User:Najevi/sandbox11

I went fishing this afternoon and prompted by a recent discussion with another Wikia user I reflected upon what might be a tolerable way to raise revenue to host a wiki.

Who should pay the bill
Broadly speaking the users of a wiki are either contributors or consumers. We might debate what level of contribution qualifies a wiki user to be considered a contributor but I suspect that this is not necessary because the number of users who are purely readers/browsers probably dwarfs the number of users who contribute either regularly or casually. To use an analogy from the world of torrent based file sharing we can equate:
 * contributors with seeders and
 * consumers with leechers

I reckon the contributors ought not be the ones who pay the bill for hosting a wiki even though those contributors are probably the individuals who are the most willing to do so. The time that these contributors invest in a wiki to: create it, adopt it, maintain it, populate it and market it is surely so much more valuable than any monetary contribution ... don't you think?

So that leaves the question of how the consumers/leechers of a wiki might be encouraged to pay the bill for hosting a wiki.

I'm starting this blog to explore that question and welcome any creative ideas. I don't expect Wikia staff to be influenced by this blog but I suspect that some readers might be inspired if enough ideas are expressed in sufficient detail. Indeed I am not necessarily thinking of Wikia communities when I write about this concept however, it does seems an appropriate topic to address in light of the current iteration of bait and switch tactics that we are reading about.

Agreement in principal
A fundamental principal is to first seek agreement for cooperation (from the contributor-base) to achieve a specified amount of revenue from advertising and/or other sources to cover the cost of hosting each wiki on a periodic basis.

Specifying what that cooperation might be is the next step and allowing each wiki community several degrees of freedom to satisfy that definition of cooperation would be a welcome change from the heavy handed approach used at Wikia. Some options might include:
 * some philanthropic user(s) of each wiki writing a cheque each month
 * periodic fund raising activities by each wiki community
 * PayPal or similar donation buttons
 * advertising on wiki pages
 * can you think of any other methods?

What revenue does impact advertising versus click through advertising generate
I have zero experience with advertising revenue at web sites and I suspect that many wiki founders or adopters find themselves in a similar situation. It might help each community if the sys-ops were privy to certain information about . Some fundamental counter data such as page-views, visits from unique IP's per day and so on are needed for starters but also some Alexis style data that objectively assesses popularity of a wiki might also be helpful.
 * 1) the effectiveness of the wiki in attracting readers
 * 2) the frequency that click through ads are clicked
 * 3) can you think of any other useful data?