Wiki, as a business model?

Curious, websites that function as a social model as wiki for instance. Is there a hidden business model to the site? How does it generate revenue? There are no product purchasing, and wiki doesn't necessarily have paid advertisements. Does the site solely function off of donations? Anyone have experience generating revenue off a wiki based site?

What site are you talking about?

Uh, wikipedia?

Yeah wikipedia. I'm looking to setup a web service that is built around a wiki-type network. I'm not looking to become a millionaire with the site. However, web traffic isn't cheap, and I'll need some way to generate revenue to run the site. I looked at wiki's donation menu:


Wiki Foundraising

But are there other ways to generate revenue?

Are there? Yes.

Would they bring the quality of the site down? Yes.

I'm assuming you are referring to crazy flash-banner ads or even the lame looking google-ad sense? I agree with you that those certainly would decrease the value of the site in terms of quality.

Was curious if anyone here at a business model for wiki like sites.

Also, if an admin can move this thread to "Web Site Management" -> Business Help I'd appreciate it. I didn't see that topic area before I posted in the Lounge.

thanks

Moved.

Well, Wikipedia makes a nice little wad of cash-ola for the slick operator known as "Jimbo", but he's kind of got that little cash cow tied up. All the little Socialist fan boys donate their hard earned workers dollars to support "Jimbo" in a manner he is accustom, but you'll most likely have to acquire your riches with advertising moolah. Therein lies the problem...

What ever fly little concept you dream up, if you try to float it as a wiki, people with way too much time on their hands and a permanent indignant streak, will brand you a whore to The Man, and a complete rip-off for running banner ads or Google ads or whatever. You should be doing it for free, didn't you know? Or maybe flat American beer. But you certainly shouldn't be trying to make a living on other people's labor, swine. I say if you're a masochist, rock on dude. Rock on...

Say, is there a decent technical wiki out there? Something with stuff in it that people other than kernel developers can understand? Something for noobs like me that need basic but intelligent info on common Linux problems that involve distros people actually use for real things? Hmmm....

It's not that you should be doing it for free. You should be doing it at a loss considering the costs of hosting, bandwidth, etc.

I'm not sure why people get upset over ad-suported Wiki's more than other ad-supported sites. They are really no different than Google's search engine running ads next to search results of other people's websites, or forum sites running ads on threads (content) generated by their users. If the Wiki content is published using an open source license, even better.

For a non-donation based wiki, check out WikiCities which runs Google ads and has decent communities.

lol! Arty, I'm a masochist. Rock n'Roll.

My idea isn't necessarily a technological idea. Originally I had this huge e-commerce idea and when I started thinking about how I could build a business model around it. Unfortunately, I started to realize major issues of content ownership, administration, and various elements. Of course I've been a huge fan of wiki for quite some time and after listening to a presentation from good ole jimmy I got to thinking about the social implications of wiki and realized that the engine would solve my content issues. However, hosting isn't cheap, well it is probably cheaper than it used to be, but it sure as hell isn't free. So I need to find away to generate some revenue, I'm not looking to become a millionaire and create an empire. But I think I could offer a web service that people will like and will be very popular. And because of the content I think it would be bad to advertise. One way I thought to possibly earn revenue is if I could find markets to take the sites content and sell it as a web service to other sites???



Jimmy mentioned geocities in his presentation and I looked at it. however, I'm looking to build off the wiki engine, but create a brand for my site. Essentially I plan on scrapping the wiki template look and layer my own user interface on the wiki engine.