out the sample in the top right column of this blog.

So long story short, the Million Dollar Wiki has gone beyond the simple experiment it started as and has evolved into a real business, one that requires nurturing and care.  Being such, Graham has passed the torch to me, and I fully intend to run with it.

I will be keeping in touch with Graham.   This was his baby, his vision and I understand that.  My charge is to keep good care of it.  From this point on, it will be my responsibility to bring value to our wiki page owners and keep this site running strong for at least the next 15 years.  And yes, I’m up for the challenge.

“Who are you again?”

My name is Ron James, and I am a 31-year-old father of three from the San Francisco Bay Area.  I have been a web developer and self-employed entrepreneur for the better part of the last 10 years.  5 months ago this week, I purchased my first wiki page on the Million Dollar Wiki.  A couple weeks later I bought another, and yet another.  It never crossed my mind that I might end up as the new owner of MDW.

I saw, and continue to see, the potential in owning wiki pages and the concept behind Million Dollar Wiki.  So I don’t come to you as an outsider, but as a fellow wiki page owner who wants to see MDW and all of it’s wiki page owners succeed.

The Million Dollar Wiki 2.0 : Wiki Harder  (Coming Soon To Theatres Near You)

My top six priorities for the Million Dollar Wiki are as follows,

• Increasing traffic to the Million Dollar Wiki, and the pages within it.    I’ve already begun working on this.  Traffic has increased to over 5,000 visitors a day and is growing.
• Allowing page owners to easily resell and transfer their wiki pages to others without a commission to MDW.
• Building a membership area where you can track and manage your wiki pages.
• Bringing back the forum and encouraging community participation.  I will be looking for community liaisons that can help moderate and vanish the spam problem the old forum had.  If you’re interested in lending a hand, drop me an email!
• Improving the Million Dollar Wiki homepage and the streamlining the process of getting your page featured there.   Let’s give other pages a chance to have some fun. 
• Reviewing page quality standards and rewarding page owners with increased visibility and traffic for creating an excellent Million Dollar Wiki experience to their viewers.

There are a few other ideas that I look forward to talking with you about over the coming weeks.  My email inbox is open, and your comments and suggestions are always welcome.

Very sincerely yours,

Ron

pages[at]milliondollarwiki.com

I have recently worked out a deal that I’m very excited about, which could easily double the number of pages sold and the number of page owners, and create a second round of buzz. What I realized was that I needed to market outside of the “Make Money Online” community on the net, which is a very distinct community. I found that I had lost my ability to see beyond this community for potential marketing ideas, but eventually I realized that there are thousands upon thousands of people out there who would be more than interested in Million Dollar Wiki, if only I could get the word out to them.

Let’s face it, when your marketing is as easy as having Shoemoney or John Chow write a post, and sitting back while the orders roll in, it blinds you a little bit. You forget that while there may not be other enormous “Make Money Online” blogs to promote through, there are other equally massive outlets on the internet that go to different audiences. I have found one such outlet that I am very optimistic about, and am going to pursue others.

So sit back everyone, and relax. My guess is that the new promotion I am referring to will begin in January,  and by February, we will be at 2000 pages. From there, it is a climb to the top until my story becomes compelling enough that my publicist can successfully pitch it to some mainstream media. And after that, we hit 10,000 pages easy.

<entrecard id=”(your id number)” size=”250″></entrecard>

So, just copy and paste the above code into your wiki page. Your id number is the number in the url when you log into Entrecard, and size should be either 127, 200, or 250, depending on which widget you’d like to use.

Now you can advertise your wiki pages all across the internet! But like I said earlier, make sure your pages are presentable, because people still make the decision for themselves whether or not to run your ad.

You can see Million Dollar Wiki is proudly sporting Entrecard on the Homepage, and from here on out, I will only be approving MDW page owners to run their card on the MDW homepage and blog. There are about 10 days worth of advertisers already approved that I need to let run because I don’t want to disappoint those early users who already got their ad in.

PS. A big shout out to Max at the One Buck Wiki for writing the extension!

We’re in the final stages of developing an Entrecard Extension for Mediawiki. That means that all you page owners can add Entrecard to your pages, and then go out and advertise your page across the entire internet for free! Yes, you could even secure a 125 spot on Shoemoney.com to advertise your page, for free.
If you haven’t signed up for Entrecard yet, and want to bring a whole lotta traffic to your MDW page,  go ahead and sign up. In a few days, once we’ve finished bug testing, I will tell you how to add the widget to your wiki page with a simple code.

Do be aware that Entrecard is only open to people with outstanding pages (you know who you are). So, if you haven’t put anything on your page, or you’ve filled it up with ads, now is the time to make your page on par with all the greats out there so you can participate in Entrecard.

I couldn’t be happier with the new ability Entrecard will create for MDW page owners to promote their page on the internet. I also couldn’t be more excited about the new standard this holds page owners up to, to make sure there page is one worth visiting. After all, if your page isn’t very good, others in the Entrecard network are not likely to approve your ad to run on their site!

So, go ahead and sign up and check back in a couple days for the code to add your Entrecard to your page. In the mean time, you can start dropping cards around and start racking up the credits to buy advertising!

Think of Entrecard as your business card 2.0. You create a digital business card, which can be anything you want (your logo, a cool image, anything), and you swap cards through a widget you place on your blog. So any of you readers out there could leave me your “Entrecards” and I could check out your sites from my Entrecard inbox, which is where your card goes when you leave it for me.

The cool thing about Entrecard is it can buy you advertising for free. See my Entrecard on the top right of my blog? You can buy that space for YOUR entrecard, using credits that you get for free every time you give and receive a card.

So, Entrecard is valuable to all you on two fronts. First, there are the networking advantages. Entrecard is an easy-going and comfortable way you can introduce yourself to fellow bloggers, simply by leaving your card. And because its only open to owners of blogs, the cards you receive are going to be from your most important readers, your most influential readers, your readers with a blog and audience of their own!

And then there are the free advertising benefits when you buy and sell ad space in Entrecard credits.

Finally, Entrecard can make you money, when you earn credits, those credits are good to buy real ad space on any blog in the network. So, you can sell them on eBay or Craigslist, or however you like.

Be sure to check out the video at Entrecard.com !

And on the Million Dollar Wiki, it looks like things are shaping up for the Entrepreneur magazine interview. Finally!

My publicist was optimistic at the time that Million Dollar Wiki would be able to get some great press. Wired Magazine, Entrepreneur, Forbes Small Business. I was counting my chickens, and banking on her pulling through. In fact, if she can still land amazing press, I’m locked into a contractual obligation for a minimum 10k spend. For that kind of press almost any price is worth it, so I hope she can pull it off.

The truth is, I’m not sure exactly what will make Million Dollar Wiki work moving forward. I know there is an answer out there, I just need to find it. I’ve never been afraid to experiment, and I’m sure there is some strategy or some move I can make to get things rolling. The unfortunate reality of buzz marketing, a lesson I am learning the hard way, is that once the buzz dies, the buzz is dead.

There are some hopefuls. The Free Samples page managed to rack in 2,000 unique visitors the other day from Stumble Upon!  I don’t know how she did it, but a ton of people must have stumbled the Free Samples page.  Congrats, I’m sure she earned some decent revenue from all that traffic. She might be able to teach us all a lesson or two as well

So getting back to the topic at hand, I need a fresh perspective. For the past two weeks, I’ve been getting my mind off wiki in hopes that I would get a fresh perspective when I put my mind back on it. I have this thing about working on projects, sometimes I float from one to another just to keep my mind sharp and thinking in new and different ways about things.

Truth be told, I own six properties around the internet. Sometimes  I get an idea for something, and I can’t stop myself from just doing it. I’m sure the serial entrepreneurs out there know exactly what I’m talking about. It’s the way I started MillionDollarWiki, and its the way I started the site that spawned MillionDollarWiki, Associary.com (which I also dreamed up and created). Associary.com is a wiki like Million Dollar Wiki, only you write the first thing that comes to your mind for any given word, instead of owning it.

So where am I going with all this? Well, in the last three weeks or so while I’ve been waiting around for my publicist to call me up and say, Ok Graham, you need to go to New York City today, to this address, to be interviewed by this newspaper,” I had another idea. It’s something that I am very excited to share with you all, something I think will make your internet endeavors and goals a little easier to achieve. This is a tool that will help you all. And while I am thrilled to announce it to all Million Dollar Wiki page owners, I am equally thrilled to announce it to the rest of the internet community.

But it is not quite ready yet.   Stay tuned.

Also, feel free to put your page up for sale on forums, eBay, Craigslist, or wherever you like.

I’m also hoping a little buzz will no doubt be generated by people peddling their pages around on the internet, and making some more sales. This will be fun!

Good luck everyone, let’s see if we can bring phase 2 of fruition!

What’s next for Million Dollar Wiki?

I am currently exploring strategic moves for Million Dollar Wiki. As many of you may suspect, I have a few ideas up my sleeve. I want you all to know that I’m committed to selling all 10,000 pages, even if I have to cut the price. The law of supply and demand suggests that by cutting the price, the demand will be higher. The question is, by how much? The other question becomes, how do I renew the buzz that made it work in the first place?

These are all good questions. Certainly the pagerank update adds a nice selling point.  But now its time to think.

I urge everyone to be patient as I formulate a new plan to take this to the next level. Like I said from the beggining, I don’t care if it takes me until the day I die, I will sell 10,000 pages. Sure, they might not all be for $100 but damnit I will sell them all.