WikiStock, a Free Investment Guide

The reviewme orders are coming in nicely so far in June, with one last week and two so far this week. So, to start this week’s reviews off right, I am happy to present WikiStock as a growing source of trading terms, articles, and techniques.

WikiStock was launched in October 2006 if I found my information correctly, and houses close to 600 pages sitewide. The site itself is a wiki, which I will explain more below, and does a good job of separating itself from wikipedia by focusing solely on its niche, the stock market.

Site Concept

WikiStock is run by platform mediawiki which is the same setup used to run wikipedia. Every wiki is an open project, allowing anyone and everyone to participate and not only edit current content, but add new content. This creates a community of writers all working together to help grow the wiki database.

Immediately when visiting the homepage you will begin to see how the site is laid out, and a few messages on registering for free so you can participate. Registration is straightforward and simple process, and I used stocktrading101 as my username. The site sends you an email confirmation to confirm your account, but that is only to allow access to the peer to peer email communication component.

What is important to note about the site concept is how it differentiates itself from a major site like wikipedia. Wikipedia has a strong base of historical text which it uses within its site interlinking. Basically, when you are reading up on stocks at wikipedia you may be carried to a page talking about castles from the middle ages. With WikiStock, you won’t find that at all. Instead, you are referred to other pages focused ONLY within the niche topic you are currently reading about.

Main Areas

WikiStock is broken up into six main areas:

Wikistock main areas

Technical Analysis, Fundamental Analysis, Investment Terminology, Stock Exchanges, Stock Trading Techniques, and Investment Information.As you can see by the area titles WikiStock covers a wide variety of stock market topics, and actually a decent handful have pictures to go with them to help illustrate points.

Suggested Monetization Techniques

I have setup a wiki myself in the past and what I found to be the toughest part besides getting everything up and running by writing A LOT of base content is monetization. MediaWiki’s setup is not designed for in text ad placements and the like, but with some time and perseverance you can find some decent spots to place ads.

The first thing I noticed about WikiStock’s monetization was the use of Zecco.com banners and bidvertise. Right off the bat I highly recommend to the WikiStock team to get themselves setup with Google adsense, and axe bidvertiser. Google Adsense is the front runner in this arena with the best and highest paid advertisers. Not only will conversion rates be better, but they will make more off each click. Get rid of the border around the 728 x 90 block of ads, and move it above the zecco (the key to ad blocks such as this is blending it with the page, you want readers to think it is simply another link on the site). Also, having this 728 x 90 ad block off-center because of the tiny forexyard ad is unprofessional, I don’t know if that is an affiliate or what but it would probably look better and fit better in the sidebar.

The biggest comment I can make about monetization regarding any site is to place ads above the fold. The highest click through rates (CTR) will come with the ads that are seen the easiest and first on the page. A decent placing ad for example on the homepage (”Main_Page”) would be a 300 x 250 ad block where the “register for free” box is.

Along this same note though you have to be careful because too many ads is a big turn off. WikiStock has done a good job of keeping ads to a minimum and really out of site, but until they have enough traffic to sell direct ad placements, Pay Per Click (PPC) will be the way to go, and Adsense is definitely the front runner.

Closing Notes

WikiStock already has a strong base of a lot of quality information that can really benefit any trader of any experience level. As their community continues to grow alongside traffic there are only good things that can come out of the site.

The site’s well assembled foundation focuses on the immediate relevancy to a stock trader, and less focused on broad topics. This puts WikiStock in a niche, and helps separate it from other major wikis such as Wikipedia. Now excuse me as I read their take on bollinger bands…