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228 Comments 
16 minutes
It’s very rare for me to do a follow-up post on any subject, let alone in such a short timeframe, but my recent post on Viral Nova caused quite a fuss. Pageviews wise, it was the most popular I’ve published this year but more surprising was how many emails and comments the topic received.
Many of them were to let me know about the Facebook click fraud video that’s gone viral and the articles from both Business Insider and Bloomberg on Upworthy losing Facebook traffic . I hope to dispel their claims and more in this follow-up post.
After all, you did ask for it.
Thank you to everyone who does follow me on Facebook, I always appreciate seeing involvement there and try to reply / like any and all relevant comments.
Since the post is a week old now you’re probably wondering if I’ve heard about any successes. I’ve definitely seen a few failures and, yes, I’m happy to announce I’ve seen a few that have started off very successfully as well. All built in the last week.
$100,000 in One Week & Other Promising Ventures
Someone who launched a website of this style a few months ago left a comment on the previous blog post and shared that his website made $100,000 in one week, just one month after he launched it.
Daniel confirmed that this is Australian dollars so at the current exchange rate that’s about $90,000 USD. I don’t really doubt Daniel’s claim, partly because his comment actually had an avatar and partly because his site actually looked good. However, some people may be suspicious.
Yet, if you look at the Alexa chart for his website, the big spike corresponds with what he wrote in follow-up comments. He had a crazy week of both income and traffic:
For that brief period of time, his website was almost one of the top 1,000 on the entire internet (according to Alexa). Very impressive, Daniel, and thanks for sharing!
I also received some feedback from Danny Chapman who decided to try some “Viral Nova” style advertising on Facebook. Here’s what he shared as a comment on our Facebook page:
I also chatted with him via email where he shared a little more about how he’s getting such good results. He has basically taken the ideas from my posts on this subject and combined them in different ways. So he’s profiting from eBay with Facebook ads and also utilising the Viral Nova style in multiple campaigns.
He states, “I’ve done some work similar to that of Viral Nova in my niche and I’ve gained over 1500 shares on FB for a tenner, not too mention all the other KPI’s.”
A tenner is 10 pounds, if you didn’t get that reference.
An Example That Needs a Lot of Work
One person happily shared their new site on my Facebook page and, since I could see he was making a lot of mistakes, I asked him if I could publicly critique the website here and he obliged.
Edgar just started a website called Flippin Cool after reading my post. Right from the start, I can see some things he’s doing wrong. He said he would like to learn from a critique so let’s get into it (please note that I wouldn’t have done this without his permission).
#1 Remove the Right Sidebar Arrow A.S.A.P
There are some clear statements in the Adsense TOS that state you cannot direct people to click on ads on your website. I know that is not what he is attempting to do but I can easily see Google banning him for this if they catch on.
Please note I warned Edgar of this a few days before the blog post went live because I thought it was that important and he removed it as advised.
#2 An Email Opt-in Form Isn’t Relevant Just Yet
I don’t really like the idea of centering the website in-between two columns but if you’re going to do it, at least make the top left portion of the website more enticing. Nobody is going to give you their email without going through a lot of content first.
Again, I prefer the idea of content being on the left rather than packed between navigation, but at least put something there that entices people to click on more articles or simply share your website via social media. Even just moving your category links here (which are really nicely designed by the way) would be an improvement.
It’s prime real estate, especially when your website is new, so don’t use it for an opt-in box for unconverted site visitors.
#3 Make Your Headlines Bigger
They’re your biggest hook when it comes to building sites like this so make sure that people can actually see them clearly.
#4 Get Rid of the Weird Effects
This is obviously something you would have to test, but I think the two main UI effects which I’ve noticed on the website are too distracting. The first one is the semi-transparent share bar which appears over images. There are times when one of your posts doesn’t even fit on one of my 27″ monitors because they’re so long, and that share bar isn’t helping.
The other effect I’m seeing, which I presume is done for load speed, is that it takes a while for some images to show after you keep scrolling. I assume it’s some kind of javascript plugin which only loads the image once you get to that point in the page. Again, I understand why it’s done, but it’s off putting and I can see users not liking that.
#5 Improve the Content
I guess my final tip is perhaps my most important: Post better content. Even though I don’t really enjoy these kind of sites, I would much rather scroll through Viral Nova or HelloU than come to your website. The meme’s aren’t that great and the implementation is quite sloppy (huge black bars on pictures, some very pixelated, etc.), yet content is the only reason people will come to your site in the first place so you have to work on this.
The other sites I covered do a very good job with their headlines. They actually leave you curious for an answer so you click through to read more “You wouldn’t believe what happened next”.
There are a few more points I could cover but those seem to be the most important to take care of for now. Hopefully that gave Edgar some things to work on and gave you an idea of what is important when it comes to design in this industry.
The Business Insider Article Was Terrible Reporting
After the initial post I received dozens of tweets, emails and comments letting me know about a Business Insider slash Bloomberg article that was making its way around the tech web. The essence of the article was that Facebook have made changes to their algorithm which is making it harder for these “Viral nova style” websites to get traffic from the social network.
This is essentially because Facebook have limited how much content from brands will show up in a users news feed.
BI made a very compelling argument, with multiple traffic examples to back it up. The only problem is that it’s a very poorly researched article, written essentially for pageviews. Writing the article for pageviews is fairly ironic, since that’s exactly the type of websites they are covering. Almost anyone I talk to in the business world thinks of business insider as the Buzz Feed of tech blogging.
Visitor numbers are far, far more important to these websites than accuracy. Something you would have found out if you ever read the Daily Mail.
They like to be very sensationalist. Here’s the chart for Upworthy which started off their blog post:
Sorry for the small graph size. That’s the biggest Business Insider provided.
Either way, it shows that Upworthy clearly received a drop in traffic over December compared to November. There’s no disputing that.
There is some disputing room, however, for the conclusions they came to because of this drop. Or rather, the lack of them.
First of all, guess what happens in December? That’s right, Christmas and New Year (or New Year’s Eve if you want to be picky). It is a known-fact that internet traffic decreases over this period of time. It’s just like how, in all likelihood, your website gets more traffic on weekdays then it does on weekends. People are less likely to be on the computer at weekends and holiday periods.
I would say Xmas shopping is an exception to this, but these websites aren’t selling Christmas gifts.
Business Insider used BuzzFeed as an example of a website that is growing in visitor numbers despite the Facebook algorithm changes. They even wrote three blog posts on the subjecting hypothesising why. Yet not in one single article did they show that BuzzFeed also dropped massively in the December period.
One commenter criticising the article also stated that November is the most popular month online, hence the traffic spike. Sadly, despite my own research on this topic, I have no idea what the figures are for the most popular months for internet usage. I tried every term variation I could think of to find the information, but I guess my Google skills just aren’t good enough. If anyone has this data, please do share it in the comments and I’ll include it as an update.
In my searching for the data however, I did for this news article about the Mail Online and the Guardian websites:
“Mail Online topped 80 million monthly online browsers for the first time in November in a busy news period when guardian.co.uk also broke new traffic records.
The UK’s most popular newspaper website continued its remarkable climb with monthly users up by 7.57% compared with October, to 84,977,460 – an increase of 65% compared with November last year, according to the Audit Bureau of Circulations report published on Thursday. Daily users of Mail Online topped 5 million, an 11.6% climb on the previous month.
Guardian.co.uk, the Guardian News & Media website network that includes MediaGuardian.co.uk, also recorded a rise in traffic last month, with monthly users rising to 63,589,633 in November.
I also found a website called The Drum who also had a record November:
“The November statistic overtakes the site’s previous record of 846,296 visits during the month of September this year. November also recorded 1,340,109 page views and 686,454 unique visitors during the same 30-day period.”
Of course, I could probably find examples like this for any month in the year, but it shows there’s a good chance that November is just a great month across the web. The Mail Online (The Daily Mail) is a great website to compare the figures to, since their numbers also went up and a lot of their content is similar in nature.
Business Insider even asked the Upworthy founder about their supposed traffic drop, and received a very logical response:
“Koechley points out that more people visited Upworthy in December 2013 and January 2014 than they did in October 2013 — so the overall trend is still positive. He’s right. Upworthy had 5 million readers a year ago and has 50 million today.” Why did they take so long to point this out? They don’t want the facts to ruin a good story.
Here’s the fact I see in Quantcast: They’re coming back.
Another company that Business Insider mentioned failing in their article were Elite Daily. They did not show that this is another site well back on the rise in February, up 20% for unique visitors. This would not be happening if Facebook had suddenly crushed their business model. The decline would continue or at least level, but not decrease.
Now, just because I’ve posted these graphs I don’t want you to think I’m telling you there’s nothing to worry about. I don’t want to make the same mistake I possibly made in the last post making this look over simplistic. The truth is when your traffic eggs are primarily in one F-shaped basket, your business model is always going to be at risk.
However, I don’t think any of the reporting from Business Insider should be met with much credibility until a few months further down the line. After all, Business Insider totally forgot they reported on this already, in another light, regarding Viral Nova,
“But DeLong told AllThingsD’s Mike Issac on Twitter that ViralNova’s traffic has only increased since Facebook’s algorithm changes.”
Great headline Business Insider, but poor effort on the research.
My Thoughts on the Click Fraud Video (And Some Actual Data)
Another discussion I feel compelled to comment on is the Click Fraud video that has been circling the web by Veritasium. In the video, which has received 1.3 million views in just 6 days, the speaker shares multiple examples where he has paid for Facebook likes and received a lot of inactive people checking out his page.
The big argument was that while certain fans / likes from some countries were engaging in his page, likes from countries like the Philippines were essentially worthless because their users were not interacting with the page.
This is not the first time Facebook have been accused of Click Fraud. Back in 2012 there was a huge wave of press after one company found that up to 80% of the traffic landing on their website from Facebook ads were simply bots.
The creator of the Veritisium Youtube channel, where the video went viral, stated that he doesn’t actually blame Facebook directly for the inactive clicks. He believes that a lot of the click-farm companies (where you can buy thousands of likes for a relatively cheap price) also click on ‘legitimate’ pages as well to make their own personal profiles look more natural.
Sadly, the video really lacks some important information (and most of it is focused back on incidents from 2012). The fact that one of the examples only had a $25 budget and there’s no specification on whether ads targeted all countries or not.
It’s a really important point because then the easy answer is to just block all of the countries in your ad campaigns which might be causing these issues.
Specific Facebook Data from the Last Week
A friend of mine is currently running a campaign in one of these countries and gave me permission to access their campaign data. First of all, here’s a breakdown to the fans of this one specific page:
If you look at the data, you can clearly tell which ad markets the page is targeting:
- People in Thailand
- Women between ages of 18-35
- People who specify they speak Thai
The stats are fairly conclusive; the page received the exact type of Fans that were being paid for (besides the lone Hungarian). The page is not being inundated with likes from people in the Philippines and India.
Sure, click farms aren’t very nice to have, but it’s very easy to get around paying for inactive likes from third world countries with some simple targeting.
Jon Loomer also wrote a great piece on the video with similar comments. Here’s what he had to say:
“If you target countries that aren’t relevant to you and are known to be havens for click farms, you will end up with a bunch of worthless likes. This isn’t 2012 anymore. You can no longer play ignorant to this.
Likewise, if you target ads very broadly at “cat lovers” don’t expect to get high quality fans. In fact, don’t expect any actual “cat lovers” to respond when you create a completely unrelated post about a scientific experiment.
Your most relevant audience is your actual customers. When you create Facebook ads, you start with them. The further you get away from that center, the less confidence you should have in the results.
Luckily for you, there are plenty of ways to target a highly relevant audience instead of blindly targeting click farm countries and broad, fluffy interests.”
Just to clarify on the Thai example, posts on this page have also been promoted through the “Boost Post” option. This did not affect the countries that the ads were reaching nor did it attract any poor, unengaged readers.
The page is also profitable.
I was emailed by Azzam who wanted to know what the Stack That Money guys thought about the video. I chatted with Mr. Green and here’s what he had to say:
“Does Facebook serve fraudulent clicks and likes through their ad platform? Yes. Do affiliates still make money? Yes. We are still talking $xx,xxx profit per day. Every traffic source has fraudulent traffic (yes, Google too). I guess scare tactic videos like these help affiliates like us, who find out for themselves whether we can get campaigns profitable, instead of waiting for some fictional all go, green lights.”
I’m definitely not trying to claim the platform is perfect here; there are clearly issues. But I hope this doesn’t stop a lot of people from experimenting with ads (please don’t spend more than you’re willing to lose) because they think they’ll get nothing but fake clicks.
Two Things I Apologise I Didn’t Cover in More Depth
Partly because I write such long blog posts on this website, I find myself procrastinating from time to time. It’s because I procrastinate about writing different sections of an article that I end up re-reading the article multiple times instead of just continuing to write. It’s this constant reading that helps me spot 99% of spelling and grammar mistakes. I would say my last post more mistakes than average, so when I’ve made quite a few spelling or grammar mistakes it usually means an article was easier for me to write.
Most of the content came off the top of my head, rather than having to be planned and researched. For example my 5-step strategy plan at the bottom of the original post is not something I had to go and study; it was very easy and quick to write.
This also means that I didn’t talk about some things as in-depth as I should have, and I apologise for that. There were two main things I’m going to make up for now…
My Research on the Legality of This Content
I will say that I really don’t know too much about copyright law on the web. I covered it a little for my post on getting file sharers to stop torrenting my software, but I had to do some extra research for this post. I do regret that I didn’t cover this subject more in the original post.
The comments from ViperChill readers were quite divided. Some had a “this is plain theft and terrible!” outlook while others had the view that “Google did the same thing to build their business or all the big brands do it so it’s OK”.
The main thing that is being copied by all of these sites of course are images from other sources. At times many of them share and dissect Youtube videos but those can be embedded on any site anyway; publishers can turn that off in Youtube settings if they don’t want the video shared.
One website I found discussing the topic of image copyright and infringement online was Zombie Journalism. Their article (website appears to be down) showed that even law makers can be confused by subjects of Copyright but their post has a very clear message: If you don’t have permission, don’t share it.
To stay on the safe side of things when it comes to using images from other websites, get written permission.
Of course, this is something I don’t believe any of these websites are actually doing.
A few years ago (actually, 7 years ago) Sarah Bird, the now CEO of Moz, wrote a really in-depth article on the subject of copyright when it comes to images.
Sarah covered the topic of Fair Use, which I believe is what a number of these sites will claim to be following the guidelines of:
“Section 107 of the Copyright Act abrogates Section 106 by permitting others to use your original works so long as the use is “fair.” To put it more simply, copyright holders don’t really have 100% exclusive rights to their material.”
I did email Sarah for more information on this topic but I’m sorry to say I didn’t get a response. It would have been nice to have a more professional viewpoint.
I sent across a semi-cheeky question over to the Viral Nova founder on Twitter, and here was his response:
After looking at the site, I find that very, very hard to believe but I hope they are trying to make his claim happen.
Why do I find it hard to believe? Well, dozens of their posts simply have no credit at all. This post, this post, this post, this post and so on have no source linked to them anywhere on the page. There’s absolutely no way they own those images.
What I did find interesting was that large brands are doing the exact same thing. I am certainly not an expert on copyright infringement but I am sure that other big companies have done their homework. Companies like Time Magazine and The Huffington Post know whether they can use images from other websites or not. They have lawyers and legal people they can ask about that.
Is this fair use?
All three sites are taking images from one Facebook page and wrapping them in their advertisements.
Please don’t think I’m singling out Viral Nova here, all of these style websites seem to be doing the exact same thing. After Scott’s claim though, I decided to do some digging. On one of their most recent posts they share a graduation photo of a little girl, linking to the source AZ Family. Yet on the AZ family website, their TOS are very clear:
“3.2 Your Right to Use Site Content. You may use the Content only for your personal, non-commercial use, and you may download or print a single copy of any portion of the Content or other downloadable items displayed on the Services only for your personal, non-commercial use, provided you do not remove or modify any trademark, copyright, or other notices contained in that Content. You may not modify, copy, publish, upload, post, transmit, sell, create new works based upon, or distribute the Content or the Services in any manner without our written authorization”
Notice the non-commercial use part. The images are not only being used personally and I find it hard to believe that VN went out and got that written authorization, as with the hundreds of other sites using their image.
Something that also came to my attention recently was the problems people may be having with Google Adsense, which is the main source of income for many of these websites, including Viral Nova. Spencer Haws purchased a Pinterest-style website which also curates a lot of content. Unfortunately because of the content, Google sent him this:
I do have to wonder how the others haven’t been “caught”. Making Google too much money, perhaps?
Thoughts on Your Chance of Success
In the original post I stated that if you want to give yourself the best chance of success in this industry then make sure you have a budget of at least $500. Judging by some feedback I have received, some people think that number is a little low and suggest at least $1,000. They may very well by right, but I would say that even just $100 is good to see if your campaigns are generating any results in terms of likes, shares and Facebook traffic.
A large part of what I do on this blog is to motivate people to take action. There’s a fine line between motivation to help people and giving false hope. I genuinely, from the bottom of my heart, see no reason why some people reading ViperChill will not have great success with this. A few have already had great success with it, but I don’t want to position it like it’s the easiest thing in the world.
It’s going to take some work.
Scotts comment is interesting, albeit odd. After all, there literally are hundreds if not thousands of websites having success with this business angle. He definitely wasn’t the first – and has a clear incentive to not want people to build more sites in this industry – but he’s right in that I probably over simplified things.
Though, I did mention multiple times that if you were to venture down this road then it’s something you’re going to have to take seriously. I made comments like, “If you’re going to really give this a serious shot” and “Again, if you’re going to be fairly serious about this then I expect your budget to be fairly large”.
I would say that if you’re not getting results like Danny and many others and not willing to fail 100 times before figuring your Facebook ads and your angle out, this venture is almost certainly not for you. A very common theme throughout my interview with the STM guys is that you have to keep going if you’re going to make it in paid advertising. You have to see your investment as a learning experience.
That being said, if a tactic keeps getting banned in Google and you keep following it without making any money, it would be silly to keep trying that tactic. There are often clear signs that that what you’re doing just isn’t going to work.
With all that in mind, there are two things I truly believe:
- There is still an absolute ton of money (millions upon millions of dollars) that is going to be made with these types of websites
- A lot of people building these types of sites are not going to make any money
With your own time availability, budget and potential dedication to a project like this, you should know for yourself whether it’s an online business you should get involved in.
Two Alternative Angles
Within any industry, there are going to be ways to branch off from the main audience focus and cement yourself as a leader in a smaller niche market. I definitely see the potential to do that with these viral-content type websites.
Angle #1: ¿Entiende usted?
One option is to focus on something other than English. Some of the success stories I’ve been emailed about in the last few days are doing exactly this in countries you probably wouldn’t even think about.
A good example is all of the clones on Facebook for the website 9Gag, which have been posting 9Gag content in different languages.
There’s the Malaysian 9 Gag:
There’s the Thai 9 Gag:
There’s also the Singapore 9Gag:
There’s also a lot more 9Gag translators out there. This should give you a small glimpse that people all over the world are finding this style of content interesting, so if you’re able to write in another language then there may be a market for you to tap with a lot less competition.
Angle #2: Go Niche
There is definitely the opportunity present to use this style of content and focus on specific niches. A good example is the Facebook page and website named Do You Even inspired by the phrase “Do you even lift?” which seems to be pretty popular online these days.
The official page for the website has over half a million likes right now and half of that figure are actually talking about the page.
There are even other pages with the same name with impressive follower counts:
I’ve seen successful pages like this – where you make meme’s relevant to your industry – about cooking, motorbike enthusiasts and even surfing. People go nuts for these kind of jokes when they’re related to something they have a real passion for, and they share them with other people who have that same passion.
Jerry’s Final Thought
You do have to wonder how good it is for younger generations (or even current generations) to be constantly exposed to this style of content. On one hand, we’re pretty much hard-wired to have our buttons pushed in the same way, so maybe there’s nothing we could do about it anyway? After all, liking the same things is why content can actually go viral.
I’m seeing more websites than ever using their type of headlines to get traffic. Business Insider is a good example. Even if they have always been on the fairly sensationalist side, their efforts in the headline and angle departments have ramped up ten-fold in the last year.
Similarly, the most popular Bitcoin blog, Coindesk (which is growing ridiculously fast) is also deploying these kinds of headlines on their updates:
This isn’t new and this isn’t to say that we’re doomed. People still read in-depth articles on topics they care about. This article is a good example. There’s a good chance that nobody in your immediate family would be interested in this, but here you are reading it.
I don’t think many companies, besides the exception of perhaps BuzzFeed, get into this type of online business and plan to be in it for the long run. I very much see it as a wave people are riding and when Facebook or Adsense cut off their traffic and revenue, there will be nothing sufficient to replace either company. Unless StumbleUpon suddenly grows their userbase by the hundreds of millions, the Facebook wave is the only option.
And wow – at least for now – these are some really big waves…
228 Comments
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Glen,
Thanks for another fantastic article. I can’t get enough of this stuff haha. I was already thinking about starting a similar site but after I read your first article I knew that I had to do it. It only took a couple of days to get the site going in WordPress but the hard part is definitely filling it with good content. It takes a lot of work to do it right. Thanks again for sharing your wisdom.
Appreciate you taking the time to comment, Ryan.
Good luck!
Hey Ryan,
Congrats on setting up the site. I love this article and the last one that Glen published… I’ve been thinking about doing this for a while now.
However, I realize finding good content and filling out the site will be time consuming. I think I’d like to partner up with the right person. I tried to contact you through your site but that page isn’t active…. so find me on FB if you’re interested 😉
Hey Ryan,
Sometimes the matter is in doing even if there are lot of successful sites around.
Once starting doing something (with due diligence of course) you will find your sweet spot.
Glen’s focus is on where virality and SEO meet and he succeeds in it (look at the number of comments of his posts and read his bio!)
You, on the other hand, may start doing something that is similar (if you love this niche) but with your own strength (and passion) focused.
Glen gives tons of useful information. And as he himself says it – “A large part of what I do on this blog is to motivate people to take action”. And he does it by showing that here and there millions of bucks are flowing into someone’s pockets and he hints that these pockets could be yours.
The point is that those successful guys did not start out of blue from scratch (although it is also possible but it’s really a rare case). They have gained experience and a kind of 6th sense of success (it is also a result of experience). And Glenn does not show those successful guys’ failures (which is an inevitable part of any entrepreneurship), because it is pretty much just the foundation for further success.
P.S.: It is worth doing something that you really want, despite the fact that it can be incredibly hard to keep going especially in the beginning. But otherwise no woman would have children if she thought too much of how it is hard to give a birth to a child and bring the child up…
Your blog post has been a call to action for me.
I’ve recently started trying out a few PPC campaigns, but stuck almost strictly to Google PPC, (I was worried about possible fraudulent clicks on Facebook).
However, now I think I will dive into Facebook PPC and see where it takes me.
Hi Katherine,
I was actually just chatting to one of my best friends about this yesterday. He has been playing with Facebook Ads which he was making a little side income with, then moved over to Google Adwords and just had no clue how to set it up.
I know there are learning curves for both platforms, but I find Google’s to be much high. I’ve publicly had little to no success with Adwords in the last few years yet I’m doing really well with Facebook.
I would be good to know how you get on since you are starting from a Google base.
Hi Glen,
Thanks a bunch for the mention.
Just wanted to add that since that day, the article that originally had about 1000 shares at the time I showed you the data now has nearly 5000 shares without spending another penny.
Excuse the link, just for peoples ref: http://carpfishinghub.co.uk/kordas-next-5-products/
My biggest take-away from this is that niche review sites really have no excuses to not make money out of this.
Just to note, Facebook love good content, the more shares you get the more traffic they will send your way and the cheaper the CPC will be.
My CPC’s started at between 2-4pence, now I’m getting over 2 visits to the penny.
Hi Danny,
I see that the post you shared has almost 5,000 FB shares, but on your Facebook page for that website, the post you shared there only has 1 like. So I assume all these shares are from Facebook advertising that is targeting others aside from your page followers? I would think with 247 page followers you would get more likes for that post since it was so popular. Sorry for all the questions, just trying to figure things out.
Thanks for sharing your success here with Glen.
Exactly that glen, my goal isn’t to build likes, i don’t see the value in them unless i get in to the tens of thousands, even then the CTR’s of people on my links would fail in comparison when I can get more than 2 clicks for a penny, for me a share is far more beneficial in terms of traffic not to mention the added Google love it brings.
What’s your opinion on that?
so promoting posts is the way to go? glen said it wasnt originally… i agree with 0% ctr on links promoted in pages. lastly, hows ctr on ads via shares. also google love from ppl linking to your site?
So I need to understand the Google love. How exactly do you make in income on this? Is it people going to your site to read the content and then while there click on adds from Google on the sidebars?
Hey Danny,
No problem at all. I appreciate your willingness to share examples here.
Nice reporting and love the datasets. Going to have to re-read to really get my head around it more clearly and come back and comment.
Thanks for the mention.
I noticed the typo:
‘Jon Ledger also wrote a great piece on the video with similar comments. Here’s what he had to say:’
Should read:
‘Jon Loomer also wrote a great piece on the video with similar comments. Here’s what he had to say:’
Cheers Azzam!
Fixed…doh 🙂
Glen,
You always get my wheels turning, thanks as always for the inspiration. Loving the consistency with posts, I appreciate the followup to last week and new angles, good stuff. Thanks again.
Appreciate the comment, Chris.
Glad you’re enjoying the updates 🙂
Wow! That’s amazing about Daniel’s success so fast.
Thanks for doing the follow up post…it’s certainly an interesting topic! The critique is super helpful. Valuable stuff. Thanks, Glen!
You’re welcome, Doug.
Thanks!
While not my favourite topic, this is a great post and works well with your first one. My only ad buying experience was spending $75 or so testing TeeSpring campaigns on FB ads…huge potential there but def need budget to test a ton of ads – just because you think you’ve got a great idea doesn’t mean it will convert and you have to adapt to the data.
Really cool to think about hitting it big, but currently would distract from my growing business. But to others, test test test and expect to lose money at first. I liken it to paying for a uni education. Nobody scoffs at spending $40k for a likely unhelpful in the real world degree. But spend $400 testing ads that could make you thousands within a month and people get all annoyed.
Have you read “Trust Me I’m Lying”? Really good discussion of how media today is built for page views and so as long as ad revenue and page views are the “important metrics” we’ll see continual and escalating sensationalist headlines, followed by potentially unverified stories.
Thanks for the comment, Curt!
I have read the book and wasn’t a big fan of it to be honest, but it’s nice to see strategies about other angles, too.
Hi Glen,
First time i believe i commented, but just wanted to tell you im taking action on this article and its previous to se how far i can get this goig. Will update you if i have success or even failure along the way. Keep up the good work really appreciate your views and insights.
Sam
Thanks for commenting Sam,
Look forward to hearing how you get on 🙂
You are truly investing a lot of your energy into getting a post like this done. God bless, Glen. May your tribe grow. Thank you for this love post. I checked a 9gag in Tamil in facebook. True. They have had some of their posts go viral. We must try something like for a client of ours.
Hey Krish,
Thanks for the kind words!
Hi Glen,
Great follow up – was excited to see this. A couple of questions:
– When you tested this technique, how many likes were you able to get and how quickly? I started a page following your last post and it’s at 1,300 likes so far and around $400 spent advertising. Not sure how good that is but also guessing that getting the ball rolling is that hard part…
– How should a page like Viral Nova (v similar to mine) target audiences? just split people randomly and the compare?
– How are people able to make posts go so viral as the content is just copied??? Are they that good at creating unique headlines??
Thanks again
Hey Andy,
Apologies for answering these in random order, but…
As far as the headlines question goes, I do think that has a large part to do with it. I remember reading an interview with Upworthy where they say everyone has to write a possible headline for an article 25 times before they’re allowed to pick the final one. That’s a lot of focus on a small amount of text space.
They go viral, simply because it’s good content and they have a large audience to publish it to.
My budget was too small to good answer, but I think you could have received a lot more likes for that budget with better targeting.
This is something you’ll have to test to know for certain. As I mentioned in the last post, I’m not going to be following through with it. I’m imagining the youngest age group (no older than 21) in countries that are likely to enjoy your style of content.
Hey Andy,
1,300 likes for $400 seems quite high. I actually started a page and have gotten 290 likes for $15. I am just trying random targeting and going for people who have liked similar kind of pages.
what market did you target, i have the same results as andy.
Glen – I really appreciate the time and research that goes into your posts! They always get me thinking and I have to say that last week’s post and this one really have my mind going (I can say the same for others based on the fact you have this reply post).
Thank you! Your posts are full of great info and I appreciate your insight!
Thank you for the comment, Crystal!
Appreciate the feedback 🙂
Besides Reddit, where are these sites scouring for content to post? It seems like they keep throwing stuff at the wall every day to see what sticks. Awesome articles, Glen!
Imgur, forums, 9Gag, Youtube and other sites with this style of content.
Glad you liked them, Drew 🙂
Hi glen,
May I ask how has viralcircus.com earned the 100’000$?
With google adsense or affiliate income?
Turn off Adblock and check out the site 😉
I wondered this as well. He’s using AdRoll — not sure how, since I think they stopped accepting new publishers a while ago. Daniel, if you don’t mind answering the question… in broad strokes, how are you promoting your site?
PS. Great follow-up post, Glen!
Are you sure they stopped? I almost used them a couple of weeks ago but went for Perfect Audience instead.
Thanks Rob!
Edit, just read that again. I see what you mean now
Hey Glen
Great followup to a great post.
I’ve been sitting on the sidelines since your original post mostly because I would have a relatively small budget (around $200) to initially invest in marketing a site like this. Although with Daniels success you highlighted at the beginning of this post, I’m considering giving it a serious go even with a small marketing budget. I would reinvest all of my initial Adsense earnings back into marketing so it’s possible I could have a much larger budget before too long.
Thanks as always for the paradigm shifting blog posts.
Bobby
Glad you liked it, Bobbdy!
Thanks for the comment 🙂
Epic post as always! There’s a lot to be learned from analysis of the viralnova/upworthy type sites which can be applied in many other areas when combined with a little creativity.
Damn though I really have to step up my game after seeing the content churned out by the likes of you and matt woodward!
Crazy! I actually thought about doing a site that used similar viral aspects but in a different niche. I had a facebook page set up and a site that I was just about ready to launch.
I ended up putting it on the backburner and focusing on my niche site challenge and other sites that I was already ranking and earning on. After seeing this though, I may have to revisit my idea.
Great stuff, and I really appreciate you putting this monster of an article together!
Thanks Josh!
Good luck if you do tackle it again.
Glen,
Great follow up. After reading your first post I was very interested in all the concepts you had mentioned, but was worried about saturation in that market as a whole.
So I took some of those concepts and simplified them into a niche I was going after. I was wondering if it would work as I’m only about a week in and making content before the site goes live. However, you just dialed down to a “T” what I’m doing.
-Also a quick note on what Jon Loomer said. I agree, but it should always be this way. 5,000 likes from genuine readers will get you further then 7,500 likes of people who could care less about what you write any day of the week.
I was going to ask a few questions on the first post but then saw you were going to write a sequel to it and knew you would touch on them but now have a few more that have come to mind.
Do you or anyone know of some good curation softwares, I know there was a big wave of them that came out about 6 months to a year ago when curation was the big thing. Though not sure if any of these would do the trick and find what is actually popular or not. But from memory, they were supposed to cut down on manual time researching for content, images, videos.
I’ve looked at several popular FB pages that weren’t mentioned along with the ones in the article, it seems like posting is done quite frequently, from anywhere from once an hour to 8 to 12 times a day, and some only link back to their site, while others mix it up, posting images and then stories going back to their site and from little I know on FB, that seems to be the better way to increase your engagement scores.
How many hours is Viralcircus averaging per day to get this done and does he have any help with it?
What is nice in this model is you aren’t relying on Google for traffic, you can place more ads above the fold and next to the title in your article thereby increasing your CTRs
Thanks
Hi Glen, I was the one who tweeted to you about ViralNova initially. Part of my reason for doing so was that I knew you would break it down and present the tactics and strategies being employed. You have not disappointed. Thanks!
Glen,
Fascinating follow-up. Interesting to see that these clone-type sites can make it. I’d welcome your feedback on my site. I ran a popular viral-ish site from 2008-2012 (and did so as my day job…100K pageviews+ per day), then got bitch-slapped by Penguin (5K pageviews per day…ouch). That’s what happens when you put all your eggs in one basket (Google).
Now, I’m starting over with the new site and struggling to figure out the best way to get it to take off. I’ve got “video” in the domain name so I kind of pigeonholed myself a bit, but there are other viral video sites that are killing it.
I can’t imagine how paying for Facebook traffic can be profitable if you’re only banking off of Adsense. I would think you’d lose money every time, but maybe my head’s just not in the right place. Are we talking about paying for “likes/fans” or paying for “reach” on a per post basis?
Would welcome your feedback. Thx.
The plan is not to keep paying forever, but to build up an audience who can help your content spread.
Glen your two most recent posts have been a great read – thanks.
Your first post on the ViralNova concept really got me thinking about what I could do and it was was perfectly crafted to get me taking action (something you wish your readers to achieve.) Any lack of clarity only served to get me rolling 🙂
The copyright issues surrounding this model do bother me and I was compelled to ask the DMCA their thoughts. Still waiting on a response but my question was:
“Hi I’ve just become a paid member of your site and service.
Can you tell me where I stand in terms of using content from other websites on my own website. I plan to use some content that has already gone viral or is at least popular and use it on my own site.
Is this legally permissible?
It’s of quite an urgent nature.
Is there any measures I should take to protect myself when using other content?
I plan to add links to the source etc.
thanks
Marcus”
I will post their answer when it comes.
Whilst waiting for their response I found an interesting post on the eff.org – that post is here
Not all relevant but worth a speed read!
Cheers
I found this interesting on the article…
A thumbnail (reduced-size) image, or a portion of a larger image is more likely to be fair use than taking an entire full-size image.
Marcus, do you mean dmca.com? It’s a good thing you looked at eff.org. For alternate views to dmca.com as well as the DMCA, I suggest you take a look at questioncopyright.org. Asking dmca.com about what is “legally permissible” is best summarized by this: http://questioncopyright.org/files/images/2011/ME_369_Allowed-640×199.png
Hi Glen! First-time commenter, long-time reader.
As many had, I had thought about this business model before, but wasn’t sure of the legitimacy of it. However, the combination of your excellent write-up last week and Daniel’s claim had me really look into this. Now, I was several days late reading it, and did so on Valentine’s Day. Within ten minutes I’d figured out a domain, and within fifteen more it was added to my hosting and I was mucking around with the coding. So, I got to work quick!
Now, I was out of town almost the entire weekend and am back to work this morning, but here’s what I have so far: http://www.heartwarmify.com/. Most posts are placeholder and auto-populated, and there’s some other placeholder stuff around, but I wanted to throw the first day or two at getting it up to snuff and then just posting great content to it. A little cleaning here and there, but you get the gist of it.
I understand you’re a busy entrepreneur, but if you could take even just five minutes to quickly glance at what I have, do you have any suggestions? I think I’m on the path, but I can’t think of a better focus-test-from-the-hip than yourself.
Cheers, and best of luck with all your future endeavours!
Glen,
I love reading your posts, but this last one kind of had me shaking my head. Few things:
1) Your post title was a bit “click-baity”. I thought the article would be going a bit more in-depth as to “how” this random guy made $100K in a week. Where’d he get his initial traffic? Was it FB Ads? If it was, was it just FB Likes to a fan page or “Click to Websites” (conversions)?
2) This comment “I don’t really doubt Daniel’s claim, partly because his comment actually had an avatar and partly because his site actually looked good.”
You based his $100K in a week claim because he had an avatar? lol! Let’s base these claims on cold hard facts. Danny is pulling in $100K primarily through Google Ads? Can he back it up with some proof? Which posts actually went viral? Did he pay to “promote” that post? I’m not doubting his site is getting a crap ton of visits (As Quantcast says it is). The real question is about the $. What kind of CTR is he seeing for his ads? Is that primarily from a US-based audience? How is he honing in on that kind of traffic?
It’s easy to get a site up like Viral Nova…The hard part is the seeding the initial traffic. The formula for virality is inherently something like this:
T = s*e (Traffic = Sharability x Eyeballs)
Even Scott Delong said it usually takes about 100K fans/followers/likes or whatever to really make something go “viral”. Even when Draw Something came out, they spent $30K on advertising to light the spark for the fire. You could have the most AMAZING website, avatar, SEO optimizations, and killer headlines…but your site will still not go viral unless theres EYEBALLS. This means an initial group of people that “see” this, and inherently decide to “share” what they see on their own.
So the million dollar question is…..how do you get those initial eyeballs? What was $100K Danny’s strategy to get those eyeballs, and how much did he spend? We’re talking about a lot more then $500 or $1000 bucks, unless you have some insane connections.
I’m 95% sure that Scott (ViralNova) relied heavily on network partners and probably even massive mailing lists (which he collected from his old sites like Godvine) to seed his initial “eyeballs” for Viral Nova. Of course FB Ads will work, but that’s just one strategy….There has got to be other strategies.
I was also expecting to see more of that you just mentioned, especially the last paragraph.
I see this post is more of a motivation to others that there’s still money to be made then real insights on how these sites work. I guess it’s up to individual to figure it out and try to replicate the success 🙂
Ah, saw that FB video revealing the lie of the century just the other day.
It smelled of BS but I wasn’t sure how to explain it to my friend that it’s way manipulative data.
The fact is, I tried a lot of ads on FB, google, Bing for different stuff, and:
If FB is broad it goes for the lowest bidder, i.e. traffic comes from “cheap” places
If it is targeted, on the other hand, it rarely has flaws, I have targeted different countries worked like a charm, and yes, anyone can say anything about how FB is bad, until I get $7 for every $1 spent on FB, I think I know what my ad platform will be.
Its a nobrainer.
On the other hand, working with bing ads (mid 2013) display network and targeting just Tier 1 countries brought me nothing but veeeery strange traffic. The same “cheap” ones, nothing from the actual countries I was bidding on 🙂 Now that really was strange…
Cheers, and thanks for yet another supergood post.
Nenad
Thank you Nenad!
Glad to hear you’ve also had good experiences with FB.
I created a test website after reading your article: http://www.routineboredom.com/
I put a $500 budget for Facebook page likes, and I’ve managed to get 200 likes over the past couple days. At this pace, the $500 will only bring in about 2000 likes. My main concern, though, is that my posts on my Facebook thus far are only reaching a couple dozen people at most. I’m not sure what to do about that – possibly use Boost Post?
My main goal is to get my content shared on FAcebook, obviously, but posting my website content on my FAcebook page, but my followers aren’t even seeing the posts.
Your targeting must be very poor on the ads for those prices and reaching so few people.
Are you split-testing your ads?
Yes, but only one ad is getting like 95% of the views. Albeit it is performing pretty well (some like 1.5% clickthrough rate), but the average clicks are about $.20 now. I’ve targeted only a couple countries and made sure it was for people who liked similar pages as mine, but not places EXACTLY like mine like Viral Nova and the websites you’ve brought up.
I’m sorry. $.20 is the cost per like, and it’s $2.40 CPM. Just for one ad that has gotten 15k views, compared to the four other ads that have a combined 500 views.
Oh and btw, after reading your old post, I created a site http://dailyfizzle.com and managed to get over 2,400 FB likes in less then a week for $30 bucks (http://facebook.com/dailyfizzle) … I’ve also managed to get 14K visitors to the website during this time as well. I threw up some ads on the site, and have made $10 bucks so far. Nothing close to $100K, but will keep you posted on the progress. Currently split testing various forms of paid advertising. There’s no other “free” way your site is going to get that many eyeballs in such a short amount of time. My total spend (including domain, Media temple hosting, and ad spend has been about $150 so far).
Let’s see where it goes…
This is the problem I see here.. no one clicking through from FB to read about the ’99 cutest cat photos ever seen by human eyes’ is going to click on a Google ad for web hosting. Or anything. They’re not engaged.
You’d have to have SO much traffic to make any money. If 14k visits generates $10 ad revenue, do that math. You’d need 14 million visits to make 10k.
Doesn’t add up. I call BS on the guy who made 100k in a week.
-N
Their estimated ad revenue from Business Insider was $2 per 1,000 views.
This is a really really interesting stat Glen – thanks for pointing it out
Agreed
Hi Glen. Great follow-up, just the extra little kick up the arse I think a few of us needed to get our own versions of these sites up and running! I am working on a DMCA Policy page for my site, similar to what VN has done in their footer – do you (or indeed any other readers here) know of any templates that can be used for such a policy? Or would a mishmash of a few other sites’ policies suffice, since my impression is that having a policy saying “if I’m infringing your copyright, just tell me and I’ll take it down, in accordance with DMCA” is the important thing?
Hey Chris. I had the same questions as you about the DMCA Policy and i am still skeptical about attempting this project. I believe the DMCA is very important, but i wonder how so many people are getting away with making profits off of others content. I am still trying to figure out how Pinterest gets by without going to court. I have had many friends find their images on Pinterest with someone else taking credit for them as their own. I really wish i could find a guide or more examples on this issue
Hey Glen,
Great post. Was already getting fired up after the last one, and even more so now.
Like your alternative angles, however I notice some of the examples you use are local, but still mainly in English. Doesn’t that mean you’re still up against the Viralnova’s & co?
Cheers
One thing I’ve read about many of these websites is that they do not get a lot of repeat visitors besides from the updates they do.
In other words, people aren’t going directly to the sites as much as they are clicking on the next hot thing from Facebook, so there’s always opportunity.
Hey Glen, happy you did a follow up of this. I read your first article via pocket while on the beach during my holidays, and you practically ruined the rest of them since I couldn’t stop re reading that article lol.
Anyway, just returned and got started giving this a try. My only question is related to Facebook advertising.
Since this isn’t a niche or product site, I’m unsure on what to display on my ads. I mean, if I were running ads for a football site, I would create a headline like “Best goals from Premier League” and put an image of Suarez below it. But since this is a more general site, don’t know which direction to take to get my targeted readers attention.
Just a headline like “Read amazing stories” and a random picture would work?
Hi Glen, nice post again. I have few comments:
1) There is a hot debate about linking, embeding, iframing or sharing pictures. No-one of us photographers (Im stock photographer pro) have problem with downloading our pictures for your personal use, linking to them and even sharing on Facebook (if you link to us). But all photographers are pissed when somebody takes their pictures without even asking, shares and copies everywhere and many even crop or retouch copyright or watermark. This is theft. Technically even hotlinking, embedding and iframing is theft, because you show someone elses content and copyrighted work on your web and cash on it. There is huge argument about this but simply put, you earn on content created by someone else.
2) Google used hotlinking in their image search – BUT the main goal of search engine is to bring visitors on authors sites, not to screw authors completely. There were numbers published by stockphoto agencies that clearly showed that “improved” google Images absolutely screwed the system. Numbers of visitors dropped by up to 80%!!! Googles tiny message “images might be copyright protected” is just funny – ALL images are protected unless the opposite is explicitly stated! So it DOES a huge harm to website owners and photographers. Still Google is not directly capitalizing on their image search and it was probably just badly planned. Pages like ViralNova are based on downloading someone elses work, uploading it on their web and then sharing everywhere without credit or link. And they DO earn money on it = problem.
3) Facebook is probably screwing data about clicks and visitors in both ways. Im now very suspicious that they show much less clicks on unpaid posts. Dropping visitors might scare many ppl and force them to invest into paid promotion. I launched new project a week ago and did FB campaign in the niche. Just first day about 180 visitors landed on the project website. Yet somehow FB shows only few clicks. There was no other promotion, backlinks, search engine traffic etc. Server Awstats show only 10-15 visitors from FB but where the hell other 160 came from?! What about not provided visitors? And this is going on whole week…
Hey Zbynek,
Great follow up and thanks for all the great information you’ve added. I was confused/lost on the issues of other peoples work and how i would go about using the content. I didn’t want to jump into things and be disrespectful of others peoples work. I have too much respect for the hard working people and the internet community.
I have always questioned how some niche websites grab content and put together articles around images. Do they go and get permission or do they link back the original source?
Lets say for example: I was working on a home design niche website. I want to target Small home living. I can find content on others websites such as dwell, but how would someone go about getting the permission for the images? I would use them as examples and link back to the original source. Sorry for the off subject questions but i beleive you have more knowledge in Image copyrighting then me, Thanks
Great follow up post Glen, i really like this stuff. Does anybody know what WP theme viral nova and viral circus use? I searched magazine type themes but there’s nothing i like or resembles them. They have clean themes focused on ads.
Try going here and finding out
http://whatwpthemeisthat.com/
Tnx Chris, didn’t even know that existed 🙂
BTW did you know that the DMCA page on viralcircus.com leads to a blank page 🙂 http://viralcircus.com/dmcaremoval-request/
Hey,
I saw this too and was wondering how a website would make this amount of money without it being completely finished or well polished. I would think the DMCA page would be on a list of things to complete before going live with the site.
Here’s my take on this whole ‘business model’…
Someone is going to get their @ss handed to them very soon for copyright infringement.
As far as I understand, these sites are taking other people’s content (e.g. images) and posting to their own website. Their “protection” is (x) a DMCA link and (y) a link back to the original site.
Here’s what I see the problems in this are:
1. is the DMCA effective? Well if you spend some time reading the DMCA act and in particular the ‘take down’ provisions, you’ll see that they are intended to protect hosts and site owners from USERS posting infringing content on the site. The theory was that in the online world, it’s not a website owner’s job to police its User’s posting habits. If a User is naughty and posts something that infringes copyright, the website owner gets a notice and can take it down – thus avoiding liability. What the DMCA doesn’t do, is protect the site owner where its the SITE OWNER himself uploading copyrighted property.
2. A linkback – really? since when was a simple linkback to a site enough to overcome copyright. Never.
Would love to see more discussion here on these points. Its easy to get seduced by the prospect of “easy money”, but you should know that this model brings with it genuine risk.
Jeff
Hi Jeff,
I’m not arguing with you, but could you tell me then how Time Magazine and Huffington Post and so on can do the exact same thing.
Surely they’ve spoken to their legal team about it…
I suspect Huff Post and Time get permission to use the images. Let’s face it, if I were a photographer and they wanted one of my photos and offered a little attribution link in an obscure corner of the page, I’d take it. I’d probably do it with no attribution just to be able to say my photo was published on those websites.
I’ve noticed popular magazine websites vary attribution. I”m in the fitness niche and the big mags often have an attribution link, but not always. They may source their own photos and if use an image to which they don’t own copyright, they get permission.
I’ve done fairly well with a slight variation on this model for over half a year, but I do it in a narrow niche. I use stock photos to which I purchase licenses or I get express permission to use a photo (often other website owners give me permission because of the volume of traffic I send).
This model is growing within in narrow niches as well… not just broad-appeal sites. Traffic for narrower niches is much lower (it’s still good), but Adsense CPC is decent and you can build a great email list fairly fast (paying for it with Adsense).
They don’t. Lots of photographers are extremely pissed at newspapers and the like using their work without permission or a link/credit. It’s because news coverage falls under fair use, so newspapers can really use practically anything.
The truth is, fair use is highly contestable. If you’re just duplicating a story and referring back then you can argue that it falls within the requirements. How that works with a site that is primarily posting content for commercial gain through advertising is another matter.
So yeah, I jumped on the band wagon.
I’ve been playing with a combination of different ads on FB – the best so far was very, very loosely targeted. £15 achieved a 11,340 impressions, 1,423 clicks, a CTR of 12.549%, £1.32 CPM, and a CPC of £0.01. While my shares/likes are pretty low, I only set everything a week ago so need to experiment and play with it over the weekend.
Funnily enough, that was promoting a post rather than my Facebook page. In the long-term that’s obviously not the best because I want repeat engagement, but as an initial test I’m sure I can hone and make sure I’m getting likes rather than one-time visitors.
Great post, Glenn! Been thinking bout giving it a try with a similar site for a while now. I think Pinterest could be a very interesting traffic source to look at as well since a lot of your content will be heavily image-based already.
I was wondering if you could recommend some wordpress themes that would be ideal for such a site. Or would you recommend having it customer designed?
Hi Glen,
Your previous post made me so disappointed and happy at the same time. I got something very precious from your blog (Nova Idea) but that was something like you did not deliver the whole research I was feeling thirsty for some questions.
9 Gags idea in other languages is awesome as I have already planned one more site in my own language. I am coming up with 2 sites. One in my native language and the second one with English…After all Ad sense CPC means a lot to me.
Now I am feeling fully drunk after this post. Thank you so much for this second damn episode. This is all you can do for “Poor Birds” and I truly appreciate it a lot.
Thank you so much very soon I will be back with a viral blog to say you thanks again.
Hey Nasir,
I appreciate the kind words and really glad you got something out of the updates.
Thanks for the comment!
Is $0.02 for one page like a good conversion rate? Right now I’m getting $0.04 on a niche site, but I haven’t really tried to optimize it…
So I invest 1000$ and get initial 50 000 fans that would help me spread the content and hope I can create good enough content that will go viral… Is that basically the whole game plan?
I think there’s more to it how those sites promoted their content.
Fishing site went different way and advertised a post. I’m really interested how get got that high CTR. Maybe it’s because of narrow niche. Can I email you Danny?
About ViralNova and similar, I think it’s really important to stress actually how important titles are. Definitely something to study.
About that video, I noticed that every 3rd page fan (on my new niche site) has liked over 1000 pages… I went back to their profiles day later, the same person liked dozen new pages after mine. All people from USA.
Ok, I’m done rambling 🙂
Hi matej,
The CTR you see was over the first couple of days, at the moment the average is around 16% with clicks costing less than half a penny.
What I am seeing though is that I get 20 times more shares than page likes on a post page and much lower stats when I don’t target a post, typically more shares than likes.
Facebook is prioritising the actual content pages, if you target your niche well, those stats are common!
For me shares are more profitable at the moment, though likes will be my long term goal the comparisons between shares and Google rankings continue to show a relationship.
Sorry, “typically more shares than likes.” was supposed to be “typically more likes than shares”
HAHA..Glen I told you you were going to open the floodgates… but this type of post just resonates with people because your not just telling them ‘What to do but ‘How to do it”.
Stick with this format for all your posts..(HINT) 🙂
There is one thing I’m a bit confused about..In one sentence you say..there is a lot of money to be made then the next statement you say many people will not make money? I know your just covering your back ..but maybe you should have said..there is a lot of money to be made but many will not be able to exploit it?
Anywaz fantastic article..My vote is stick to this style..it really suits you 🙂
Hi Greg,
Thanks for the comment.
That’s exactly what I mean to say. There’s a lot of people who will make money, but a lot of people won’t as well.
I think that’s the case for most “strategies” online 🙂
Just curious if you think there’s some sort of psychological factor involved with these sites too, with regards to their names. Viralnova, viralcircus, and Upworthy have names that almost imply that anything they post should be shared or liked.
This is a joke based on your comment name? 😉
I love this concept and since reading your post last week have set about trying to see if I can have any success from it.
The one thing that has got me a little stumped is what to select in terms of interests and/or categories when creating an ad of Facebook. I have used FB advertising in the past and because it was directing to page likes or website clicks for a specific product it was very easy to specify that niche in the ads. However, this sort of site is a lot broader. Do I still need to try and narrow down the target audience in some way? I understand that if you leave it too broad you will have less success with the adverts. Would love to know what others are trying.
Cheers
Sam
Hi Sam,
I would definitely look to narrow the audience size yes. I would start my testing by going after younger age groups as well.
Hint: there are ways just to target the fans of pages like Viral Nova.
Haha I was thinking to myself I am sure there are ways, but I am yet to fully understand what they are! 😉 I am hoping with a bit more searching google will help me with this….
But for the ones I have running at present, I have narrowed down the target audiences and seem to be getting some ok results.
Great stuff…I am afraid I don’t get more than 10% of what you are talking about (let alone drive action from it), but it is still inspiring and keeping me up at 1.40 am
Time to get back to emptying that lousy work mail inbox, I was meant to empty at 23.00.
Cheers,
al
Doh,
Happy to try and explain anything a little better if I can…
Its very hard to get click thrus on articles over images posted to a fb page.. Also what is everyone spending on click on avg per like?? Any one wanna share nums?
Well, the articles being clicked through to are essentially the images.
Many sites have proven it’s really not that difficult, as long as you craft the right headline.
Yes, out of 2k fans I’m seeing 15 click throughs.. Even on titles that workedfor VN. Going to try for another week.. Otherwise if people just aren’t clicking through what’s the point….
Have loved the last couple of blog post (and all the ones before!).
Super-quick question: what would be the best way to spend money getting a site like this up – purely paying for Facebook PPC to gain likes/traction?
Or would some best be split into buying tools and plugins, and if so would would be your top couple of recommendations?
Cheers
Hi Elijah,
I highly recommend you read the first post on this topic where I covered my action plan regarding Facebook 🙂
A way to scrape fans from other pages would be useful 😉
Thank you for the well written article.
I often use Google image search for images for my posts, and a couple of times have caught myself not using the correct options to leave out copyrighted stuff. That makes me feel like a thief, but do not have it in my heart to remove the image from a published post – “the image is just perfect”.
Then I read your last post, I was not quite thrilled to see big players doing it to earn big.
I wanted to do my own research, but had been occupied somewhere else. You have the research more effectively than I could have ever managed, and answered most of the difficult questions. I still believe it is not legal to copy any viral image, and get paid for that. But it is good while it lasts.
Glenn,
I literally ignored this email alert for the first time but when I read this and visited ViralNova and other stuffs I thought is it possible to earn such a huge amount just by copying others stuff, over the whole explanation is wonderful and eye opening.
After reading this am thinking why don’t give a shot on this interesting and funny module? However I have few doubts though, I am basically from India and I am not sure about DCMA policy or any other policy over here. Assuming I just started the website and shared all the old stuffs from other websites which my not or might have got visits but people could not have forgotten will that be as effective as this. Also, is it possible to build up visitor base without spending money on facebook ads?
Not sure, but really interests me to take a chance.
Hi Raghu,
I think you would have to look at the laws in your own country. I can’t really advise you on the legal stuff here I’m afraid.
I didn’t read through all the comments, but all I have to say is this kid running VN is gonna get bagged soon enough. DMCA is not gonna save him when someone who is pissed and has $$$ wants to hit him with copyright infringement. Gonna rip the wrong content from the wrong person/company. For example, try taking pics from Getty, host them on your own server, make a cute title, then see what happens….
These sites remind me of the rss ripping, auto blogging days of 10 years ago. Rip it, sometimes rewrite it, keyword stuff it, SEO it, game the search engines to send traffic to your adsense filled page of garbage and hope for the click. The only thing changed now is instead of gaming an algorithm, you’re gaming someones head. Catchy title, hope they click through, and pray they don’t have adblock installed.
This current crap will all be done soon enough, when facebook or whatever social site tweaks their algos a little more. IMO, if you want to keep it going, you better be willing to pony up some of this quick dough and give it back to the land owner. Pay the man, if you’re making $100k, you better be giving them their 20% (and I think one of the larger ones already does that and wasn’t hit). This is a pay to play game, especially if you’re on someone elses property and profiting.
I’m laughing at all the third worlders thinking they are gonna jump into the game at this point, clone the current big ones, and boom, $100k a day is gonna flow lol. Can’t speak a lick of english, but all of a sudden gonna be a copywriter writing clickbait titles and content. Dear sirs, to your success, GTFO, lol. I’ll give it to this kid running VN, he can write clickbait. He’s also has previous successful exits, but man he is pushing the legal envelope with this one. I can see why he may be shopping it. I just can’t see someone buying it for that much $$$, unless they are a moron, way too much risk from every angle from the legal aspect to the traffic being decimated.
The simple takeaway from these types of sites: Copywriting, GOOD content, an audience & a niche = profit. Right now all you are seeing is broad audience, ripped content, catchy titles. Think outside the box and drill it down. Oh and if you’re gonna be doing it on someones elses real estate, remember pay to play if you want to stay.
Interesting comment JD, thanks for sharing.
I did ask Scott a little more about copyright infringement today, so I’m curious to see what he replies…
Hey Glenn, did Scott ever get back to you on this?
Sadly not.
This is really interesting post Glen.
I tried this idea and got ~ 400 likes for $18… so if I would send $1000, I could have 20,000+ likes…. actually the number would be much higher as some of my posts would go viral and bring in thousands more likes
Nice job!
Just make sure your likes are actually becoming engaged in your content before ramping up the numbers.
If they’re not engaging then you need to work on your targeting.
Awesome work Glen, these posts are really priceless! You’ve also given me an idea for my own Facebook experiment, but with my own content, the site is taking shape already 🙂
Awesome post as usual.lots to learn from
Hi Glen,
I love you long in-depth articles and I get why writing new content can’t be overwhelming because of the standard your put up.
But I have one idea that I’d like to plant in your head:
AMAZING content doesn’t have to be 3k+ words.
I read Viperchill because of the great content/ideas/tools/opinions – even if that is a 200-300 words, like this little gem I’m sure you’re aware of: http://kk.org/thetechnium/archives/2008/03/1000_true_fans.php.
Big ups,
Fred
Glen, you are the man. I’m not remotely close to ever entering this space but I can’t help but read every word. Even the business model is addictive to read about 😀
(I especially liked the mini-site review in the middle of the post. Would love to see that again in a future post or ViperChill podcast episode)
Awesome work Glen, thank you for starting this discussion! Here’s my question:
On the revenue side, VN is maybe making $2 per 1,000 ads or $200,000 per month (according to Business Insider). On the cost side, what is the hosting cost for 100 million visitors/month? If you hosted with wpengine.com for instance (in case something did go viral) the cost for 100,000,000 per month would be $99 for first 100,000 visitors + $1 per 1,000 visitors for the next 99,900,000 visitors. If my math is correct that’s $99 + $99,900 which is just shy of $100,000 bucks in hosting.
Even if you made a mildly successful site and got 100,000 visits per month the revenue would be $200 and the hosting would cost $100 for a gross profit of $100. In my opinion this seems like a lot of work and some risk for very little revenue. Am I missing something?
There are much cheaper ways to host a website. They also use a CDN service for all images.
I don’t even think WPEngine would charge that much (surely they would have custom options for those numbers).
Glen, what would you guess hosting would cost for 100 million visitors per month?
Hey Leo,
I know this is quite a late response but gotta chime in here.
Sites like ViralNova and Upworthy are basically nothing more than static sites. Sure, they may use WordPress or some other CMS as the backend, but essentially, apart from retrieving the pages’ contents from the database, there is no other backend-heavy stuffs going on there. Understanding this is the key to answer your question.
Since those are static contents, each pages can be served over and over again as static cached pages from caching memory. This way, a page has to be loaded from database only one time (unless there are dynamic changes, which in case of VN and Upworthy there won’t be) and after that, cached version of static HTML page will be served to subsequent visitors. This way, the database doesn’t have to generate the pages over and over again.
So how many static pages a decent server hardware can serve? Millions, without optimization. By properly fine-tuning the web server and database server, plus using a server-side caching like Memcached, nginx fastcgi_cache, Varnish or any other kind of caching server, serving 100 million visitors a month is pretty easy.
Case in point: ViralNova uses nginx web server and Varnish as cache server. Basically, you can run a web server on one physical server, database server on another server, and Varnish/whatever caching server on another hardware. All in all, you just need to have 3 server hardware with pretty decent specs to serve that much. But then, in this cloud hosting age, I would be using Amazon EC2 or Digital Ocean to use several cloud VPS and do load-balancing. This way, you can deploy additional servers whenever there is a huge traffic spike, and heck you can automate that too.
So to answer your question, for sites like VN which has no heavy database processing, you can actually handle 100 million visitors with proper fine-tuning of server softwares along with a good caching server at the cost under $3,000 a month. Plus, use CDNs for serving images and that takes away your bandwidth + storage cost. Sure, CDNs comes at a cost but still pretty damn cheap.
Hope this answers your question and everyone else if they’re wondering the same thing!
— Sam
I think the biggest issue here is copyright, especially with images.
My understanding is that you cannot use an image without express permission. Attribution alone is not sufficient.
But social media muddles the issue.
I can create a status update link in Facebook which posts the copyrighted image on my Facebook page – which earns Facebook money – without permission. It can even earn me money by attracting new fans.
Is this infringement? Some people suggest that because the link goes directly to the main article that it’s not infringement, but Facebook is acting as a curator and earning revenue. That’s a commercial use.
Take Scoop.it as another example. Scoop.it makes money with curated images and snippets of articles.
Pinterest makes money with images. With the Pinterest toolbar, any image can be pinned.
So, what’s the difference of a small-time blogger doing the same? There is no difference except that established social media platforms are given a pass. Yes, they will remove content upon request, and I’m sure it happens, but most copyright holders don’t bother … it’s practically impossible to police.
I’m not suggesting that because Facebook and other social media platforms can curate (i.e. use copyrighted content) we should go out and do that. However, it does suggest a problem with the entire copyright structure.
Great comment, Jon.
exactly… this is what some twats posting here don’t understand. It’s the same with piracy. It cannot be stopped…. the web always comes up with a substitution…. and you simply can’t police a billion people from each and every hole of the planet……. and the other thing people forget is that sharing is most likely to be productive and useful to the content owner. They get something from it. The reason I see comments mostly negating Scott’s business, is pure jealousy, ie, “why didn’t i think of it first?”. That, instead of accepting you need to explore new ways/strategies to improve yourself.
Glen, great article – not that I expected any less from you 🙂
I made a few interesting discoveries, though… I looked at the DoYouEven facebook page and I don’t see them linking their posts to the site. It’s mostly picture posts without any links. Now If you go to their site, there is no FB Likes, and actually pretty slow activity in general… which makes me wonder.
I like the idea of “translating” pages and wanted to see what 9Gag in Thai or Malaysia does, however I wasn’t able to find their facebook pages (deleted?).
Alright, so I created a website and have about 6 posts on it. I create my Facebook page as well. I created about 10 ads also. Same tagline and info, but with different pictures. My CPM is about $.02, so I’ll be playing just dollars for thousands of impressions. One ad today received 22 THOUSAND impressions….not a single click. And I’m targeting to only the US and people who have liked websites like Fail Blog, Cracked, and College Humor. I don’t know what I’m doing wrong.
Awesome article. I would argue that we’re still in the prime of this strategy. Just today I got an email from a popular blogger’s subscription in which he linked to a viralnova clone article about the best 7 places to go before you die. I have seen this same article in numerous forms in the past month and the fact that it keeps popping up speaks to the viability of this strategy.
Just today I saw someone share an article about dogs from a site called http://www.reshareworthy.com/ The facebook page for the site’s first post is from the 8th of February. Is the owner of this site possibly someone who started your idea of taking a viralnova clone and running with it right before you posted your original article? If so, what timing!
I am actually shocked (unless I missed it somewhere) that nobody has really talked about scraping FB ids and doing uber-targeted campaigns that get ridiculous clicks. This is how you get your $500 to go further.
Also, you didn’t hear this from me, but how many credit cards do you own? Debit cards? Paypal accounts?
With each FB spending account, you can use a $50 voucher…they are everywhere on Fiverr, just make sure you are using different IPs with different accounts
We did talk about this in the comments, jeremy.
Thanks for the contribution though!
Well, I’m 1 day in. I have 50 FB likes. With 105 click throughs. 0 shares though.
Any suggestions for my site Glen?
http://www.viralmafia.com
How much has it cost you per click so far Nick?
Love the site, looks very clean.
Thanks for the compliment Danny!.. As for the CPC it is around $0.01-0.03 which is insane. I ran quite a few different ads on Facebook but when I started having a successful ad Facebook displayed it more I guess and it got my CPC super low. A key thing I learned is that in order for the CPC to be that low you must click that you want clicks to your site when you create the ad… But I’ve given up on it for now because it don’t feel like investing $500 into something my heart isn’t in. But I’ll save it for a rainy day or something to do when I’m bored.
so you are promoting your site instead of the facebook page? and thats bringing cpc to $0.01?
Great post, Glen.
Out of interest, and to others, what sort of thing are you using in your advert on FB?
Are you basically using one of the story headlines from your blog to get clickthroughs, or something different? It’s just you recommend to direct the ad to your FB page, rather than a post itself?
Any clarification would be great.
Thanks a lot,
Matt
Glen I’d like to get your thoughts on this as an experiment. What if I put up a site, and literally put up every article that viralnova has published so far. Of course at the bottom of the article I’d credit them, but is there any way they could claim copyright infringement with a straight face? Would they even dare?
If you put your money on something, you expect that money to be worth it. But for companies like Buzzfeed and Upworthy to put their own money into a huge business that they both have formed, maybe it is worth it for the long run to invest into a business like this, being called “Viral Media”. If people want to share certain things on their Facebook, now it’s basically up to them to do that.
So the algorithm update made it so people can only see stuff on their newsfeed that they care about. And so with so many people sharing Viral articles from these big sites, isn’t it still promising that this business will last?.
Anyone have any idea what FB popup plugin Viral Nova and Bored Panda are using when you get down to the bottom of their blog?
~~ I want to know this as well
ShareCallout plugin I believe.
VN is using the truepixel theme http://mythemeshop.com/themes/truepixel/
shareCallout is a plugin, which I could not find and i assume it is custom. It’s the bottom popout slider that is holding the facebook like box widget
Btw, I figured all this out using an extension for firefox/chrome called ‘spybar’ that allows you to see what themes and plugins a site uses. It’s not free, but priced quite low.
To emulate shareCallout, I was able to create a similar bottom slider by using a popup plugin called “wp popup magic” and making a simple code hack to be able to use a widget in it. Thus, emulate the VN slider. I couldn’t find any free plugin that I could make work, so I had to buy this pop plug. well worth it for that and all the popup types that plug gives.
Ok how is everyone spending money on Buying Facebook Fans? where are they buying that from? and where are we getting the viral content from? this is a difficult strategy. but can be done.. I plan to start more than one viral site and try to work with different strategy
If you were starting a viral site right now. what would be all the steps you would take to do it. from A to Z?
from hosting, to actual A/B testing, and the websites you would implement to do this at?
But please let me know my questions above!! I appreciate it
Hi Mike,
Did you see the first post on this? it has a lot of info on buying ads 🙂
Really? What a ridiculous comment. “Please tell me how to make boatloads of cash, and break it down into little baby steps so I don’t have to think at all.”
Come on, BigMike. Try a little.
Well this was a failed experiment for me,2k followers, paid around $400. Users love the pictures I post directly on the page but links/clickthroughs is at 0. Share is at a bare minimum too for pictures (0 for link shares). Even if headline is the same and new as viralnova’s. You need a HUGE following for this to be even remotely effective. RE: 50k followers minimum.
Anyone else try this and give up or actually have any success? So far my adsense revenue from the site is at $1.35 earned for $400 spent.
What’s your website/facebook page if you don’t mind me asking
Ive been hearing a lot of people saying this a failed experiment. Scott DeLong says that people are trying to emulate this, but there no where near close to his strategy..
Well Its obvious he wont give out his “secret sauce” but im wondering If there are other ways to get facebook traffic rapidly, and quickly?
And im wondering WHY everyone is failing at this.
is it because
1. there not putting enough money into the campaign
2. Not getting enough followers
3. Not being patient enough
4. Because there’s a “secret sauce” method to this whole viral marketing venture??
Each like is coming to $0.3/ and if users don’t engage in your LINK posts, your reach drops drastically to 1%, which makes things even harder.
I am sure Delong had something else to his magic then just this. Glen investigate and let us know!
Glenn – what are your thoughts on sites like alltop.com? I’m not sure how well they are doing, but they’ve been around for a while. They aren’t full stealing like Viral Nova, but they are also a curation site in a sense. I believe it was popurls that first started the trend.
Hello Glen, just want to share another site (vitaminl [dot] tv). It’s alexa ranking is 918. This is also a viralnova type site but it has only youtube videos.
Hi Glen,
Just on the FB ads “scam”. He does mention in the video that he limited it to USA at a later date, and he still got the same spammy profiles liking his page. It would make sense, since USA likes are usually valued higher than worldwide on places like Fiverr etc. So a person using either a USA proxy, or in the USA to begin with could still be liking pages with no intention to interact.
There is still a small flaw in the explanation though. And that is, why click the ads to like pages? Why not just run random searches based off say… Google Insights, and like those pages. For example, following the video’s logic, a spammy profile will go.
– Create profile.
– Like a bunch of pages via ADS
– Accept an order for a page, go directly to that page and like it.
Wouldn’t it make more sense to go.
– Create profile.
– Peruse around facebook, making random searches and liking pages.
– Accept an order and go to the page and like it.
Otherwise it would be rather obvious that you like 1000 random ad pages to every 1 that you receive an order for. Although again, if you follow the video’s logic, he seems to think that FB is aware of the issue but because they are making so much money they just don’t care at this point. So they may not even want to shut down the spammy profiles.
Actually, early in the video he does say it was targeted to the Phillipines which I missed.
Unless you’re referring to a different example.
Great comment, thank you!
I don’t know if you guys went through Viral Nova when he first started his facebook page.
On the very first day he had over 100+ likes.
The first picture he shared in September was only of a dumb tree and it received 408 Likes and over 100+ shares.
Theres obviously something else to just advertising on FB for likes.
Many people have beat those figures after starting a website since reading the posts here…
Hi Glen,
Is there somewhere where people are discussing these types of sites since your posts? Forum?
Thanks
Just here I think…
That is a very meaty post and equally good podcast Glen – thank you.
The impression is that sites like Viral Nova are almost taking advantage of Facebook users who may be more unfamiliar with online marketing than general web users with more experience. Either way – very clever to start the wave – good luck to them.
Danny – can you bring your carp crew over here where they are a massive pest http://www.canberratimes.com.au/act-news/what-to-do-with-carp-unclear-20121210-2b64x.html
Great post!
I am currently running ads on Facebook but restricted to 25 characters in the Ad title. I have seen ads which have longer titles that go beyond 25 characters – how are they able to do this?
Cheers
Are you sure it’s actually the headline? Not their page name?
Glen,
How do you go about beating those figures after starting a website?
I started my own site but have no idea how someone can get so many likes and shares when starting up.
Thanks Glen, I took your advice and made the changes. My site is defiantly growing fast. My Alexa ranking is also growing.
Edgar
The one thing VN and vitaminl.tv and all these other sites who use Adsense is that they are in violation of Adsense rules. though typical Google, ban the small guy doing the same thing but getting 6 figures a month, then we turn the blind eye.
Thank for you to share these experiences, you are a great Geek!
Glen,
I wish everyone with a blog would put as much depth in their posts as you.
I honestly think you could completely capture my attention writing about any topic,
George.
well..after read the comment i did not see one who reveal the secret of VN use to gain more likes also got those earning..
But in my country a lot of adsense publisher use this method to get earning from adsense and also seed the likes for their page.
The Answer is: Rent other FB page that had above 100k likes and had a lot interaction such likes and sharing.
yup,this is the strategy using by many of adsense publisher in my country,they rent the fb pages,usually many of fb pages owner offer a 1 mont rent service for below $50,some offer $10 per week,and they r other who offer free but need to become their fb pages moderator and update the post every days(it’s a win-win situation,owner got their page active and the one who offer to become free moderator will get free acces to post his/her blog content in that fb page..).
Because the cpc is low(maybe my country is small for adwords advertiser) many of this publisher earn less than USD2k per month using the method above.But for sure $2k is a lot in my country.
sorry with my english lol..
In the half of the article, I was like “Oh man, I have to try this, but in my language!”
Then I read Two Alternative Angles subhead and I was just smiling.
Love this article, Glen!
Great minds think alike 😉
Curious to know what people are using as scrapers?
Surely an automated and scalable solution exists.
Of course. They aren’t perfect though. RSS scrapers can be found very easily…
Looking at Facebook search, there are over 1000 pages starting with “viral…” pages / websites out there, but a lot of them don’t have anything to do with news. If you keep scrutinizing it, you end up with only few that are actually news related and are starting to grow with Likes ranging from 50k up to ~280k to VN’s 1.2m & BZ’s 1.8m. So, I think it’s like Glen said, there’s room for more until either people are fed up or fb changes it’s algorithms again. If you jump in now, there’s still a chance of boarding the train.. you might not make as much as Mr. DeLong here, but a 10 or 100 times your investment should be possible (looking at how virtualcircus did and various others if you check the facebook search). Also, looking at BZ, a full invested startup, and VN, a business run by 3 individuals, catching up to it without investing near as much, it’s a perfect case study that shows that even now, it’s possible to re-innovate the web.
Scott saying “500+ clones later and…” well, you can’t expect everyone else to grow to VN scale in just a few weeks. There’s also a limit of how much content you can push everyday. Too much, and new content becomes old way too soon. It’s a process, so you can’t say none of the clones are successful. Yet. Obviously a remark to discourage competition.
Someone asked for the “secret sauce”. The “secret” is already told. The site life line is based on link sharing through fb. It’s easy enough to guess VN has put several thousands dollars (if not more) on fb campaigns since they had the cash from previous sell-outs and the second reason, being educated enough with how to promote a page on fb, what age ranges to target for, specific ad tactics etc’. That’s the “secret” sauce, well experience in other words.
Great comment!
Hi Glen,
Many thanks for the awesome article. Start making the site like coinbase.com.
p.s. Keep in touch…
Scott DeLong is making money by lying to people… I think his 1.2 million following would significantly decrease if this spread as virally as his lies….
PHOTO PROOF: http://s28.postimg.org/8fgvxihx9/liar.png
Not really sure what this photo proves?
The photo proves that Scott’s method is to find an emotionally effective photo, like the one in the link I posted, then make up whatever caption he thinks will get the biggest reaction out of people. He initially wrote “Real men take time for their daughter’s tea party”, then 4 hours later, he edited the post to say “Real men take time for their little sister’s tea party”. Meaning, one, if not both of those 2 statements has to be false. He most likely didn’t get the reaction in terms of “likes”, “shares”, etc. on the initial post, so he changed it to something that sounds even more “touching”, or “heart-warming”… The point I was trying to make is that what he is doing is not sustainable in the long term, because he’s not even telling true stories a lot of the time, and eventually people will catch on (another reason I don’t think he’ll have an easy time selling the site for what he probably want for it, its all stolen content, or made up content)… So in terms of replicating a business (if you can even call it that) like ViralNova, I think people should be aware of what is clearly necessary to gain such success in such a short amount of time. A lot of people trying this method won’t get to the level ViralNova is at because I don’t think they realize the amount of shady tactics that are clearly being used to achieve such success. I think it is a mistake to believe that you can “honestly” rise to over 1 million fanpage likes in a matter of months, even if you do have an initial ad budget of $500 or even $1000. I think the “secret sauce” everyone in the comments and elsewhere on the topic are referring to, is basically to use shady marketing tactics… So in my opinion, you basically need to be able to steal (content, images, etc) and lie (make up image context), at the least, to succeed with this type of site.
Thanks Sherlock! like it wasn’t obvious enough that this is how it works…
If you think that matters one bit, you’re so SO wrong. It doesn’t and people will not stop following his page.. not today, not tomorrow, probably never (as long as it’s active). Also, you might find it a little surprising, but I’m trying this niche myself and I follow around what’s happening on Facebook and I’ve seen new pages rising to 1m in less than two weeks time. Some people manage to drive traffic the size of VN in 1/10 of the time. That’s the real secret sauce if you ask me. Setting up the website, content.. it’s all peanuts against the real deal – bringing the traffic.
Hi Glen,
I chanced upon your blog about 2 weeks ago (ironically by googling viralnova), and read your piece on starting a viral stories site. Great insight and tutorials on how to run such a site and start the corresponding Facebook ads. A few of the comments left by other readers are also very useful.
I never actually thought of starting a site just to make Adsense money, so this is my first experiment with doing something like this.
Within a few days, my site was up and running. Some stats:
– I post 3 to 5 stories a day, mostly copied from other similar sites with a bit of rephrasing.
– My Facebook ad campaigns cost $0.01-0.07 per Like. That helped grow my fan page to over 3,000 within 5 days.
– On the 2nd day, one of the stories actually received more than 10K views (from Facebook sharing).
– Apart from that 10K-pageview day, I’m averaging 1K pageviews on other days.
– Adsense earnings are negligible, averaging at $0.20 per click, and some days I don’t get any clicks.
As some commenters here have mentioned, most people are liking the photos, and few are actually clicking the links.
My question is, what would you do from here? Would you keep posting articles, pumping money into the FB ads and continue growing the fanbase? Is this the whole idea, that out of maybe 10K fans, eventually a few influential ones will share the stories and help them go viral? How long would you do this for, like a month, 3 months?
Appreciate any thoughts from you, and anyone else!
P.S. I am also based in Singapore!
How were you able to get likes for so cheap? Just a matter of testing?
Yes. I tried dozens of ads, paused the expensive ones and continued the cheapest ones. I have found that using appealing images is the most important ingredient of getting Likes.
My advice would be to know why your articles aren’t going viral, maybe your blog isn’t optimized for sharing ? maybe headlines aren’t powerful enough ? try to find out that and everything will flow …
Hi Glen,
Great article.
We had this same idea back in November last year and have been building the blocks to go live by April 1st. My biggest concern naturally is for original content and also uploads by users however, the scraping idea is intriguing to get things moving and attract eyeballs. What is the easiest way to move the content from one site to another.
Thanks
Lew
The reason why so many fail while some succeed in the content industry is because they constantly innovate and rise above others.
Granted, you could curate those photos or blatantly copied those contents from other site, but this doesn’t have a staying power with the visitors.
What ViralNova succeed while others fail is maintain a coherent identity and brand in their articles.
You want visitors who visit your site over and over again, thus maximizing your ROI you intend to spend on facebook, google or who knows what in the near future.
Stop focusing on the dollar, focus on your visitors demographics and money will be a bonus with the experience you gotten through this process.
I start out rough with only a few visitors which has ballooned to a few million views so far to date, without any investment on advertising on my part since my site is kinda “brandable” and memorable in its own rights.
If you have any question, I am happy to answer here.
P.S For starters, stop putting “viral” in your domain name. It looks second rate or someone desperately looking for a cash windfall.
Glen,
I just came across your blog a few weeks ago and revisited today. Just wanted to give you an enormous thanks for publishing sweet content like this. I’m shocked by how many people are asking you to hold their hand through this process of creating a ViralNova-style curation site. Some people truly want to be handed success like it’s easy or something. I think that even with lots of hard work and constant plugging of new viral content, there’s still luck involved in this formula for launching a viral media site.
Get one third-party website with 100k+ fans to share your content and you could potentially have a $1000 day and/or get the boost of fans you need. But you may or may not get that lucky break. It could take months or even a year of launching new content every single day to get to that point. Most people aren’t willing to do that.
But I am 😉 Thanks again for your great posts and I’ll be back.
Hi Glen,
Thank you very much for the article. I’m from Spain and i only read your blog when I want to learn about SEO and Internet stuff.
Cheers!
Hey Glen,
Great post yet again! I really love the way you write.
This post has reminded me of the importance of great quality content (whether this is entertainment or information.) You can’t go around the fact that you need to have great quality if you want to stand out from the masses.
.
But I also believe that these “meme” sites like viral nova and so-forth are going at it in a wrong way (maybe not for financial gain but IMO for acquiring lasting fulfillment in their life. Keep in mind this doesn’t include specified niche sites e.g. doyoueven, gymmemes, … ). Might sound a little bit “hippie” or “stupid” to some people but given your personal development background, I think you might agree on this.
The content/message meme-sites contain are pretty hollow (unless you have someone passionate about entertaining people off-course). And if the work you are doing is hollow(only doing it for a profit) you will eventually stop creating it. The reason Steve Pavlina is still going strong is not because he needs money but because he LOVES what he does. I think passion/purpose is a missing element in the creation of these kind of sites (as they are focused mainly on making a profit.)
Maybe it is a great idea to do this on the short term to build up some financial freedom but I believe it is always better to invest your time in work that inspires you.
Anyway, I’m probably on the wrong site (with the wrong audience) to convey this message. But that’s just my two cents about this. Take care man, you’re a pretty damn awesome guy!
Simon
I think a good thing to remember is to make sure that the actual content is worthwhile before loading it up with likes otherwise we will just be spinning our heels. Excellent post Glen!
Another great post Glen. I had just been wondering how this all turned out, thanks for the follow up!
Hi Glen,
I am actually starting to see some moderate results after starting my own site like this.
I was just wondering, and sorry if you’ve already answered this (I have read both posts and comments multiple times)…. but what sort of ad did you create?
Did you create an ad out of one of the posts on your site then simply use the headline/image that corresponds with that post?
That’s what I’ve done, then simply send people that click the ad to my page timeline.
As I say, I’m seeing moderate results but it’s costing me £0.27 ($0.45) per like!
I’d be interested to hear what sort of ad you created.
Thanks a lot!
Anyone else having success duplicating this type of site?
اhello Glen,
Thank for you to share the great article
Thats a grate post, will try all the steps, thanks
Hi Glen.
Thank you for all your invaluable & easy to understand info – it really is great!
I just had a question about the sharing sites like viralnova – if I used my Adsense account & for some reason my sharing website got penalised, would this effect my other blogs associated with the same Adsense account?
Thank you from London!
Veena V
I think the biggest question is how do you write copy for your facebook ads to get the initial userbase?
Are people writing clickbait headlines for the facebook ad copy? Or doing other strategies?
I just came from doing Apps for iOS and wanting to experiment with this. I love looking at scalable business opportunities.
I tried playing around with my facebook ad copy and not really getting any traction, so any input would be appreciated!
I’ve listened to this podcast maybe 10 times now. Every time I get more out of it.
Thanks
it’s Really Possible? I am Very New on Online Marketplace. So Please Send me Some Step by Step Instruction. Thank you.
Wow, 100000 in a week, now thats a lifetime money to get. Viral stuff does work alot when it really goes viral. I found this really helpful and surely will try out some stuff to get a little bit of that 100000 😀 hehe. Thanks
Glen, after your post went live I saw many ads on Problogger seeking freelancers who would create content similar to Viral Nova, Superstarmagazine and the ilk of it.
What say, inspiring action?
Hey Glen once again this is a cracker of a post, i haven’t yet tried my hand at facebook ads i like to learn as much as possible before i start with something seems like its time to start learning fb ads!
Just loved the article man really a quick guide for money to settle in life with easy tips
Looks like a new Facebook update has completely killed organic reach. Any thoughts on this? The gravy train for this is probably over.
It hasn’t killed organic reach. There are still people doing very, very well with this.
Nonsense it HAS killed reach. I manage over 20 pages for clients and have seen reach decimated. Heck, look at Viral Nova and those sites. Viral Nova has 1.4 million likes and rarely has a post get over 5,000 shares now, with most being less than 2k shares. That’s pathetic for a page “viral” page with over 1.4 million followers.
Yes… reach has went dramatically low…. making this VERY hard to get going. In fact, I think it’s almost impossible to get on the wagon anymore… if this article says you needed 1000$ just for fb ads, you will now need at least 2000$… it becomes serious money.
I think Facebook are creeps for doing this to everyone.. big pages are likely to have made enough money to afford the extra spend on ads, but what about new pages that just started? it’s giving them no chance to enter the competition.
Looks like we’ll have to find a new way to cheat the system……. greed killed the Zuckerberg!
Hi Glen,
Do you think it’s worth it income wise to try this in a (non-english) country with 25mln people?
If you’re asking that question straight away this probably isn’t for you to be honest…
Why is that?
Hi Glen,
Thanks for the follow-up, it was inspiring. Probably it is too soon to say, but unfortunately I feel a bit disappointed after my personal experience with that “scheme”. It started pretty good and my site had received a lot of attention for just a few days after the start. The first clicks on the ads appeared too and all that with just a few rewritten Viral Nova type “articles”. And then – a sudden drop. Like I was cut out of the net completely. I have payed a small amount to promote the FB page and some particular articles, but to no avail. A lot of people have seen the articles, but the number of the ad clicks and likes is ridiculously low. Now I am paying for a 1000 fans and again with no impact on the site development, as the site visits are going down fast. I am aware that my English is perhaps not as smooth as of someone born with it, but still, it is not that bad. What am I doing wrong? Any suggestions?
Hi Glen,
Great article and great site. Your podcasts and information have been extremely useful and valuable. Im still learning a lot but thanks to your site Im learning at a quick pace. I was wondering, after we get out viral sites set up, how many posts/articles do you recommend we have before we start promoting it with ads on facebook?
Glen, Found your blog a few days ago, and haven’t stopped reading it. Amazing info and detail.
Just to follow up. Seems like even DeLong himself knows the jig is up. According to this article from Bloomberg BusinessWeek just released a couple of weeks ago, Viral Nova traffic went down from 13.1 million in January, to 6.6 million in March.
This is the last paragraph of the article:
That may be DeLong. On March 11, he sits at his kitchen table, pondering his next move after putting Viral Nova up for sale. He bristles at the flood of knockoffs, including Viral Forest (“trending stories on the Web”), Viral Circus (“high-quality viral content”), and Viral Viral Pictures (“so viral we named it twice”). “There’s a guy who launched a site like Viral Nova, and he hired a ton of people after the first month of virality,” DeLong says. “I was like, ‘You’re crazy.’ Anytime there is an obvious bubble, it will burst eventually. You need to be prepared for that.”
Source:
http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2014-04-24/scott-delongs-viral-nova-success-formula
Interesting how the article even mention’s Daniel’s site, Viral Circus.
Glen, I even did a little curation of my own!
Hey Glen!
Another update from my website http://www.ViralWorthy.net
A few days ago, we had almost hit 40k visitors per day, 2 days in a row. It was great! Until the 3rd day when the server crashed. It took a whole day to find a VPS and do the whole switch. By the time the website was back up, the post that was going viral and the 2 others that were gaining momentum were killed (obviously since they were being linked to an unavailable website).
Now that it’s back up again, we still get some visitors to those posts, but nothing like before. But we are gaining momentum again.
On Facebook, we exceeded 500 likes and about half of the likes were through running ads. Although I can’t seem to be able to get it right as the CPC is at about 0.80. I stopped running ads (got some likes after that too, pretty cool.. free likes) and I’m m going to try to find time and spend a whole day trying to perfect the ad campaigns.
Anthony
How can we even start with a Facebook page, i mean how can i start to even get some like or a post to get shared when people don’t find my page.
Nice article 🙂
Great article.
I read about viralnova.com ages ago, back then it wasn’t hyped as much as it is now. I’m still biting my ass, that I didn’t try to copy the website back then.
Now there are quite a few clones out there, copying VN. Heftig.co – A German clone is generating massive amount of likes/shares at the moment and half of tech-blogging Germany is going bananas over these results (heftig.co got more shares last month than the biggest media outlets Bild.de and spiegel.de)
I agree with the DMCA copyright issues. But if somebody would really put the hammer down on these sites, they had to close at least half of the facebook pages. Including 9gag – as they’re “re-posting” images taken from god knows where and they def. do not have a written permission to use all of these images.
But like you pointed out, they got too big too care and Google doesn’t want to lose them as a source of income.
Side-note. I just recently started my marketing blog, as I’m running websites since over 10 years, but every 2nd day I stumble across another great marketing website and I think – damn, am I the last person to start with this topic? Why are there so many good resource out there, makes me feel tiny and useless :/ But I try to keep going – maybe I’ll grow to a significant userbase some day too! 🙂
Hey guys,
Great article! I have a quick question..do you know why ViralNova does not have a commenting system on the bottom of their posts?
As always I’m to late to the party.
Facebook almost killed organic reach (and they will continue to decrease organic reach for fan pages), so if you are new you will have a hard time to reach sustainable numbers.
Content is still the king.
SEO might help you in gaining new visitors by the day or by the month, but what if those new visitors just hit the “Back” button?? 😀
To keep them glued, one needs to have great content that will have the visitors coming back to the site. I do believe that writing with a certain distinct voice, or personality, can make a big difference.
Glen this and your other ViralNova article have both been extremely helpful and insightful.
I am playing around with a similar idea at the minute – before looking at monetising, I am only looking at generating traffic for now.
I built the site, and and to a small extent the FB fan page then started using micro-targeted promoted posts (targeted at non-fans) to promote links.
Managed to get £0.0076 (yes that is less than 1 UK pence) per click to website, on a budget of £5.00 per day.
Around 600 link clicks, and that is before I even look at how many times the share or tweet button starts to get hit.
Still in the initial testing stages, but early potential is VERY promising.
This is lengthy but great post. I feel I have to visit your blog again after trying your ideas. Thank You for this valuable article.
Looks like ViralCircus is banned from adsense?
“Their article (website appears to be down)”
The link where it says website, is actually a broken link. Feel free to credit me for correcting your error 😉
Great article, nice work buddy!
Hi Glen,
I have a twitter page which has 1.7 Million followers i want to work with you guys can you help me where to sign up for viralnova ?
thanks
awesome info!!
seems like everyone has started their own viral nova like site after reading this article…been seeing loads of new sites like this recently on FB!! 🙂
I had to laugh at this… ” There’s a good chance that nobody in your immediate family would be interested in this, but here you are reading it.”
10pm on a saturday night and i’m here reading your blog!
I’ve put off building some of these sites for a while but really feel like it might be worth having a go. I would probably try to niche it down and target a smaller audience.
Q: I see very little adsense ads on all of these sites. Do you think when they reach a certain point it becomes all sponsorship?
I just checked VN & Bored P and did not see one Adsense advert..
Thoughts?
Turn off your Adblock plugin 😉
A bit late to the party, but thought I would give this a shot. Going for the sporting niche as I believe there is still a lot of content and a large audience. Only just started the other day but am going for the approach of trying to build content before adding Adsense.
Hardest thing I am finding is trying to decide on themes and plugins that will help increase time spent on the site and clicking from story to story.
Thanks for the help Glen!
I’m just reading this post now for the first time, it was linked to recently by a blogger talking about the sheer volume click bait articles are having success with. You raise some great points and it’s cool you wrote this to touch base on your previous article. Facebook to me is the most frustrating social media website, I struggle to gain followers. Mainly I prefer Twitter, but I understand the huge benefits to having a strong FB following. I recently bought a dead FB page from a website that went under. I’m trying to merge it with my current FB page. If it works I’ll have added 5200 people for under 2 cents a person. Of course FB is making it difficult to merge pages. Anyway’s thanks for writing this, I have just recently discovered your blog. Big Fan
Amazing article.. thx
My idea is the content should be cool,fresh and shocking in the same time.Do you have a post where you explain about how things go viral?Thank you
Hi,
I launched a viral nova esque site last week. I have 59 fb likes but I’m paying over .60 cents per like. Is this website model working for people? How do I create fb ads that cost less and/or how do I build an audience quickly? Thanks for any feedback..
Hi Glen,
I want ask to you: how has viralcircus.com earned the 100’000$? With google adsense or affiliate income? Thank you so much!
Hi Glen, thank you for another great article! It inspired me to take a chance and build a site of my own. I know it’s a long shot, but I would be honored if you critiqued my site hackable.com. It’s a website dedicated to life hacks! Thanks for your consideration!
Tim
Thank you for this great post. Well I have started one viral website and not sure how it will become in next few months. I always wanted to have one website with viral niche. I am not sure if I will become as successful as nova or circus, but I know if I am consistent I can get decent ROI. Someone also said that starters should stop putting viral in domain names. Well I thought about it not putting but put it anyways because if I couldn’t make cash out of it maybe I could sell it later.
My question is that I haven’t added adsense to my website. In fact there is no visitors on my website now. I am trying to get some facebook ads running and hope to get some fans and likes. Do you think I should put Adsense straightaway even though I don’t get any visitors? I have seen some viral websites that have much better traffic and by looking at it I thought I can do it too.