[WikiEN-l] FW: Regarding Advertising on Wikipedia

[Geoff Burling]

I've read a lot in this mailing list about Wikipedia eventually
needing to find a source of revenue, but I'm a little hazy on
exactly what the cost of maintaining Wikipedia & the related
sites actually is. Jimbo, can you offer an idea of what this
costs your company? How has this been trending over, say, the last
6 to 12 months? (Is the cost steady growing, growing arthimatically,
staying the same?)

Once we have an idea what the cost of Wikipedia actually is, then
we can start talking intelligently about how to raise the money.
For example, if it costs $500.-- a month to run Wikipedia, & we
have 50 people willing to pay a subscription to keep it afloat,
then the most effective plan would be donations thru Paypal.
If it's, say $2000.-- a month, & we only have 30 people willing
to pay a subscription, then obviously we need to looks for
alternative source of revenue.

Frankly, I don't think advertising would be a cost-effective source
of revenue. Ignore for the moment the general dislike of advertising
by the Wikipedia regulars: to get any sort of steady income from
advertising, we would need to HIRE someone & PAY THEM MONEY to
get advertising. (That is, unless Jimbo has a long line of folks
pounding on his door, wanting to buy ad space on Wikipedia.) And
any decent salesperson will eventually want things like health
insurance, benefits, maybe an expense account to wine & dine potential
advertisers, support staff who will also want stuff . . .

If I have to wonder about Wikipedia staying afloat, I would like
some kind of guesstimate about when Jimbo is going to have to give
up his hobby. Are we talking (1) within a year; (2) sometime
between 2 & 5 years; or (3) someday? An answer from Jimbo about
what Wikipedia is costing him, & whether its bound to get to a point
sometime where he has to stop helping us would then let us know whether
just how serious we have to be when we talk about needing other
sources of revenue.

Geoff