Ok, I saw this post at Jason Calacnis’s weblog, the story ended up making digg. HipMojo projected that Wikipedia could make $42 million a year. No disagrement here, unlike Myspace, Facebook, and YouTube who have pretty mediocre traffic, Wikipedia has niches which can easily earn double to triple digit CPMs.

But, the big deal here isn’t the dollars. Wikipedia is not-for-profit so its irrelevent if its worth $5 billion or $500 billion. (well, not irrelevent to everyone.)

What is important is what Wikipedia is. Wikipedia is the definitive compilation of human knowledge. Despite its weaknesses and vulnerabilities, it manages to provide more detail and broadness than any other single source of information.

This is historical. In my mind, Wikipedia is a milestone in human accomplishment on the same scale as the printing press.

At a young age I read Isaac Asimov’s Foundation series. If you have too, you’ll remember the Encyclopedia Galactica. At the time, the idea of an encylopdia “containing all the knowledge accumulated by a society” seemed more far-fetched than psychohistory. Here we are, hardly 50 years later and this thing has been created. Not by an army of full-time academics, but rather by humanity as a whole.

The great benefit here is expertise. In stark contrast to the learn-all attitude of modern education, humans flourish greatly when they are able to focus on very specific things. Hunter-gatherer societies spend nearly all waking hours gathering food, simply to survive to the next. Expert knowledge, trade and the markets changed all of this.

In much the same way, Wikipedia is accomplishing this evolution with knowledge — and benefiting by allowing all to participate.

In the past so much time was wasted searching. Before books, knowledge was transfered by mouth or very limited manuscript. Books required travel to a central location. Locating the book and then locating the page of the information required a great deal of time. The digital age changed this. Extracting the waste out of the knowledge system, much the same way it was removed with hunter-gatherer societies, means more productive time. Productive time means accomplishment and evolution.

I think Google may already be in the process of being passed up.. but on a slightly different level. Search engines are about profits. Profits result in information bias. (Make no mistake, nothing is immune to bias, money involved or not.) The difference is over time Wikipedia progresses to a more neutral viewpoint.

Forget all of this babbling I have done. What is important is that Wikipedia has a very long, and bright future. When I want to learn more about a specific topic I go to Wikipedia, not Google. Wikipedia articles allow me to instantly form a base knowledge or a word or concept. Certainly it is not the end all of knowledge — but it is a great starting point.

Its almost 4 a.m.; despite my professional leanings I am not going to spell check this post, so don’t bother alerting me to typos.

Here is a little trick I began using over a year ago: content leasing. Rather than commissioning writers and artists to create content for my web sites I asked these content providers if they had any old work gathering dust. To cut costs even further I asked if I could purchase rights to use it for a year.

Once an artist myself, I knew just how much “junk” I had produced while practicing my skills. I hypothosized correctly that other content producers experienced the same. Photographers, writers, illustrators, and even musicians accumulate loads of content which isn’t fit for much of anything.

No right-minded content producer is going to lease you brand new work. Few are going to take a pass at virtually free money.

Buying unwanted content is hardly a new idea — be it a lease or an outright purchase. I happened to be watching a new show on CNBC the other day, Conversations with Michael Eisner. On the show he was interviewing cable mogul Ted Turner. By purchasing old content and packaging it together — e.g. The Cartoon Network — he was able to turn a very healthy profit.

Yes, free user-submitted content is ideal. But, sometimes you need the bait to get those contributing users there in the first place. Two choices: make it yourself or you buy it (alternatively you can raise the Jolly Roger; not recommended.)

Good ideas need to be rooted in reality. If you want to get a good deal, that deal needs to look good to the seller too. In this month’s Business 2.0 a real estate investor makes hundreds of thousands buying homes before the banks foreclose on them and they go to auction. How does he pull it off? Not only does the investor offer to cover the soon to be ex-homeowner’s mortgage back payments and put them up in an apartment for free, the investor also cuts a commission check to the distressed seller once he sells it at market price.

Before you think of buying a package of dirt-cheap hackjob articles considering alternative sources where you can buy quality articles at about the same price — by leasing them.

There are no excuses for no content in this business.

And the dunce of the week award goes to… Aspen Technology of Massachusetts. After a decade of pestering they finally gave away chesapeake.com, for free, to the city of Chesapeake. Turns out the city didn’t really need it. They just sold it to another company for $120,000.

Or I could be wrong. Some people have so much money that a valuable internet property isn’t really worth bothering about.

I wanted to point out a post by Ken over at WebSitePublisher.net. He is a fellow publisher and owns EnvironmentalChemistry.com.

He recommends getting rid of the mouse and getting an Adesso ergonomic keyboard with touchpad. May be I am jumping the gun by posting this, but I ordered one last night. Touchpads may not work nearly as well as a standard mouse but my hand needs a break.

The Republicans were worried they were going to get too many votes so Bill Frist decided to ban online poker. What other obnoxious government intrusions are on the horizon?

How about the IRS requiring capital gains tax on non-existant imaginary good? Thankful you are not a US citizen? A proposed EU legislation could place broadcast regulations on amateur online video.

If thats bad, how about doing business online when one country says you are breaking the law if you follow the law of another country? Understandable, you can’t expect every single country in the world to agree on anything. When it really gets wierd is when the same government agency starts telling you to do things that conflict with each other. That kind of defeats the point of the whole legal system when everyone is a criminal, right?

But thats business. The market works by rewarding those who can create a solution given the existing environment. The big loser is the consumer, not the business who successfully operates in that given environment.

Update: If you plan on visiting Iran, prepare for slow internet access.

I’ve been keeping busy here, at the same time trying to lay off the typing. The cold weather has given me hand problems again and now I am thinking about going to see a specialist.

Here is whats new, via FT:
“Universal Music has launched the established media industry’s first legal action against rapidly growing user-generated websites by filing copyright suits against start-ups Grouper.com and Bolt.com.”
What this means: Universal is going after the smaller guys before taking on Google. YouTube is looking more and more like a huge home run for its founders. Of course, they’re payment is Google stock and I don’t know if they have any restrictions on it in terms of when they can sell.

A few days ago (I’ve lost track) Shoemoney’s blog was hacked. Some have speculated that it was a publicity stunt to get links, since the hack got him a lot of backlinks. In a way this backs up Aaron Wall’s theory that being at the top is self-reinforcing. In the search engine world, ranking for a term means other people find your site, and if they like it, they link to you. When you are in the spotlight, be it the search engines or otherwise, people suddenly get interested in really mundane stuff about you.

If you are in the domain side of things, T.R.A.F.F.I.C. is coming up October 24th-28th. All the big names will be there, here are a few: Matthew Bentley, CEO of SEdo, Monte Cahn of Moniker, Roger Collins co-founder of Afternic. Marc Ostrofsky co-founder of iREIT, Eytan Elbaz head of Google’s domain channel (you know, Adsense without the content), and of course Rick Schwartz. The list goes on. Curiously I never hear people on this side of the business talk about going to domain conferences. I will not be at this one but I’d like to make it next year. You can read more at DNJournal.

I am happy to announce that I am a confirmed speaker for Affiliate Summit 2007 West. I am officially speaking at “Ask the Experts on Lead generation, PPC and SEO, and Becoming a Super Affiliate.” There should be four total speakers at this session including myself and Jeremy Schoemaker. I am not entirely clear on the details of how the session is going to work; I will post more information when I find it out.

If you have any involvement in affiliate marketing, either as an affiliate marketer, merchant, or network, you should be at this event. WickedFire.com is giving away 125 Hall & Full Conference Passes to Affiliate Summit. No excuses to miss this one.

1. Stupidly obvious wins. Filesharing caught on because people wanted to download music for free. Youtube was the obvious next step — share video.

2. Push the rules. More than a few people have said Youtube is a copyright infringdement honeypot. Neither Napster nor Kazaa had the law on their side. Why should Youtube?

3. Social networking is very profitable. At least, it can be profitable for you if you can exploit its traffic stream.

4. Sometimes it pays to be a big loser. Youtube has been footing a bandwidth bill big enough to rival a mega-yacht’s fuel bill at full power. Hosting videos when no advertising is displayed compounds the problem.

5. The big three rivalry can be your gain. Google wants to be first. So does Microsoft. So does Yahoo. The worst case scenario for a company looking for a buyout is having one company being in the market to buy you. Three companies with obnoxiously deep pockets? Home run.

Two months ago I made a post about giving a try at affiliate marketing. I surpassed the goals I set in August by a long shot.

Today I have decided to venture into another territory — viral marketing. I am going to spend next week building a web site specifically for the purpose of attracting viral traffic. Its going to be detailed, yet simplified for its intended audience. Its controversial enough that it will probably piss a lot of people off, yet true.

The last blog post I know really helped people involved goals. I said make handwritten lists of specific tasks, keep it right in front of you and cross tasks off as you finish them. I could give you the details about my affiliate marketing successes or what viral marketing strategies I am going to use. Forget it; you can find out all the information on any number of forums or blogs.

Here is what I am going to tell you: How to set a performance goal.

First, look at what you are doing right now. Are you making $10 a day? You can make $30. Are you making $100 a day? You can make $300. Are you making $0 a day? You sure as hell can make $10.

Now, do a hard analysis of what has worked best for you. One of my biggest weaknesses has been abandoning what works getting caught up in low-to-no-profit projects. If you find something that is making you $50 a day, do it again and again and again until it doesn’t work anymore.

There is a downside to this. Some people with large exposure to the poker industry are learning this. Take a page out of investment strategy and diversify those windfall profits — when you get them.

Whether you choose PPC arbitrage, affiliate marketing, viral marketing, or running a content site, I want to hear some success stories from you in 2 months.

For clarification, my last post was about thinking, planning, and action, not about killing people. I know not all of my readers understand these concepts.

In war you have two or more competing actors. Variables of environment, rules, technology, and diplomacy all determine who the winner is. Business is not linear and variables are not fixed.

Myspace exploited Friendster’s weaknesses to rise to the top of the social networking game. Player who choose to ignore their customers, trends, and their competition end up as the losers.

For beginners it may feel like you are on your hands and knees crawling through the darkness. You are still trying to understand the basics, may be doing a little made-for-adsense publishing or PPC arbitrage. You are in a “fog of war.” The pieces and players remain hidden from view.

The longer you “play” the more you will understand about how the system works.

What is your 5 year and 10 year plan? Can you answer that? You need one. Even though it might change, thats fine. Think strategically, act tactically.