Scam Types dot Com

I first heard of the MillionEuroWiki this afternoon when the latest post on CashQuests arrived via RSS.

Having just recently heard of the MillionDollarWiki, which became an overnight sensation following a review from John Chow, earning it’s creator around $100,000, I had a fair idea of what to expect.

Or at least I thought I did.

CashQuests is normally quite well grounded. For instance, Kumiko didn’t jump on the bandwagon when everyone (myself included at first) raved about DealDotCom and she didn’t copy 99% of the blogging world by supporting the doomed Agloco either.

Therefore, I was quite shocked to read her amazingly positive review of the MillionEuroWiki – it was just so completely out of character. If I was cynical I would say that she was paid for that review or is getting some other type of kickback.

Oh, but I am cynical… ho hum.

Anyway, moving on, the real question is whether the MillionEuroWiki is something you can make money from or not.

What is it?

Basically, for 75 Euros (approx. $100) you get a whole page on the site, for as long as exists. You own this page which means you can put pretty well anything you like on it, including links to your site(s), affiliate links, AdSense… you get the idea. The page you buy can be dedicated to a certain word or key phrase, such as “Traffic” or “Money”, both of which are already taken.

+ The positives +

There are several potential benefits of buying a page on the Million Euro Wiki. I’ll come back to some of the points later but on first glance, the following spring to mind -

The owner has done it before. Love him or hate him, ‘John Cow’ successfully copied the highly successful John Chow’s blog, right down to the theme and profited well from it, making $1,000 in his first month. Therefore, it seems possible that he could successfully imitate the MillionDollarWiki too.

It will be well promoted. John Cow has made some influential friends – CashQuests and John Chow have already written about MillionEuroWiki and many others are bound to follow.

Page Rank. If Google ever updates page rank again then MillionDollarWiki is bound to attract hundreds of inbound links, meaning any page you buy is likely to bag some too. If you then link to your own sites with appropriate anchor text it will be of SEO benefit to you.

Visitors. With all the hype that this will get, the site will attract hundreds or thousands of visitors per day – some may visit your page.

Sell your page. You own any pages that you buy. This means that you also have the right to sell them at any time and at any price you choose.

- The negatives -

It’s been done before. We’ve already had the MillionDollarWiki – is there room in the market for a copycat?

It might get de-indexed. If you look at the MillionDollarWiki then there are some good and well thought out pages on there. Unfortunately, there is also an awful lot of… you know – pages about the things that you normally see spammed in comments and emails because they can’t get links anywhere else. There are pages with 2-3 lines of text and a whole mass of AdSense blocks surrounding it. MillionEuroWiki already has several pages purely promoting affiliate links for Text-Link-Ads. How much value does all this offer visitors? If the answer is negligible then why would the likes of Google want it in their index??

Selling Page Rank. It would appear that Google is devaluing links where it believes that the buyer is purchasing page rank or is in some way trying to artificially manipulate their site’s placement with the search engine results. Buyer Beware.

No traffic. If you check out the MillionDollarWiki then you will see that some pages do incredibly well whilst many, many others get virtually no traffic at all. If you find yourself in the latter category, will it have been worth $100?

Hype

Hype is a double-edged sword.

Sure, there is no doubting that the MillionEuroWiki will attract a lot of attention and go viral. It’s guaranteed, mainly because of the networking that John Cow has very successfully engaged in.

And for me, that is also a big problem.

I have subscribed to several RSS feeds for blogs based around the theme of making money online. Over the last 2-3 weeks, however, I have seen them lose their idividuality as they join together to hype one thing after another – MillionDollarWiki, DealDotCom, BlogRush and now MillionEuroWiki.

Not only am I getting extremely bored of reading the same thing, on the same day, from each of these blogs but I also feel that they have started valuing the dollar much more than their readership.

If they were promoting quality then I would be pleased to click on their affiliate links, or would applaud them for the money they are making. Unfortunately, however, I feel they have all joined forces to promote a load of crap, purely because it pays well

Conclusion

One thing I have noticed with a lot of people who read the blogs where the MillionEuroWiki will be promoted is that they are gullible. They become fans of one or more ‘gurus’ and then do what they say, buy what they suggest, and jump on every bandwagon going.

These people will not be converted.

To recap, the MillionEuroWiki will be a success. The movers and the shakers of the make money online world are all going to be firmly behind it. Their minions will write it up and praise it on another thousand blogs within days (oops, does this post mean I’m one of them?). The site will get a huge amount of traffic and it will make a huge amount of money.

Genuine Money Maker?

Yes.

Absolutely.

But only for ‘John Cow’ and a select few others.

That said, I still wish him every success – JohnCow.com may have started as a copy, MillionEuroWiki may be a copy too, but his mission is to make money and that is what he is doing.

This review may have sounded very negative but The Cow is fulfilling his objectives and that means he should be an inspiration to us all. If I was in the position where I could do what he is doing and have his earnings – I’d do it too!!!

The Fallout

It seems that I am not alone in my views of this, with site logic talking of the million euro wiki scam, Nate not thinking million euro wiki is of much benefit, and Angel also becoming sick of all the hype lately, with the million euro wiki being the tip of the iceberg.

Additionally, and tell me if I’m wrong, but has John Chow’s RSS readership not dropped by 1,000 today?

I hope the money these guys make is worth the the long term loss they will make in terms of regular visitors. What do you think?