The Story of PageWise

PageWise was founded in 2000 with a simple mission: To provide concise, clear, and accurate answers to questions real people ask online.

To achieve this, we have hired literally thousands of freelance writers and researchers to write answers to commonly asked questions, from "How do I Unstick a Stuck Window" to "How to Plan a Wedding Shower."

The PageWise network consists of 80,000 unique pieces of content spread out across multiple websites. The network consists of:

Allsands.com - Published in 2000, Allsands consists of 10,000 freelance-written reference articles. Separated into 90 categories, Allsands emphasizes the humanities and cooking.

Essortment.com - Coming off the success we had with Allsands, in 2001 we incorporated a substantial amount of user feedback to produce Essortment. Our most ambitious project to date, Essortment featured 16,000 new freelance-written articles in 250 categories. Essortment's popularity is unequaled and it has five million monthly readers.

WebGuru.com - In 2004, we published WebGuru, which was literally years in the making. Although WebGuru employs a similar category list as Essortment, the content has more of a "how-to" and "crafts" flavor. The 6000 new articles we commissioned for WebGuru were produced by a new batch of freelance writers and are among the best we have ever produced.

PageWise.com - For 2005, we have commissioned 20,000 new articles for PageWise.com. You will notice some new features, such as the ability to see all the articles on the site contributed by a single freelance writer. Although we continue to use the same category structure, the 6000 articles we have produced so far this year for PageWise emphasize "do-it-yourself" and "buying guide"-style articles.

Recipe-for - 2005 also brought the launch of recipe-for, our mouthwatering recipe site with 5000 unique recipes, gleaned from classic out-of-print recipe books.

Trivia Library - Also in 2005, we launched Trivia Library, a fantastic collection of 8000 articles, reprinted from the runaway bestselling series of books, The Peoples' Almanac. Our CEO, Byron Reese, had wanted to license the rights to these books for years, and in 2005 his wish came true.

Factopia - The final site launch in 2005 was Factopia, a "Meta Encyclopedia". It is a reference site, like an encyclopedia, but when you look something up (like "Iris"), you are actually searching several encyclopedias and dictionaries. Presently, there are 30,000 articles on Factopia from some of the best printed reference material around.

Your-Answer - We have already started planning our 2006 site, Your-Answer. We have several new things planned for Your-Answer, including interactive forums, better user feedback, and a way for readers to ask follow-up questions about our articles. Presently this site is in "alpha" and contains 1000 all-new articles we will be testing the new functionality with.