There have been some questions about wikiHow’s hybrid business model that I’d like to address. First let me say that as the main owner of wikiHow my primary motivation is to achieve our mission. To remind folks: “By creating the world’s most helpful instructions, we will empower every person on the planet to learn how to do anything.” I’m absolutely maniacal about our mission. wikiHow and its mission has become my life’s work, as it is many of yours as well. People who have met me know that the mission is what makes me excited to get out of bed everyday to come to work. I do not take it lightly and it is not something that I would ever casually lose sight of. One of the questions I frequently get is where does wikiHow spend its’ money? The answer is that we invest it in things that deliver on the goals of our mission. Here are three examples of where we spend money today: - One of our biggest expenses we have right now is paid translation of articles into multiple languages. Since our mission calls for reaching every person on the planet, we know we have to succeed in languages other than English. Pretty soon we are going to be launching in Indonesian and Czech! To me this is a great example of how spending money can multiply our impact. I should point out that spending money like this isn’t profitable right now. There is not a vibrant web advertising market in Indonesia. We will probably lose money there for years, but we are doing it anyway because we think reaching the 250 million Indonesian speakers is so important for our mission. - Reader happiness - We spend money to make our site pretty and fast. For example we spend money to cache copies of our content on multiple continents so readers can access them quickly even if they aren’t physically near our servers in the USA. We also spend money on design so our site looks fresh, beautiful and memorable. - Product development / engineering expense - We spend money to keep innovating, build features and keep the site running smoothly. Right now for example, we are working hard on making wikiHow fully editable on mobile phones. When we make a good feature that our community enjoys using, it makes our articles more helpful and higher quality, thus contributing to our mission. So those are some examples of how we do spend money. Let me also tell you what we don’t do: We don’t sit around the wikiHaus and discuss how to increase profitability at the expense of site quality! For the most part we don’t discuss profitability here at all. Only 3 of wikiHow’s 20 employees even have access to our financial information. The company is designed that way intentionally. Through the unusual practice of not sharing financial information even with some top executives, we hammer home the message that wikiHow’s focus is on its mission, not on its profits. Not sharing financial information with executives is just one of the many unusual practices the wikiHaus has to prioritize our mission over money. Here’s another example: Most websites of our size have large direct advertising sales force. eHow / Demand Media at their peak for example had a team of over 80 people selling ads. In contrast, we’ve never hired a single ad salesperson. Not having a big ad salesforce is just one more way we keep our mission focused on our social good rather than money. Fortunately though wikiHow is healthily profitable. That gives the project the stability it needs to continue growing. So what do I do with any extra money from our profits? When I can, I save it and invest it. I hide acorns like a squirrel preparing for winter. I sock away as much as I can. There may be times ahead when wikiHow becomes unprofitable and I want to be able to financially support us through tough times so we don’t need to seek venture capital investment or ask for donations. Or alternatively there might be future opportunities to accelerate our mission that requires extra capital. Either way I’m increasing the odds that wikiHow will have the financial resources to survive and thrive independently. I also spend some of the money I make from wikiHow. I want my family and I to live well. I’m not a monk. I’ve always tried to be clear about this so people aren’t confused. In no way would I want people to think that I don’t financially benefit from wikiHow. All other things being equal, given the choice between making more money or making less, I’d rather make more. Just because wikiHow’s financial success is not my only motivation doesn’t mean that it isn’t a motivation at all. As I’ve said all along, the combination of financial and non-financial motivations is why the hybrid business model works so well. And I think our hybrid business model has been working well, phenomenally well actually. We are helping millions of people every day. We are in ten languages and soon we will be in 12. Alexa ranks us as one of the top 150 websites in the world. We are profitable and financially stable. The future of the project is certain. We’ve never asked anyone for a dime in donations. (Wikipedia by comparison raises $50 million every year from its readers and editors.) We remain totally independent of financial investors and the whims of donors. The hybrid model is working better than I think any of us could have imagined. I know that no matter what I say there are always going to be people out there who think that the wikiHow is just a money making plot. That’s really sad. I’d ask those people to consider this undeniable fact: If I wanted to make a boatload of cash, I would have sold wikiHow long ago. You’ve probably read in the news that popular technology companies sell or IPO for immense sums of money. Over the years several large corporations have tried to buy wikiHow. And honestly, it’s often tempting to sell wikiHow and live the rest of my life doing whatever the heck I wanted to do. But here’s the truth: I’m already living my life doing what I want to do: I work on a mission I’m passionate about with a great group of people who are passionate about the same thing. I think I’m making the world a little better every day. And, I love what I do. Why would I trade that for just money?
That’s a great way to put it
My saying: “Do what you love and love what you do. You’ll perform a lot better if you’re happy than if you’re not”.
Could you let me know if this post made sense or clarified things for you? Just reply in the comments. Or maybe just say “Wow, that was a long post.”
@JackHerrick
Makes sense to me!
Hinni
5
I love the way wikiHow works. If it did pay users or anything like that I know that my parents wouldn’t let me be a user.
system
6
It makes a lot of sense, and I very much agree on the system.
system
7
I’m proud to be an editor on 6 of the 10 wikiHow languages. With that said, being here for a near 7 1/2 years, any long time contributor would come to realization how far this site has come since they first started. Back then, wikiHow didn’t have mobile versions, they didn’t have these nifty community dashboard tools, the overall site design has come a long ways, we didn’t have NFD guardian (so all article deletions were reviewed, vote tallied, and deleted when called manually). Before wikiHow, I didn’t know this much about copyrights (and I’m still learning), I improved my writing skills from others and the workshops, I met a lot of epic people in real life from meetups, I got sooooooo much help by Pam, Rosy, SudoKing, and Bridget with Spanish (which greatly increased my confidence in just going out there and learning new languages without giving up). Most of all, when I was in the deepest threshold of emotions a couple of years ago, I had fellow wikiHow editors to talk to for comfort and advice. When you get all this and more, for taking out your time to give back, this issue hasn’t actually came to my mind at all. To give you guys on the English site a little insight and some fun trivia, as of this post now, there’s just under 6,000 more uncategorized pages on the 5 other sites I edit on than there are unboosted articles here… just a little cherry on the first example regarding the amount of translated articles
system
8
Wow, what a long post! Especially for a person who has difficulty reading short posts… I cannot help but feel like this is a response to an earlier thread I created. If I didn’t trust you personally, I wouldn’t spend my time (which I value, by the way) contributing at wikiHow. Who you pay, or for what you pay, isn’t my concern, it never has been. I do believe there has been a shift in wikiHow’s content oversight and decision making process, taking those out of the community’s hands and giving them over to staff, but that is probably a matter for another thread at a later date.
Thanks @JackHerrick
for taking the time to write that post - that has provided the reassurance I think I needed. wikiHow is, and always has been, an amazing project, and that’s why so many people have stuck by it for so many years. To watch it grow so well is an honour, and I know that the wikiHaus is working so hard to take it in the right direction. You deserve congratulations and respect, not pessimism, from me, and I apologise wholeheartedly if that side of me came out a little bit too strongly in my previous post. But on the other hand, I’m glad this situation has been clarified… I think it’s healthy to challenge these things on a project like wikiHow which involves so many people. So, in short, keep up the good work that I know you are doing, and thank you for continuing to be a fantastic steward for wikiHow
It does make sense to me. My concern was always just whether wikiHow had enough money to continue, and most of that concern was during the recession when a lot of companies were struggling. Also, I knew that wikiHow would never be sold out to corporations. If I felt that was going to happen, I probably would have stopped contributing a long time ago.
Makes sense to me. I’ve always believed in wikiHow’s hybrid business model. For a wiki to be successful, financial stability and good quality content are essential. While wikiHow is for-profit, its non-profit mission is what makes it different. If I ever felt that this was ome big money-making plot, I would’ve never continued contributing. Thanks for the post, Jack
Makes sense @Jackherrick
, though the original post was a bit wordy. Although I knew, deep-down inside that you were making money, it’s mission here actually kind-of makes me excel at a place I love to spend a whole boatload of my time doing. If the mission wouldn’t have been in place, I would have ran away a long time ago.
Oh @JackHerrick
, I didn’t know what the point of this thread was. Yes, this makes sense, thank you
I’m very sorry to hear that people think wikiHow is a money-making scheme. I can tell, from the experience I have had here, that the staff is very dedicated to wikiHow’s mission. I have read a few complaints on staff member’s talk pages, and I don’t see how a person could think that way. If no one said anything, I would have never guessed that wikiHow even makes money! Things are done fairly and with community consensus, instead of the one-man-owns-it-all layout, like in big companies. Of course, there has to be an owner of any company, but I mean in the sense that other people aren’t given a say in anything, which is the farthest thing from the truth here. By the way, @JackHerrick
, I didn’t think the post was too wordy. I felt that it explained it pretty well, and I hope that this clears it up for people.
system
15
How does wikihow get money? From Ads? Also, I could help translate some articles into french for free.
@Happymemos2
Yes, we make money when someone clicks one of the ads we show to non-logged in users of the site. French wikiHow is always looking for more volunteer contributors. Check it out at http://fr.wikihow.com/Accueil
You should feel free to translate any of your favorite articles in English into French. Let me know if you need any help.
@Happymemos2
Just avoid using Google Translate when working on French wikiHow. I learned the hard way that you’re not supposed to do that :).
