Skip to main content

Wikipedia’s Jimmy Wales Appeal increases donation by 15x

If you have visited Wikipedia during the last few days you must have seen and hopefully read founder Jimmy Wales appeal for donations. Wikimedia, the parent non-profit that runs the free online encyclopedia Wikipedia as well as a number of sister sites, survives solely on donations. Towards the end of each year, the organization launches a fund raising campaign. The two-month campaign for 2010 has just kicked off, during which Wikimedia hopes to raise $16 million necessary in order to keep the sites free, stable, and running smoothly.

jimmy-wales-appeal

Wikimedia is carrying out A/B tests on different fund raising messages. It turns out that the banner of  Jimmy Wales haunted gaze staring at you is performing the best. The figures available on the banner testing page speaks for itself.

wikipedia-fund-raising-results

From Wikimedia blog:

Almost 900 people were involved in the creation and discussion of potential banner messages. We tested dozens of iterations of banner designs, including both graphical and text, and we will continue to do so.

Many of the new banners did well. Unfortunately, none of them came anywhere near the 3% clickthrough rate of the winning banner from years past: “Please read: a personal appeal from Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales.”

But we’re going to keep trying. Our research indicates that banner wins because it is simple and direct with no attempt at marketing or manipulation. So we’re going to test, “A personal appeal from Wikimedia editor _____” and later in this memo, I’m going to invite you to be that editor and write an appeal for us to use in the fundraiser.

Hundreds of banners were created and submitted by volunteers, which you can browse here. Some of them are clever, others not. Perhaps the most horrible is the one that says “Give generously, Jimmy needs a new Lambo.”

Comments

  1. i like the part where http://www.4chan.org/ spoofed it.

    ReplyDelete
  2. he doesnt want advertising, but asking for donation is advertising. I'd rather have a banner ad instead of his face - and wikipedia would make millions.

    ReplyDelete
  3. I wonder why the rate wasn't as much as before. No one wants banner ads on Wikipedia. It's like PBS with the once a year.

    and finally,

    straight.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

How to Record CPU and Memory Usage Over Time in Windows?

Whenever the computer is lagging or some application is taking too long to respond, we usually fire up task manager and look under the Performance tab or under Processes to check on processor utilization or the amount of free memory available. The task manager is ideal for real-time analysis of CPU and memory utilization. It even displays a short history of CPU utilization in the form of a graph. You get a small time-window, about 30 seconds or so, depending on how large the viewing area is.

How to Schedule Changes to Your Facebook Page Cover Photo

Facebook’s current layout, the so called Timeline, features a prominent, large cover photo that some people are using in a lot of different creative ways. Timeline is also available for Facebook Pages that people can use to promote their website or business or event. Although you can change the cover photo as often as you like, it’s meant to be static – something which you design and leave it for at least a few weeks or months like a redesigned website. However, there are times when you may want to change the cover photo frequently and periodically to match event dates or some special promotion that you are running or plan to run. So, here is how you can do that.

Diagram 101: Different Types of Diagrams and When To Use Them

Diagrams are a great way to visualize information and convey meaning. The problem is that there’s too many different types of diagrams, so it can be hard to know which ones you should use in any given situation. To help you out, we’ve created this diagram that lays out the 7 most common types of diagrams and when they’re best used: