Write Great Google Knols

How crazy will people be about getting their hands on an invitation to become a Google Knol early adopter? As far as I can figure, that depends on two factors:

• Supply and demand: How quickly will Google open up the gates to let just anybody in? This is Google, after all, and not some startup with worries about bandwidth and storage costs. If I recall correctly, highly-restricted beta periods for previous products like Gmail or Docs and Spreadsheets have been brief.
• The value of knol-related SEO: This is hard to predict–I’m only an SEO acolyte. Presumably if you can create highly-ranked knols in your subject area, and then link back to your own content, that’s attracted. Simultaneously, you can make AdSense revenue from highly-ranked knols. Here’s the kicker though: how much will expertise matter? On the rest of the web, there’s definitely an ongoing battle between the most ‘popular’ page and the most ‘authoritative’ or ‘informative’ page. They are often not the same thing. Will knols be any different? I doubt it, but we’ll see.

Will we see knol invites up on eBay? We might, for a very short period of time. If Google sticks to its usual beta process, the number of knol users should grow sharply, quickly.