Everyone has heard about the Million Dollar Homepage, and more than a few of you have heard of the Million Dollar Wiki. Both of these projects sought to leverage the dual pillars of cheap advertisement and viral marketing to turn a quick profit and provide us all with a case study on how an interesting concept and some ingenuity can really take off.

Goldigg

The most recent take on this idea is what the author, Andrew Galasetti, is calling Goldigg. The short version is that it is Digg but with paid registration. 5,000 accounts will be sold for $100 a pop. He hopes to use the money to help him pay for college and donate the rest to the Modest Needs Foundation.

How does it work? Well, just like Digg. More precisely it works just like Pligg, Digg’s open source cousin which this site is based on.

The Model

The best way to understand this project is to hear Andrew explain it. He was kind enough to answer a few questions for me.

1. Why would anyone want a paid user to submit their story to Goldigg? For a site like Digg, you want someone to submit your story because it will drive traffic. Since there are fewer people reading this site, what is the incentive?

As of right now there aren’t many readers yes, but if traffic grows there will certainly be an incentive. And if memberships sell out there will be no other way to get your stories on the site than paying members to submit it.

2. How are you promoting the site? This can only work if there are a large volume of readers

I’m relying on viral marketing with blogs. I have contacted over 100 bloggers such as yourself to peak people’s interest.

3. How did you come up with this idea? It seems like it could be really interesting if you get enough buzz.

Since the beginning of August I have been trying to think of a similar idea to the Million Dollar Homepage but I wanted something with much more value to visitors. At first I was going to start a Digg clone that charge per submission but realized that just wouldn’t work. So I went back and tried to come up with something where everyone could benefit. And Goldigg was born.

Web 2.0 Roundup

Can this work? Sure it can. If the site manages to drive a decent amount of traffic (through promotions and good content) it would certainly be valuable to have your stories posted by one of the chosen 5,000. There are two major obstacles that could stop this from happening.

The first and most obvious is that there are hundreds, if not thousands of Digg-clones out there. From a design and technology standpoint, there is absolutely nothing setting this one apart. The major thing that Andrew could capitalize on is the whole charity/fund raising angle, but I am not sure whether that would resonate well with the major demographic that would be attracted to this site (internet marketers and advertisers).

The second problem is that if the site does become successful, the content will suffer. Assuming that the hurdles of managing the “micro-economy” are overcome, the only way I could make my money back as an account owner is either by spamming large amounts of advertising (which is against the TOS) or by selling my submissions to other advertisers seeking to spam their content. I have a hard time believing that average net users will want to come by to see this kind of marketing honeypot.

It is certainly a noble experiment, but I think that there are a few minor tweaks that could be made to the model. A better scheme might be to allow users to advertise through a perma-link in their avatar as well as being more lenient with moderating their self-promotion. You could also link back to paid users somewhere on the site in a permanent fashion, a la Million Dollar Homepage.

Giving users who have self-promotion as their only reason for purchasing an account carte blanche is one of the fastest ways to turn a growing community into the worst kind of black-hat marketing cesspool.

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