I just caught word that CashQuests.com has been sold for $15,000.

For some time now, many people have wondered whether Kumiko Suzuki was for real. We questioned whether the person behind the money-making blog was male or female. We questioned whether the person running the blog was really just a middle-aged man in Arkansas pretending to be a pretty Japanese girl in hopes of making a big splash in the ‘make money online’ blogosphere. Naturally, the geeky guys on the Internet are much more attracted to pretty girls than they are to fat slobs who enjoy World of Warcraft. After all of this controversy, we still don’t know and it looks like we will never know.

If you hop on over to sitepoint, you’ll find that CashQuests.com was placed in their marketplace and it was sold for $15,000. As it stands, the blog makes over $1,300 a month, so the new owner should be able to recoup the expense within about a year.

You’ve probably noticed that Kumiko Suzuki has been slowly removing herself from the site. Do you remember when the quest was taking place on Blogspot and it was actually called Kumiko’s Cash Quest? Do you remember the “peace sign” photograph, the only picture that we have ever seen of the elusive Kumiko? Here, let me refresh your memory:

That was when Beyond the Rhetoric was a featured ad on her site. In fact, the skyscraper banner was the first of several ads by Kumiko.

After moving over to her (his?) own domain at cashquests.com, the transformation continued. The picture of Kumiko was removed. The color scheme switched from the girly-girl pink to orange, and then it changed again to red. I talked a bit about this transformation four months ago, clearly noting that Kumiko was removing herself from the site, presumably with the intention of selling Cash Quests somewhere down the line. (Foreshadowing, anyone?) Soon after, the byline disappeared, effectively creating an anonymous blog. At that point, Kumiko ceased to exist.

Cash Quests went from a sea of pink with a personal (although possibly fake) touch to what it is today:

Interestingly, there is no mention of the sale on the Cash Quests site itself. The way I found out was through this post by Jane May. Ironically, my dot com pho buddies were discussing Jane May just this past Saturday. We wondered what happened to Jane, because she hasn’t blogged in such a long time and then as soon as she re-emerges in the blogosphere, she breaks this huge story. Welcome back, Jane! We missed you.

As for Cash Quests, there’s no word on who the new owner is and so it’ll be interesting to see if there will be any changes implemented to the site. If the sale of Career Ramblings is any indication, the new owner of Cash Quests will keep things pretty much the way they are. Best of luck to both the new owner and Kumiko Suzuki, even if the latter isn’t a real person.

I’ll be turning 25 next week, and as is tradition, I’ve started poking around to see what I want as a present for this go around. When I was little, I’d run up to my dad with a particular flyer or advertisement, pointing out exactly what I wanted to accompany the candles on the cake. Sometimes I’d get what I wanted, other times I’d end up with yet another sweater from grandma.

Now that I’m a little older and I work full-time as a freelance writer, I can largely purchase my own birthday presents. I can treat myself to something if that’s what I want to do. The first small gift that I gave myself was a new fighting games blog. Depending on the ebb and flow of Internet income, I may buy myself another gift. We’ll see. But that shouldn’t stop you from buying me a present!

Here are three items that I want for my birthday:

As much as I like the 12x optical zoom on my Canon S3 IS, I’d like to have something a little more compact to carry around for everyday shooting. For something like that, I’d consider the Canon PowerShot S500 digital camera. I’m most comfortable with the Canon user interface, for better or for worse, so it’s easiest if I just stick with their family of cameras. Although the PowerShot S500 only packs a 5.3 megapixel sensor and 3x optical zoom, I feel this is perfectly adequate for me anyways, because I’m unlikely to ever produce a physical print. Five megapixels produces an image that measures 2592 x 1944 pixels.

Given my technological tendencies, it may be somewhat surprising to hear that I do not own a standalone GPS navigation unit. I spend most of my time in the Vancouver area, but when I venture outside of this familiar territory, I’d prefer to use a handy gadget over a clumsy paper map. I love the slim styling of the Garmin nuvi 660 and I hear that Garmin produces some of the best personal navigation devices on the market. It’s powered by a trusty SiRFStar III GPS receiver, so I’m sure it’ll be accurate too. The Garmin nuvi 660 also has voice prompts and Bluetooth.

As much as I enjoy my Nintendo Wii, I sometimes need a more traditional video game experience. For times like those, I hit up the PlayStation 3 for titles like Virtua Fighter 5 and NHL 08. One game that I’ve been eyeing for a while now is Heavenly Sword, an epic action game that some have compared to God of War. After playing the very short demo, I’m hooked. Looks like crazy fun.

I know. These gifts are a little pricey. Of course, a few beers couldn’t hurt either.

I just got a message in my email box informing me that the Million Euro Wiki is up for sale. No, not a single page. What is up for sale is the entire MEW site. All the individual page owners will still retain full rights over their individual pages, but the “business” of the Million Euro Wiki is apparently on the auction block.

What made the message strange was that I got the “reply” from someone else rather than the original message from John Cow, the guy behind the Million Euro Wiki. This makes me question the legitimacy of the message and it also makes me wonder if the $30 affiliate program is still in place. I just bought my blog page on there not so long ago, so I have yet to receive any affiliate income from people using my $10 off coupon code: MichaelKwan.

In a nutshell, the site is up for private auction with bids starting at $100 and going up in $25 increments. The email I received was from trafficfarmers.com, which put in the first bid of $100. If you own a Million Euro Wiki page, have you received this email as well? If John Cow is reading this, I’d like for him to confirm whether this is for real. The full email message follows.

Hello,

You are receiving this email because you are currently an owner of a page on the Million Euro Wiki project.

The site is going to be sold. Because of unforeseen circumstances in our personal life, we currently don’t have the time and bandwidth to manage MEW. Because this project has great potential, we’ve decided to get someone in the community to take over. You as a page owner are obviously aware of what the wiki can do for everyone in the right hands, otherwise you would not have purchased a page in the first place.

Because we’re not in it for the profit, we’ve decided to make it a private auction for you guys in the first place. Starting bid is the same price you’d pay for 1 page –$100. With minimum increments of $25. This includes the entire site as you can see it now, with all the customized code and design. Also the forum setup and blog attached to the site will be included. We’ll be happy to host for free until you get you own hosting sorted.

We’ve included the rest of the million euro wiki page owners on CC and ask you to reply to all with your bid so we can all see what the highest bid is.

We hope you understand that this wasn’t an easy decision to make as we’re really excited about MEW and it’s potential. It just needs more attention than we can give it right now.

Kind regards,

www.millioneurowiki.com support staff.

UPDATE (OCT 9, 2007)
I just received an email from Bob Jones, owner of the Million Euro Wiki, saying that the site has been sold:

We have some great news for everyone that was worried in the last few hours. We’ve found the perfect candidates to continue with the site. I just spoke over the phone with Paul Hartrick and Neal Duckett, both part of the MEW community, and they have convinced me that they are genuinely interested and motivated to take MEW to the next level.

I then received an email from Paul and Neil, introducing themselves:

Hi All,

Thanks for the introduction Bob. After an interesting day for all of us waking up to a series of emails from around the globe, we’re very pleased to have come to an agreement with Bob to take over the Million Euro Wiki effective immediately and accelerate it’s exposure over the coming weeks, build the community and ensure each and every page holder reaps the benefits.

As Bob pointed out we believe coming into this as a team we are able to devote the necessary time it deserves from a workload and a creative marketing approach to make it a success.

Over the coming days we will be finalising a seemless transition from Bob to Paul and myself and we will keep you informed at every milestone. We are experienced in the Wiki system having cut our teeth on the MDW.

We’re looking forward to exciting times ahead!

Best regards.

Neil Duckett and Paul Hartrick

So, the Million Euro Wiki is still alive and kicking. The affiliate program and coupon codes are still fully active, so if you’re interested in purchasing a page, please use MichaelKwan as your coupon code to get $10 off.

I usually try to stay pretty mature about things, but when I saw this commercial on TV, I just couldn’t believe it. I thought it was some sort of spoof as a promo for Saturday Night Live or Mad TV, but this is 100% real. And that’s the final thought I want you to have as you head into the beautiful long weekend.

As is the norm with me on a lazy Friday afternoon, I was thumbing through the local (free) newspaper yesterday when I came across this ad for a pizza place. The HSBC Celebration of Light — an annual fireworks competition/festival here in Vancouver — has been going on since last Wednesday and concludes today with the grand finale. Thousands of people flock to a number of beaches to watch these fireworks, which are blown out from a barge in the middle of the water. This creates a huge business opportunity for restaurants and eateries in the area and they know it. As such, they want to capture that audience and make sure they dine there before heading out to the beach for the fireworks.

So, as I was saying, I was reading through the paper when I saw a very strange ad:

Sorry for the crappy camera phone quality, but I’m pretty sure you can make out those numbers. I wasn’t a math major at university, but I’m reasonably confident with my basic arithmetic. For $3.49, you can get yourself two slices of pizza and a single serving (can?) of pop. Alternatively, you can pony up $1.50 to get one slice of pizza and a pop… so, why wouldn’t you just do the one slice + pop deal twice instead of getting the two slice + pop deal?

I’m still trying to wrap my head around this, but would you not save yourself fifty cents in the process and get an extra can of pop? I understand that math can be difficult for some people, but if you’re running a business, you had better have a basic grasp of these figures. Can you imagine if their cheese suppliers offered them one pound of mozzarella for $5 or two pounds for $12? Looking at their fireworks pizza special, I have a feeling they’d pick the latter.

Some people love the Apple iPhone and others hate it, but everyone can enjoy a rowdy session of Will It Blend. Having a video of an iPhone going through a blender is pretty fun already, but now you can buy yourself a piece of blending history, because the crazy kook has put the blended iPhone up for auction on eBay. And yes, there have been bids. Many of them. As an added bonus, you also get a $400 blender, an autographed Tom Dickson (the blender guy) t-shirt, and a “Will It Blend?” DVD.

Click here to view the blended Apple iPhone auction on eBay