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It’s so easy to think that all of the best ideas have already been thought of, but then each year something else comes along that makes you go “why didn’t I think of that?” Whether it’s Pinterest, Snapchat or even Flappy Bird, it’s amazing that new ways to communicate and play are still being “invented”. One such example that I want to share with you today is simply about giving crack to Facebook users and becoming rich because of it.
Not actual crack, of course, but crack in the form of content that they just have to share with their friends on the world’s most popular social network. What’s more amazing is that your website can look terrible, you don’t have to get any of your own images or write any of your own content, and you can be up and running with traffic in the next 12 hours. Don’t believe me? I have more than one example. Let’s go…
More Traffic than People, Gizmodo & The New York Post in 6 Months
A few weeks ago someone tweeted an article to me on Business Insider entitled “Why Viral Nova Might Sell“. If you haven’t heard of Viral Nova yet, then what I’m about to say might get you as curious as I was when I saw the website was for sale: It was founded in May 2013 and by December 2013 it hit over 100 million unique visitors for that month alone. I have a feeling that the audience here is not likely to be the type that have been sharing their posts on Facebook, but you may have recently found them in your Facebook stream.
Here’s a very simple gist of what Viral Nova are doing:
- They have a very simple website design with a focus on sharing and clicking on more articles
- Each article has a very enticing headline that makes you want to click through
- Articles are primarily targeted towards users of Facebook
- The website has no original content, and simply steals stories and links to the source at the end
And I’m sure you’re going to click over to the site eventually, but here’s an example of some of those headlines:
The end result is content that Facebook users love to share in the tens of thousands for every post.
$400,000 in December Alone (& 200,000 New Facebook Likes)
In just a few weeks since I first heard about this website they’ve went from having 900,000 fans (likes) on Facebook to just over 1.1 million. I know it’s not rare to see pages with millions of fans, but keep in mind that this site was only launched back in May of 2013 and almost instantly started receiving millions of website visitors.
The website founder, Scott De Long, is just 31 years old and has years of successful website flipping under his belt. In an interview with Business Insider he stated that he’s easily making six-figures per month and Business Insider estimates that he made $400,000 in December alone.
As mentioned, every single article I’ve looked at on the website is simply taken from other sources…images included. There’s a good reason they have a DMCA link in the bottom of their website, they don’t own and didn’t create any of the content they’re making all of this money from.
Reddit seems to be a good source of content inspiration:
It’s not like Scott De Long is alone in his idea to copy content from other websites though. Sites like 9Gag, I Can Has Cheezburger and many others have been doing so for a really long time.
Here are the Google search results for the title of an IMGUR post that was released just 8 days ago:
One image that went viral is now on millions of websites, not limited to those with names like SRSLulz, FunnyPictureQuotes.com, GagsArea, I Can Has Cheezburger, Funri, 4Chan and many more.
Even after recent Facebook changes, which many similar site owners expected would reduce traffic to their news articles, Viral Nova seems to be thriving.
“Facebook just changed its NewsFeed algorithm to highlight high quality content on Facebook, rather than dinky links from websites that try and game it. ViralNova arguably tries to game Facebook, hence its ability to scale to 100 million monthly visitors in just eight months.
But DeLong told AllThingsD’s Mike Issac on Twitter that ViralNova’s traffic has only increased since Facebook’s algorithm changes.”
The Interview That Makes No Sense
As I said earlier, I first heard about the site when it was up for sale. Anyone who has made hundreds of thousands of dollars in a short span of time and wants to sell their website either needs a quick influx of cash or doesn’t think it’s going to make money for much longer.
Now, it’s important that we’re not so quick to judge. I looked into the site owners past and he has a history of building and selling websites, with such examples being:
- Selling Godvine, a Christian video website, for $4.2 million
- He has been buying and selling websites since 2000
- Sold a traffic reselling business in 2006 for $120,000
- Sold another in May 2008 for $175,000
- Started a browser-based game in 2009 that still makes $500/day now in 2014
Without a doubt, he is one of the most successful individuals I’ve ever heard of when it comes to profiting online. That’s exactly why I don’t understand his comments on wanting to sell the website because he doesn’t want to handle staff and an office. Having an office is obviously not compulsory of course in an age where you can hire virtual assistants for a small fee. Even 37 Signals (now rebranded to Basecamp) make millions of dollars every month and the majority of their staff have never met each other.
Here are his exact words (Twitter embeds below, sorry if they don’t work in your RSS reader or email inbox):
@ajs Well, if you consider 16 hours a day – every weekend – and nonstop problems to tackle all alone "lazy"… then yes.
— Scott DeLong (@scottintheworld) January 14, 2014
@ajs If I took weekends off, that means I'm scheduling "rushed" content for the weekend. That has lasting negative effects.
— Scott DeLong (@scottintheworld) January 14, 2014
Other tweets of his states that he doesn’t want to get investors, start an office and all that kind of thing. Well, first of all, he’s already hiring freelancers to run the site (just two, I should add) so I see absolutely no reason why he can’t simply get more.
What would two full-time American staff, who get to work from home, cost? $2,000 a month each? $3,000-$5,000 if you want someone with a more impressive CV? Either way, they’re not likely to even make a dent in the profits he seems to be pulling in from the website.
I totally understand the argument of wanting to sell websites and choosing something new to focus on, but there is absolutely no reason I can think of that he needs to be working 16 hours per day, weekends included, to keep the site going. It’s not like they’re having to come up with original articles. Everything else was another person’s original work.
Four More Examples
This article wouldn’t give you much hope or doing the same if I didn’t show you other examples of sites that are experiencing massive growth due to employing very similar tactics.
Example #1: Distractify
This is another website which has only just been created in recent months and is receiving a huge amount of traffic from Facebook:
Example #2: Bored Panda
I didn’t actually discover this website on Facebook, Diggy had actually sent me a link to one of their articles on the best places to live, but with a 1,800 Alexa Rank and their latest article with 78,000 views, they’re clearly doing well.
Bored Panda is definitely one of the uglier sites I’ve seen trying to capitalise on the Facebook market but my experience tells me that ugly sites tend to convert pretty well when it comes to ad clicks. Especially when their navigation bar is nothing but Adsense ads.
Example #3: Hello U
HelloU describe themselves as your daily feel good digest. I have no doubt the site owners are feeling amazing every day when they check how much money they made on Adsense while they were sleeping.
Example #4: UpWorthy
Upworthy, which seems to have a name inspired by Reddit’s “upvote” system, is quite possibly bigger than Viral Nova at this moment in time and seems to have a more professional approach to this industry.
Want In? Two Reasons You Must Act Now
Before I get into the ethics and legality of running a website like this, I must stress that if you are going to attempt to get into this niche then you have to act fast.
Here’s reason number one: It took Viral Nova just a month to reach millions of visitors.
Keep in mind that Compete only tracks US visitors so no doubt a few million came from other countries as well. Especially when Compete only shows 10 million people for December yet they reached over 100 million.
Here’s reason number two: Websites starting right now are still banking hard.
From what I can tell, based on my Terminator-like eyesight, that spike has hit around the end of January, early February, so I think there’s still a lot of room for competitors. Obviously there’s going to come a point though when even hardcore Facebook users are overloaded with similar pages to follow, and they’ll stick with what they’re reading already.
Should You Enter This Niche?
The people that are interested in the idea have probably already started thinking of domain names. This section is probably quite pointless as I’m sure you’ve already decided if you’re going to try and build a site like this or not.
For me personally, I did try this idea on a very small scale after reading the Business Insider article and…it worked. Surprisingly well. I’ll get to the steps in a minute.
Although it worked, it’s not really a business model I want to focus on. There is a lot of money to be made, but I also have too many projects on my plate to give it a serious shot. No doubt the thing that is going to keep you earning money is the continual posting of new click-bait articles on Facebook every single day. I’ve barely had time to work on our XXX niche case study site so I’ll probably not go any further than my initial testing.
It’s not the most ethical way to make a living – after all, the content is unlikely to be “yours” – but it hasn’t stopped the hundreds of people who have built these types of websites already and the thousands that are no doubt coming in the next few months. I can’t really say too much about the audience because it’s just not me. I really don’t find myself clicking on those types of articles on Facebook. I’m busy enough as it is and don’t really need any more distractions.
However, there’s clearly a very, very large market of people who spend a lot of time on Facebook and just want something to read. And by these figures, using the phrase “very very large market” is no doubt an understatement.
How I Would Approach This
If it’s not for you, then you can stop reading right around this point. I hope you found the blog post interesting and found it a nice break from my over-analytical SEO posts.
If you think you might actually give this a shot though, let me tell you how I would go about doing things.
Step 1: Pick a Simple Brand Name
It doesn’t have to be anything special but keep in mind it should be used for your website and your Facebook page. Bored Panda is a name that’s enough to get you into the top 1,000 of Alexa so really don’t stress this part too much. It’s more important that you actually get the site up and running as soon as possible.
Random suggestions from the top of my head include Viralocity, Tissues Required (if you’re going for the emotional story angle like Mothers and Sons being reunited) and Clicktastic. Like I said, I really don’t think this matters too much. Nameboy.com is a good resource to check out if you’re struggling though.
Step 2: Set-up Your Site & Facebook Page
I’m not going to go into a lot of depth about web hosting here so just go and pick whichever hosting company that has some sort of credibility. While not everyone has had the best experiences with DreamHost, Hostgator and Bluehost, you’re unlikely to go far wrong with one of those options.
If you’re going to really give this a serious shot then pick a hosting company you can grow with. One that offers both VPS and Dedicated Servers so if your site takes off, you don’t need to worry about moving it elsewhere. I have no doubt that click-happy Facebook users aren’t too patient for a website to load so definitely install the usual caching plugins and follow my supercharge WordPress guide.
As far as your Facebook page goes, starting with the basics should be enough. That means making sure you have a cover photo, profile picture and some updates which don’t include links.
Step 3: Follow the Competition, Backwards
We’re not trying to reinvent the wheel here so the easiest option is to look for some of the most popular articles on sites that are already adopting this kind of strategy. I’ve mentioned four above which should give you an easy starting point.
What I would do personally is head on over to Viral Nova and use their pagination at the bottom of the homepage to go back to their first ever articles back in May. Chances are that the internet has forgotten about those stories and it’s your chance to revive them. Take time to note which articles received the most shares and likes (where applicable) so you’re not wasting time copying stories that didn’t get much social traffic.
Step 4: Set-Up A Facebook Ad Campaign
As I mentioned previously, I did try this strategy so please listen to me when I say it’s better to promote the page itself than it is your individual posts. I paid for ads towards a page (in the form of Page Likes) which is fairly typical but also used the “boost” option where Facebook allows you to promote posts to people who like your page and their friends.
Since my page didn’t have too many likes when I did this it really didn’t work out too well. What has been really interesting to me is that I stopped the campaign almost two weeks ago and I’m still getting 2-5 likes every single day. I know that’s not a huge number, but when you factor in that I only promoted three articles and spent less than $15 then it’s actually quite surprising, if not impressive.
I have a huge post on how to go about setting up Facebook ads here.
Again, if you’re going to be fairly serious about this then I expect your budget to be fairly large. The more money you can put into this to get your brand started, the better. The lowest investment I would suggest anyone make is around $500. If you don’t have that budget to start promoting your page via Facebook ads then I possibly wouldn’t start.
I’m sure there is someone who could make it work on a smaller budget, but you’re not going to make it very easy for yourself.
There are other social media platforms you can advertise on like LinkedIn, StumbleUpon and even Twitter have their own ad platform now, but since the majority of traffic is likely to come from Facebook their platform is where I would spend most of my time.
Step 5: Track, Test, Repeat
As with any internet marketing campaign, it’s important that you’re tracking what actually works and what doesn’t. With enough articles you’re quickly going to see which ones people like to share and which ones don’t get much social action. I would say that the majority of your time should be spent on crafting titles that get people to click through to your website.
As far as testing goes, don’t always be satisfied that you’ve found the perfect formula to get traffic. Always be testing new angles but keep an eye and strong focus on what is clearly working.
Then it’s simply a matter of repeating what you’ve done already. I don’t expect that you would have to keep buying ads on Facebook for very long. Once your initial budget is used up then you should have an audience which are going to like and share your posts, meaning you will reach their friends on Facebook for free. Assuming that your content (read: headlines) are good enough.
What do you think about building this kind of website? Is it something you’re going to try? If you have any questions, I’ll give any advice in the comments since I won’t be amongst your competition. Normal SEO posts will be coming soon…
RSS Subscribers: 
Wow Glen,
I think you need to stop as you’re throwing to many shiny objects in front of me.
This is something I had been considering for awhile, but wasn’t sure how viable it was. I think you answered more then enough questions. Great post!
Thanks Shane,
Glad you liked the post but sorry for the distractions
Glen does throw a lot of posts and info out on the blog, but that’s a good thing!
This post goes to show you what writing awesome headlines can do for your blog/business/website.
Interesting post Glenn! Bored Panda has been out there for a while, another interesting thing is that they have over 2million Google+ fans. This made me take more attention and try to figure out what is that they are doing.
Scott is definitely a great guy to follow, interesting to see what other people are accomplishing on the internet at such a young age.
Hey Miki,
I figured as much for Bored Panda. As I said, they’re the only one I didn’t find via Facebook.
Appreciate the comment!
Ugh… makes my 5-figure sales for hard-typed content seem like a waste of time. Well played, guy.
Cmon now Ramsay you provide value to your community with Blogtyrant and that cannot be replaced by this sort of business – all the power to the guy making a killing and anyone else for that matter but its not all about the money.
and.. there’s nothing stopping you from starting your own viral news site
Paul
How would you monetize?
I don’t see ads or anything on Viral Nova.
Awesome post though, love how you break these things down!
Cheers
Maybe you have Adblock installed?
They’re all covered in Adsense ads for me. I can also confirm that as of writing this, 100% of Viral Nova income is from Adsense, as per their interview with Business Insider.
Oh shit… definitely have ad block going
Oops!
So G is allowing Adsense ads on essentially scraped content?? Wasn’t that against their TOS or where have I been?
Thanks for yet another eye-opening post Glen. I never fail to open your emails.
I am just wondering how they avoid the inside of a courtroom or at least some very big fines? Stealing stories and pictures and basically everything, that is something I always have heard that creators usually frown upon… to say the least.
I’m not a lawyer but I believe as long as they’re using link credit and have the DMCA option there, they’re probably avoiding any and all issues.
Similar to how a newspaper website like the DailyMail can write an article on a celebrities latest tweets – pictures included – and just put a Twitter copyright sign there.
I could be wrong though…
Curated website – that’s what it’s called.
Hey Glen ! I am following you for a while now, This post really tasted my interests !! And i decided to go for it !
Can you give me a bit further information about the DCMA’s options ? How does it work?
Thanks a lot for the great article !!
I had no idea these kinds of websites were making so much money!
Glenn you give too much value bro!
Hah, thanks Marco!
Thank you Glen,
just a quick one
Starting from the scratch would you do this or niche(affiliate) sites?
(You need min 500$ for both)
Good question!
I would be very tempted to give this post a try based on the quick-win possibility (especially as a beginner). Knowing what I know about niche sites though they’ve always been a stable income source.
I would say the Facebook idea is more exciting so a younger me would probably go with that, but I don’t know if the strategy has much of a shelf life. I’m already opting-out of doing this, so you know what older me has chosen
Another awesome post Glen,
I actually requested a post about Facebook in my previous comment. Awesome that you delivered exactly that
Thanks Onder,
Glad you liked it
Hey Glen, I did know about Upworthy and even wrote an article that mentioned them. But the other sites are quite new to me. I would say that Viperchill too belongs to the same category except that, that you post only once in a while( that has improved quite a lot). But in the recent months everyone of your posts has gone viral.
Well if you want to see the post this is the link http://www.adpushup.com/blog/scientific-way-write-great-headlines/
I had considered these type of websites for couple of years now, but tackling a different language and mixing it up with some original content to differentiate from competitors. I even purchased a domain, but never jumped into it afraid of legal issues (which after studying the DMCS option, it shouldn’t be a big deal). Using only adsense isn’t great, but it should work.
Seems to be working well enough for those sites, yeah.
Any regrets?
I have missed many opportunities, but nothing will match missing bitcoin at $2, so this may be just one more thing
Yeah me too.
I first heard of Bitcoin when the founder of Second Life recommended it on Kevin Rose’s Foundation show. I saw that video sometime in 2012, and I thought Bitcoin looked pretty interesting (I read some Techcrunch articles on it just after, and even wrote about Bitcoin in my Business Innovation exam that same year).
Why the f*** didn’t I invest $1000 in it back then, when it was only $2 or $5?
I would have been a millionaire if I had sold them back when they reached $1000 a coin !
I guess life is full of missed opportunities, and a lot of people are kicking themselves in the foot for not investing in Microsoft stocks a while back…
Very interesting. They are playing on the “human curiosity” factor
We, humans, would to laugh at things falling/failing/with an ugly but funny twist in an imaginary world. Why would we otherwise laugh at a Tom&Jerry, Laurel&Hardy, Charlie Chaplin etc.,? I am not shocked at the success of these websites. Thanks for bringing these up. Eye opener, once again.
Love the samples.
I have toggled with the reasons to do these type of sites and have stayed away for the reason I think they are crap and I do not want to be associated with crap LOL
The big bucks are a driving factor for sure, but I hope something comes my way that has feel good factor for me personally.
Makes a lot of sense.
I would argue though that we’re probably both a little biased since we make our income online already.
Appreciate the comment as always, Azzam.
I have tried this before and have a page and site in the dog niche with over 4k fans, which, for a certain breed and with minimal ad spend ain’t too bad.
I post infrequently and make sure I mix up cute pics, questions and links to Amazon items.
However, I tend to have the posts reside on FB more than the associated website – I think this will be a good turning point for my current site.
Once you get to a few 100k likes, making money will be easy if you can keep up the posting schedule.
Glen,
Great information as usual. I have been to ViralNova before and have wondered how they are making money. I do not see adsense or any other kind of advertising. What have I missed?
Thanks in advance,
Rich Wright
OOPs! I had Ghostery installed. That is why I did not see the adsense! Duh!!!
Hi Richard,
Did you see the comment above? All of their income comes from Adsense. The website is covered in it on my end. Maybe you’re also using Adblock.
Ghostery is like Adblock. I white-listed the site and saw everything. I also saw a link from Amazon.
I did see the post from above and that is what reminded me that I had the ghostery plugin installed and activated. Thanks Glen!
Is there something that can grab the source articles and put them onto your blog or is that something that has to be done manually?
Yes there are plenty of ways, such as RSS scrapers. The start of your marketing will have to be manual though.
Glen i am yet to find anyone who gives so much away without asking for anything in return.You are the real deal may your efforts be greatly rewarded.
I am from Nigeria i would love to know ways in which i can make a living online.Yoursuggestions please!
Thanks Stanley,
Suggestions? This post is a start. If not, check out http://viperchill.com/blueprint/
Seems to be a curation business model…on steroids? I like the idea!
Hi Glen, I’ve been following you for years but this is my first comment! I will definetely give this a try, but in the spanish market. It’s my native language, and it seems there are no competitors. Any opinion?
Thanks!
You don’t have much to lose. Isn’t Spanish one of the top 3 most used languages in the world?
My mother tongue is Chinese Mandarin. As I did a search online there’s little competition..
Let’s rock shall we?
Curious to know how you get on. I have to say I would be surprised if nothing like this exists in Chinese.
I’ve seen them in Thai, Korean and so on.
hi Glen:
Not sure why I couldn’t reply to your post..
Anyhow, as mentioned I found there’s not much competition in Chinese market, as compared to English one. There are few indeed, the one that I looked into is onefunnyjoke.com, it’s a top site in Taiwan ( alexa rank in taiwan: 297). The site was launched in year 2010, with FB fan of around 40K+. It’s basically a chinese version of its English/Japanese/Korean competitors.
The challenge is: the Chinese netizens comprise of two primary users: the traditional Chinese(mainly in Taiwan/HK/Macau) and simplified Chinese(mainland Chinese) users. That’s right: there are two set of characters in Mandarin. Also, I am sure you’ve heard of internet censorship in China so you really need to be careful of the content you post online. Sometimes websites are banned for no apparent reasons.
Gonzalo let me know if you are going to do this in the spanish market (I’m native too from Argentina)
I’ve been thinking about doing something like this since I read the article on Business Insider.
Also, great post Glen!
Do you think we can put our own banner ads on that instead of Adsense? Never really used it before so not sure how it works. Hmm but just had a thought it wouldn’t be very targeted though..
What is your opinion on this?
Sure, why not?
There’s one line that makes me think someone just hacked your blog and posted as you.
“Based on my terminator-like eyesight”
Cool article once more bro
Well I’m used to seeing a lot of LED’s
Ohoh this is your secret niche in your case study dude ?!
Awesome post, will maybe try this in France !
Hi Glen,
Thanks for this article. I found your perspective very helpful. I don’t think I will start a new site dedicated to this strategy… but, since I already have an (ugly) blog I could use it to augment my traffic.
After your post about making $1,000 a week in FB traffic I also started a small FB campaign and am looking for ways to augment it. Pulling some content from UpWorthy or Viral Nova that relates to my niche is a perfect follow up strategy.
Thanks for the great post!
J
Thanks for the comment, J.
Let me know how you get on
It’s amazing! I’ve just come here through your email, and the title attracted me to visit and read this post. And I can just say, that’s impossible thing but it was true. … I still couldn’t believe it happened, Glen!
Hi Glen,
Interesting post!
I actually fear what if people start calling me spammer if I start stealing posts. ….
Lately, many people started Blogging community type sites; earn more, work less!
thanks for sharing!
People will start calling you a spammer – and worse, a scammer and a thief, if you start stealing copyrighted photographs and posting them on your site. Or if you start pulling posts, part and parcel, and putting them on your site.
This article and the encouragement to start sites like this is really disheartening. I say this as a blogger who writes her own content and takes her own photos. Nothing is worse to me than someone who comes along and tries to scrape up all my hard work and post it on their own site. They all receive DMCA notices when I find out about it. And they all take the content down, eventually.
Unfortunately, though, and here’s the upside for those of you with morally ambiguous tendencies, the virality of these posts are often, timewise, faster than the process of a person finding out about a copyright violation, filing a DMCA notice, and then you having the 24 hours (or whatever your site host sets as their limit) to take it down.
By the time all this has happened, the life of the post has reached its decline anyway.
Nonetheless, if you’re the kind of person who likes to profit off of other people’s work, then I doubt you even bothered to read through my whole comment anyway, and you’re already scraping sites to find out how you can profit without doing nary a damned thing.
Actually, Leslie, you’re absolutely right. They’re very likely not reading your comments, but not for the reasons you may think. Many of the comments confirm Viperchill isn’t exactly endorsing these methods. In fact, I took quite the opposite perspective after reading some of the feedback and his replies to it. Take another look if you would be so kind to. Maybe I’m just missing something here. You tell me.
The above is true unless this Viperchill article is going viral on Reddit. Then they will have the chance to read them!
If you didn’t get this from the article on your first read, these sites are scraping their content from Reddit and 4Chan, and putting it on the web 8 years later… In fact, the big corporations are doing so as well, and putting the Internet of 2007 onto the TVs of 2011 (the Dramatic Chipmunk comes to mind).
What does that mean, Leslie? Unless your blog articles are going viral on Reddit, which would be a great thing for your brand, and that’s totally another story, especially if you adopted Secret Santas and sent them gift bags with all your promotional materials, in addition to a gift they would post on Reddit for sure (big screen TV, a new car, a brand new stereo with a vintage LP and a stack of vinyl records (and the instructions on how to care for them included, stand up straight, etc.)), your content is not ending up on Facebook. Back to the Secret Santa idea, and mind you, you’re doing this during the holiday season, sending your gift as soon as you get contact info. Big brand you’d have from this practice!
…So, if your content did end up on these sites, you’d be better off, instead of filing a DCMA takedown notice, to instead have a lawyer write a legal policy on your website, defining the jurisdiction where all copyright violations would be settled in court and outlining exactly what the defender would be sued for before the violation even occurred. ( Lawyers probably call that “fair warning” or some other nonsense. I’m not sure, and that’s where the lawyer would come in to clarify and earn enough to cover his student loan payment for the month. )Then you could demand the revenue share you deserve for your content, offer to settle out of court and keep news of it off the Internet and anywhere else (standard non-disclosure agreement, which makes the media unable to touch it without violating the law), and throw in the “don’t you dare take any of my content again unless you want to keep sending the rightful share of the AdSense cash my way!” Yeah I’m completely making things up because I haven’t done ANY this myself, but it’s fun to imagine…
And then some 14 year old kid reposts their Facebook spam back to Reddit, and the circle of life on the Internet (you might prefer the term infinite loop) continues.
I’m going to copy this.
Great study here. I’ve seen a lot of viral things like this go on, but I didn’t imagine that they were making as much as they predicted.
And what’s up with him saying he’s not able to handle it. Like you said, i’m sure he can muster enough VA’s and workers to completely take care of that site for him. It really doesn’t take much maintenance.
If I were him, I would hold onto the site for a little while longer (unless I was already seeing downward trends).
What if I already have 5 sites using adsense and Google knows about all of them.
Now I want to monetise this new site with adsense but since most of it is duplicate content, would google penalise my other sites?
If I understand your question properly then no. I don’t see how or why that would happen.
I’ve been tracking ViralNova and Distractify for a while now. It’s simply amazing how quickly these sites grew their audiences.
It makes me wish I had a bigger source of cashflow for my own Facebook campaign, but….baby steps.
Amazing article.
Hey Glenn, great post. Do you think this type of curated site would work for a niche, as opposed to just ‘everyone who is curious’? By niche I guess I mean like viral stuff that would appeal to people in specific job industries (eg software developers, marketers, lawyers) or people with specific life circumstances (students, moms,pet owners). Or is the main money to be made in appealing to the curious masses?
Modern day marketing.
We should be aware of these stories and can apply some of their tactics as appropriate.
Really appreciate the post-could not have analyzed this myself so – much gratitude to you Glen.
Hi Glen,
Im in the middle of creating something similar in the comedy/humor niche. Everyone loves a laugh right?
Will keep you updated on it.
I found the article quite helpful, actually. My website is aimed at women who are 50 and over, and most of them are on Facebook anyway. This article gave me insight as to how to use these elements to draw traffic.
My goal is not to make tons of money, but it would be nice if the site would support itself. I want my site to be classy and am working on a new look, but didn’t know how to include better traffic builders. I have decent content already and I think I can use parts of this concept to build the traffic I need using a couple of the ideas you presented.
My site is only a year old and I have struggled with how to draw traffic, site structure, etc. I never built a website before and am learning as I go, but I truly want to help women and the only way to do that is to get them to the website.
So thank you for taking the time to write this article; I am glad I followed your link to read the complete text. It gave me a bit of new perspective.
If your goal is “not to make tons of money” then your wish is my command…
Just kidding. Thought I’d lighten things up a a bit
I’ve been reverse engineering these sites for a couple months now. I think it would very easy to launch a site like this. You just need to build up your page with some ads share your content via outbrain and partner with other large Facebook pages and you can have a viral site up and running in a month.
Recently I’ve been doing a research on the same subject too. Content curation is a pretty big trend right now. Moreover, if you check other sites made by Scott, for example God Vine, it’s basically the same business model.
Speaking of ethics…I think there’s a way to make it more “ethical”. When crafting articles, you can link to youtube videos or flickr and attribute original creators in accordance to creative commons. If the images are from other sources, you can always just email them and ask if you can use them on your site.
What do you think? I might do a case study on this.
Kudos Glen for this perspective! When I was researching how to write better headlines a month or two ago, I came across Upworthy. They started up in 2012 and their mission is to spread viral messages about social causes and nonprofits. So they write and test 25 headlines per article….. I assume most of their infrastructure is centred around split testing multiple headlines all day. ViralNova just goes for clicks. http://www.businessinsider.com/upworthy-how-to-create-a-fast-growing-media-company-2012-11?op=1
FB said their latest algorithm changes are trying to kill the pages that republish memes. How is FB going to stop VN yet allow Upworthy? This first cute answer will make you laugh…. and the second will break your heart!
That was a really interesting read on BI. Thanks for sharing the link!
This interview goes into the VN founder’s mindset. Sounds like the STM guys!
http://www.celebritynetworth.com/articles/entertainment-articles/exclusive-interview-scott-delong-mysterious-genius-behind-viralnova-com/
Well, to put it shortly, all of these are 100 % thieves using content created by others. Whats even worse, because of their high ranking they outrank original authors and might get them penalised for junk links and duplicate content. For content creators pure disaster and as a photographer and copywriter I dont like these websites. This is not business, this is simply theft covered by DMCA excuses and other law bypasses. And no, backlink is just not enough and it was proved many times at the court. I think these folks need to piss off someone really powerfull who will be able to get them fined properly to their income. $1 milion fine would be probably quite usefull to realize what copyright means…
The other problem is further stealing directly induced by these folks. Articles and photos are shared in millions of copies without backlink or credit. So they earn half million $$ monthly but they cause other $5 mio induced damage. Imagine one photo from stock agency shared and copied all over internet in hundreds of thousands of copies. Even cheapest $0.25 licence multiplied will be huge damage – and they do that several times every single day! And exactly this behaviour is what makes all think that sharing and copying anything anywhere is just ok. That has deadly impact on content creators. Really nothing to admire…
I’m not saying that you’re wrong or that I disagree with you, but what do you think of something like this: http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2014/02/07/celebrities-read-mean-tweets-6_n_4743651.html?just_reloaded=1
That’s the HuffPo embedding a Youtube video, getting tens of thousands of shares, and profiting because of it…
Embedding a YouTube video is entirely different from copying images and the story from a website and then asking for permissions. Part of the TOS of YouTube is the ability to share, you know unless it’s a private link or you’ve disabled embedding, that your video might be shared elsewhere. You upload it and release some rights to it.
But when I go to a site that is privately owned and not from the RSS feed (another argument) just copy an image and the story.. that’s stealing Backlink or not, I am not publishing on my blog with rights for you to publish elsewhere.
People who write for HuffPo are already giving up rights to make somebody else successful.
I mean, if I copied your stories with pictures, word for word on my SEO blog and gave you a backlink… would that be okay? Unlikely.
Linking to content is one thing, or pulling pieces to make a point. But these guys aren’t even breaking fresh stories. They just aggregate and have figured out a way to make it much more interactive than the original sites.
So then that’s probably part of Twitter and Reddit and IMGUR TOS as wel?
People copy my blog posts all of the time without permission. There’s very little I can do about it to be honest. It’s usually automated
Again, I’m not trying to say these arguments are wrong, just trying to understand more about it.
Marc, from what I can tell he’s not copying the content, seems to write his own take on it, no different that what many news/political and curations sites do.
Do you promote your website through FB ads or your FB page?
Facebook page, which then links to your site in updates.
Oh Glen…you just opened the floodgates..LOL
I won’t be surprised if this article goes viral…
Good job mate
Hah, let’s see!
Thanks Greg
Great post. I’m gonna give this a shot. Seems like it’ll be fun just to see what happens.
Please make sure your sources get credit, and good luck
This project has been on my mind since past few months.And after reading your post I need to take action really fast.
Would doing a site like this be good for the long run?
Would you say it’s as good as doing an authority style site?
For the first question, I have no idea. Keep in mind that you are at the mercy to your traffic source if all of your eggs are in Facebook’s basket.
I can’t really answer the second question. It really depends on your situation, budget, goals etc etc.
Wow some great stuff – so much to learn so little of me…… Thanks for your perspective at the end!
Hi Glen,
Thanks for sharing,
I am confused about the “set up of the Facebook ad campaign” . Would you promote the website or the facebook fan page? For me if the revenue comes from adsense, it seems logical to promote the website, but you mention something about “I paid for ads towards a page (in the form of Page Likes) ” and then I got confused. Could you please clarify this to me?
Thanks mate
Miguel
You don’t have to buy Facebook ads for external websites, you can pay to promote a page as well. Then once the page has a lot of likes, your updates should start getting some external traction.
Clear now!
Thanks
Miguel
Really nice post Glen!! Many on my friends have made some good amount of money by selling facebook pages and websites and they are no where close to be called as an SEO-SMO expert. Its like this- with more and more elders coming on sites likes facebook, twitter the business strategy is changing at light aka viral speed. Yes sites like upworthy.com has a long term plan and others are just those which will get some millions from a multi-billion online industry.
But thanks for sharing such an interesting post…
Wow, now that’s fascinating lol. I wonder if this became a new model or rather blueprint on creating an authority site in 2014+ – would google change there algo? The content isn’t unique, but the stats alone displays that it has value to the end user… hmmm. Just random thoughts.
Other than that, man keep up the good work, and keep being the champ that you are.
Appreciate your integrity buddy.
Best,
Ralpheal
Hi Ralpheal,
I don’t really think Google matters at all here. They’re not the site driving traffic.
I think they are now.
http://www.semrush.com/info/viralnova.com?db=us
Interesting post. Glen if I get you correctly, you don’t advise Boosting individual posts. Why is getting Page Likes a better tactic?
Advertising to ppl who already like your page is cheaper on Facebook , so that could be one reason to build your likes.
It just worked better. If sharing posts worked better I would have said that too.
Granted my budget was small, but it makes logical sense that page likes should do well.
Man, I have got to work on my researching skill set. That definetly sets your stuff apart.
Looking forward to the videos and book soon.
Awesome post Glen!
If it were you, would you go the affiliate niche site route, or give this a shot that you outlined in today’s post?
Thanks man!
-Alex
Hey Alex,
Answered above
Awesome post Glen.
I started my site in November (viralcircus.com) and made just shy of 100k in a week in December, from one of my posts going viral. The key here is doing a ton of posts, and sure enough at least one will go viral, and you can just ride it from there.
Is that 100K US?
Huge man, congrats!
That is amazing – have you seen an FB dropoff in traffic with algorithmic changes? I run a romance books related fb page which took somewhat of a hit, but still maintains a fair amount of it’s traffic with timely posts and memelike content.
Did you use boosted posts as Glen has suggested? I’ve had success with just a tiny budget running to all of my posts.
Best
Brian
That’s awesome Daniel!
I’m just curious how you started getting traffic. Did you buy facebook ads?
@ Glen Thanks mate, thats 100k Australian
@ Brian Patrick – I haven’t noticed much of a difference really, maybe because these can be considered “high value” content.
@ Steven I was just going about making $60 per day from it, happy with myself, not thinking it could get so big and the next week I was making 5-10k a day. I think someone must have shared it on a popular page.
Did you use facebook ads to drive traffic or something else?
I didn’t use facebook ads at all. All I had was a facebook page that I would share it on, but that doesn’t seem to have much of an impact so I can’t say that’s what brought all the views.
I’m trialing with facebook ads now, will let you know how it goes.
Hi Daniel,
Thanks for sharing your story with us.
Quick question – how you generated 116k FB fans in 1-2 months? Any help would be appreciated.
I think I know this story…
At first there’s a guy who finds the opportunity and does everything manually.
Then clones appear.
Then some guy puts some money to automate the whole process with scrapers, auto publishing and stuff.
Then he goes and sells all his websites.
Then he goes and sells the script itself… several times.. till people stop buying it.
So have you seen an automated script to setup a site like this lately? I bet you will soon
Hey Glen,
First comment ever. I rediscovered Viperchill about 6 weeks ago, been reading everything you’ve posted and spending a lot of time reading everything on the triple x case studies forum. Great stuff!
Want another ultra-classic example? wimp.com They just repost youtube vids, good titles, and the most ugly interface ever, and they’ve optimized their design/layout so that you can literally only do 3 things: click an ad, watch another video, or like/share them on FB.
How’s it working for them? Alexa rank of 232 in the US, and 848 in the world…
When you throw enough garbage at the wall, something eventually sticks. I thought about this type of strategy, and in all fairness it looked promising. Never considered scraping the content, and probably it was the only reason telling myself it wouldn’t work (having to hire content creators and all). These numbers surprise me a lot. Damn you man, now I have to rethink giving this a chance.
“It’s not the most ethical way to make a living – after all, the content is unlikely to be ‘yours’”
When Yahoo or Google started, was any of the content on their sites owned by them? I think only Yahoo Directory had some “original” content, i.e., the directory structure and perhaps the site descriptions (but those IIRC were mostly provided by site owners). And Google didn’t even try to build a directory, they simply hosted a version of DMOZ. About the only proprietary “content” that Yahoo and Google had were their algorithms and their logos.
If you organize information for others to find, I fail to see anything unethical about providing such a service.
Ditto what Joe said …
Also, if you’re quoting text from an article AND linking back to the original content, how is that being unethical?
Lazy? Sure.
Smart? If you’re making money, definitely.
I’m game for setting one up and seeing what happens …
Got the domain name and setting up the site now …
Glen if you want me to document everything email me and I’ll make sure I keep notes …
Cheers
Nick
Thanks for the great post Glen! I’m not sure I’d have the time to do this, but honestly, these types of posts get my mind working overtime!
It’s always fun reading the content that you put out.
Thanks for taking the time to create content worth reading.
Cheers!
I would never steal other peoples’ content so that puts me out of the ring right now!
Without sounding like an idiot..
If ones goal was to just earn $50 a day on adsense through a site similar to those mentioned, would you consider this to be ridiculously easy?
If I could get a site to earn me that per day, I could become location independent (with a few other things on the go).
1 article a day, taken from another source, spun/adapted with the correct sourcing and citation..
Spend a few quid a day on Facebook ads to get things started…
It couldn’t be that simple could it? Am I missing something?
I was transfixed by this post. I can’t believe it. I want to set up to try this right away but of course I don’t have the budget to put forth so I’m stopped before I can even start but hopefully next month I can implement it. Thank you for the insight, I doubt I would have known about this tactic any other way. You rock!!
What amazing timing, I’ve spent the last few days drafting up plans to do something almost exactly along these lines, focusing on a specific type of story, and perhaps leveraging some affiliate links to monetize along with AdSense.
Hopefully this doesn’t mean the rush is on and the market will be flooded with such sites before mine goes live!
Another monster post!
Thanks Glen. I actually tried my hand at this strategy a few months ago– but found it to be a lot of work. I gave it up as it was a huge distraction from the projects I was already working on.
Facebook news feeds seem to be more and more cluttered with this kind of stuff every day– I wonder how long it can last?
Cheers – Peter
Finally some good news about this. – http://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-changed-how-the-news-feed-works–and-huge-website-upworthy-suddenly-shrank-in-half-2014-2
LOL Thanks Mihai for the link…Facebook reach is down for all brands across the board. You can have millions of likes and you will only be able to reach a small percentage of users audience. Facebook basically is now setting this up as RePay To Play aka RPTP (made that up) to reach more people that you’ve paid for to like your page in the first place…Yep switcherooo at its best. Make money get paid!
Great Post!
Kind of in a gray area… but still, makes you think the possibilities. For people that are starting online, this might seem as a great goal for online business. I don´t like all the legal stuff that is gray, but definitely will think of a way to try out curation, to pump up my blog. Thanks Glen!
How many pieces of content per day would you recommend posting? Those sites probably have at least one person to a few people who are spending a full-time job’s worth of time scouring the internet for content to scrape or create.
The social sharing data for 1150 posts on ViralNova:
http://cl.ly/1y2D332G3M2k
Tried cloning the site for a non-English language, but don’t think I was able to capture the ability to write such catchy titles. Whilst the whole business model is very simple, the task of writing those titles is something of an art.
Their first blog post had 17,800 Likes and 5,900 Shares on Facebook. Their first post!!!! How in the world does that happen?
Very curious, where did you get this data?
I;ve been looking for something like this for a while? Is it a service that you can subscribe to?
I’d like to know this as well.
More than likely his own custom made script.
We use the same thing internally which crawls a website and shows which pages were the most popular on G+, Twitter, Facebook and so on.
I’ll be doing a post about it soon
Right on. Thanks for the post Glen
Would love to get my hands on it. Would pay for it.
Hope all is well.
I’ve read your post, but I don’t understand how to make many behind that model?
Did you read the comments?
copying photos and content is not legal and is copyright protected: http://chillingeffects.org/anticircumvention/faq.cgi
I started a similar site (http://www.FutchDuck.com) in December, though it’s videos only… so I’m not stealing anyone’s content, just embedding their videos.
I can attest that it’s a lot of work… I add six new videos every weekday and it takes about 2-3 hours a day. An hour or more to screen videos, and an hour to update the site and do my social media.
I post on Facebook, Twitter and Google+. Traffic is building bit by bit but it’s going very slow… it’s certainly not growing like Viral Nova did.
I think it’s time to try some Facebook advertising. Any suggestions or improvements would be appreciated!
Update: A Facebook ad campaign isn’t looking very good to me after watching this video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oVfHeWTKjag
I’ve had so many emails about this video you wouldn’t believe.
I think it’s pretty irrelevant to be honest. It’s not like it suddenly started happening when that video was made.
It hasn’t stopped people banking hard with Facebook.
I think it’s important to note that in the video, they’re talking strictly about getting Likes and not direct sales or squeeze page signups. So my take on it is that if you’re going to run a Facebook ad campaign to generate Likes, start slow and keep a close eye on your metrics and level of engagement (common sense) to see if it is worthwhile. If you’re going for sales or signups, it’s a lot easier to determine the effectiveness of a campaign because it directly correlates to conversions.
How have you been doing marketing thus far?
Primarily just on social networks, as stated earlier. I was hoping things would snowball, but it’s going slower than I’d like. I’ve had some great success with StumbleUpon, getting some 10K views to a single video, but the bounce rate was high so I stopped using SU.
I tried a bunch of other stuff (i.e. posting YouTube comments on the videos I was embedding), but nothing so far has proven to be highly effective.
Scott says he’s working 16-hour days on his site (a dubious claim), and my guess is that the bulk of his time is/was spent on promotion. I don’t have that kind of time, so I’m trying to be patient while the traffic builds organically.
Hi
I would be interested to know how you are getting on with FB ads. Thinking of doing something similar with a video niche.
Haven’t tried it yet for this particular project, and as I commented above, I’m no longer sure I’m going to try it.
Thanks Glen for your wonderful post again.
Is it necessary to include a DMCA disclaimer in the footer ? I know we are not lawyer, don’t worry as I won’t hold you liable.
Found a few DMCA generator on the web and gonna give it a spin.
Have a few niches in mind, since it is easy enough to model, will try to grab and repost.
That depends if you’re taking someone elses content. If so, then yes it’s absolutely necessary unless you have a shady web host.
Preferably you can find and create your own content though. if that’s the case then you won’t need the DMCA page.
Well, if I follow the ViralNova path, I thought it is just copy / steal content and then republish ? I guess, if I want to use this route for experiment then DMCA disclaimer is a need.
However, I looked at the recent post on ViralNova, I think they rewrite some part of the content. Not copy exactly now.
Some people here rushed to say that “it’s not legal”, but little they knew. A deeper look reveals he puts his OWN text with the pictures. The guy KNOWS about copyright and he’s playing fair, a ton of websites do and did the same thing WAY before him, only that they phrased titles that are less enticing. Pictures spiral from one website to another, all across the web. Even if you want, you can’t stop it. And also, look at the other end of things. He posting your stuff on his website can potentially viral your brand and earn you big $$$ (I call this “giving back”). When someone says “I’ll file a DMCA bla bla yada yada…” he’s only saying that because he’s feeling a little green.
Thank Glen for this Valueable post! Here is also a Good interview with Scott Delong ! http://www.inc.com/jill-krasny/viralnova-founder-selling-bootstrapping.html
Have tested a few sites in this viral niche over the last few years content, viral stories, memes ect, sure their is traffic to be had and money to be made. The thing is theirs also a huge amount of players in the space. And you really do need a whole heap of time to research and essentially take content from others, which is what Viral Nova & all the other players do they rip content all the time, even on one of my own viral sites I noticed they lifted some content.
My advice is to set up a site and see if you can cash in on the market, the only negative is Facebook can slap a ban on your URL if you are “sharing” heavily. Getting out of them is some times a pain. That and you need a bunch of time and staff to leverage good content.
I think another thing which is missing is Scott is a long term SEO and traffic gen expert, he has an existing network of traffic sites he can leverage to seed this type of content out very quickly in the early days and then develop it further.
Thanks Glen that’s great post.
So Google Adsense will monetize unoriginal content after all under these circumstances….
Hi Glen,
1. Is he a complete dumbass? Sincere question. With the money he’s pulling, he can outsource many things and act as a project manager (his personal touch to choose the stories that are on the website, since he seems to be very good at this). This is what I would be doing, IF I believed in this kind of “business” ..
2. Well, this is not realy a business. Is he making a lot of money? Probably. Good for him. He’s totally dependet on Facebook traffic and Adsense. He might get away with, he might not. He might sued for copyright infrigement (like Buzzfeed was when they used a picture of an amateur photographer and then had to settle for some money, so they would not get sued). A (real) business has multiple streams of income and multiple streams of traffic. This is not a business that I would be proud to be in.
3. He’s hosting the pictures on his CDN. Embebeding Youtube videos is different, for example, because you’re not hosting it. There is actually a BIG debate over this (I am sure you’re aware). Also, websites that to that kind of video sharing, usually provide commentary, which in many cases fall under the umbrella of fair use.
4. These kind of websites are doomed, in my opinion. It just takes one to open precedent and next ones will face heavy fines. Content creators are being ripped-of and that IS a big deal. That’s like someone copying this exact article, Glenn, and posting in his blog and profit handsomely from it. Would that be cool?
Where are these site getting their content? Reddit?
Anywhere and everywhere, it seems.
IMGUR, Reddit, other similar sites and so on. Someone posted a good article about Upworthy in the comments above so I recommend you check that out.
IMGUR, Reddit, other similar sites and so on. Someone posted a good article about Upworthy in the comments above so I recommend you check that out.
Thank you Glen for this valuable sharing.
This reminds me the popularity of funny pictures websites recent years.
The model is simple: set up a website to post pictures, create a Facebook fan page, sharing the pics to the fanpage…
There are many people backing through this, but I also see much more end up not getting a penny.
there are hell of bloggers who keep writing all the day and make just $100 a day. But you changed the way of thinking ofcourse
Just a thought, and perhaps I’m totally off-base, but is it possible that he’s buying likes, shares and traffic, and that’s the reason for wanting to sell so fast?
I mean, it really doesnt make sense to build a site for making money and sell it just when it starts making money. It’s not like he built it to save whales, and discovered that it takes too much of his time.
Hey Glen,
I’ve heard of these sites before, but didn’t realise how much they were making, it’s crazy!
It seems some other guys are using Twitter to achieve the same thing – once they decide to monetize:
http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2014/01/the-2-teenagers-who-run-the-wildly-popular-twitter-feed-historyinpics/283291/
I still like this story – making a six figure income on IG by posting pics of her booty
http://instagram.com/jenselter
Hi Scott,
How on earth jenselter makes six figure income on IG by posting pics of her booty? How did she monetize? Do you have proof of the income?
Glen,
Very interesting idea to make money online. Going to start a site on this and let you know how much it made?
Thanks again for this eye opening post and yeah, your headline in the email really catch my attention.
Jen Seltner is all over the internet these days. I literally have no idea who she is besides those booty photos (psoted all over fitness forums & tumblr’s).
I think she just signed a deal with a major magazine / model agency.
Hi Jeff,
As Glen mentioned, she has signed some deals & endorsements, and is apparently looking at launching her own line of workout wear.
The hardest part seems to be getting the audience, monetizing follows from there.
I only heard of her a few weeks ago, she was at 1.5m followers, she’s now up to 2.4m!
We certainly live in interesting times.
Great stuff, Glen.
I think we’ve all noticed these sites blowing up all over the place but never really how to set one up.
Like you, I’m too busy to go full-on into this niche, but I think there are some lessons that all marketers can learn from viral sites like these…especially in the headline department. Love them or hate them, BuzzFeed and ViralNova write headlines that flat out get clicks.
Well, its alot like news jacking
But, i can verify that this “crack” works 
The no.1 reason why he tries sell is because of pressure
When you start from fresh the heavyness of succcess is not there
You can be more creative, less sure on everything..
Steve jobs talks about it his famous graduate speak..
This boy has real talent..
Oh hell Glen, I had a site like this up last year but ditched it because I had a house move and it got neglected. Time to dust off the backup and go again – cheers!
OK Glen,
I’m hoping this question will not be blown off by you because you are SO beyond where I’m at. If any other commentors want to make a suggestion please do. I am overwhelmed by the thought of building my own website. Do you believe that any of the websites that are being sold on Ebay are legit? How can I weed out the ones that over selling? Thank you in advance for any tips you can give.
I would start with Flippa over eBay.
This should be useful http://www.viperchill.com/buying-selling-websites/
It’s a few years old but still very relevant
Thank you Glen for such a quick response!
I would give a try, My niche is bit different it is based on love stories
i think people will like to read the other people stories… I am not sure as it will be BOOM like the website you have mentioned above… I will be using the facebook let see how it goes for me.. Thank You for sharing your valuable article.
Well, I guess its good to try out the Viral Nova other platforms to see if actually one can reach 100,000,000 unique visitors in Facebook under 6 months! That figure sounds unbelievable but one of two companies have attained that, then its possible for others to do so!
I have shared this comment in the content syndication and social bookmarking and networking website for Internet marketers – kingged.com where this post was found.
Sunday – kingged.com contributor
http://kingged.com/time-sensitive-how-to-reach-100000000-unique-visitors-in-just-6-months/
Are we already too late? – - > http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-02-11/facebook-puts-a-downer-on-upworthy.html
The data is wrong. They just had a crazy November and haven’t actually dropped if you look at the graph properly.
Also, the Viral Nova founder says traffic has only increased since the change…
If your goal is “not to make tons of money” then your wish is my command…
Just kidding. Thought I’d lighten things up a a bit
great post as usual. thanks love!
Glen,
How many post did you make before promoting your page?
I’m giving this a try on a domain that’s been sitting in my account.
Already answered in the post…
Here’s a value add for you.
Niche case study showing how well curated content works.
http://www.japkin.com/websites/blog/3-unconventional-ways-to-drive-100000-visitors-to-your-blog-each-month/
Check out their alexa rank and growth after launching late last year
Hey Glen,
Even if he goes on and sells ViralNova, how much do you think will its net worth be? Considering the fact it just launched in May last year and the traffic is still on the rise, this one just doesn’t fit the profile of other large websites for sale. What do you think? Somewhere around 10m to 12m?
Depends on the profit. Either way, a lot. But definitely not the kind of multiple (12 – 36X monthly profit) a more stable business would get.
Wowwww… the story is really inspiring whenever I read something like this it always helps me push harder and work more towards the goal..!!!
I loved you tips Glen!!
Really great stuff! I will try to implement some of them on my business. I need to diversify my traffic strategies. Now more than 70% of my visitors are from SEO and this facebook integration sounds really cool!
Thank you!
Love the article as always glen. Just a small correction 37 signals has not rebranded to basecamp. Basecamp is one of their products while 37 signals is and remains their name. Also they all meet each other in person semi annually at their main office in Chicago. But yes, they are a remote company. Keep up the good work. Been a fan since buying your cloud living book a long time ago.
They just posted a few days ago that they’re dropping the 37 Signals name…
Thanks for the comment and kind words!
You’re absolutely right about the rebranding, I missed that news. They were top of mind for me after reading their new book Remote.
Glen,
I started a site and I’ve set up a Facebook page. I am using a RSS Scraper and using the spreadsheet that one of the guys here provided. I have a two part questions:
[1] How would you pattern using the old content from viralnova and mixing that with new content?
[2] How would you advertise the Facebook page? I know you aren’t recommending advertising specific posts. I am just thinking about what angle to take with that. I’ve read your PPC article previously and had some success, I wouldn’t mind hearing some advice you have on that.
Thanks,
Patrick.
Killer article, once again. Thanks Glen.
I’ve been thinking lately of trying some FB ads. Now, how to convert pictures of cute animals with TOTALLY UNRELATED copy on them…lol.
I don’t have $500. to spend, but might dabble a little anyway, just for fun.
Fantastic post Glen.
It’s frightening the money these websites are making. I have some limited success with posts going viral through Facebook – but I have seen the potential. Just recently, one of my posts generated around 10,000 visits through Facebook – despite being published several months ago.
If you use Facebook every day, you can see the type of posts that are being shared a lot. Wash, rinse, repeat
I definitely need to give it a serious try. Should not take long to throw up a quick WordPress website and test the waters properly.
Kevin
Glen, Great post as always.
I know I am a little late to the comment section, but I had to think it over a little. Right now the passive income for him is insane, but I think there is more behind the scenes of why he is wanting to sell the site. There is a bubble that surrounds these types of websites, and with all bubbles it is best to get in, build up, and sell before the bubble pops. That is where the most money will be made with the least risk. Right now the referral traffic is at its peak from facebook because some of the executives aren’t to happy with this “viral” content. It makes sense since these sites are so dependent on a 3rd party source.
- J
I have to agree. There are a ton of reasons to sell….plenty to consider with taxes. The guy most likely knows he is near the top of the game.
Put it on the market, continue to grow as potential buyers watch, and get a deal going before it slows down.
What kind of multiple he can get is anyone’s guess.
The idea looks quite good but you’ll have to setup a large budget for Facebook campaign first once you get 1M likes then things start working great..!!! Some Gag guys in our country are getting more than 1000$ easily..!
Hi Glen, (and great post, as usual)
Spanish is good enough for this lucrative idea.
But, do you think, the language from my country is good enough too ? (with less competition I think)
Thks,
Vince
Scott mentions on his Twitter that he didn’t buy any FB ads to kickstart Viral Nova. Supposedly his initial posts just “went viral”. I call BS on that. He’s obviously leveraged some major traffic source to get that kind of initial traffic. It helps that his posts have a an awesome virality index. However, there’s always initial spark that lights the fire. If it wasn’t FB Ads, then what was it?
Do we know anything about how he gets his traffic other then FB? It’s obviously through large media buys (which he can afford..since he’s a millionaire many times over with Godvine, etc)..
I’m wondering if he’s partnering with large FB fan pages…or even spamming FB groups. Or buying traffic through blackhat methods from places like visitorzoom.com..
Glen, any thoughts? I refuse to believe ….”my posts just went viral”..and “people came to my website and Liked my posts”…Aint nothing that easy any more!!!
would love to get your take ViperChill
Follow-up post is coming
Cool, how come I don’t get a email when you reply…secondly, I did this before, and copied some headlines, re-wrote some headlines, tried new articles, NOTHING went viral or was shared.. maybe I am targeting the wrong age demographic? If you can maybe share your thoughts on that … that’d be great… It seems harder then it looks, I think.
What can I say Glen. I’ve allergy of reading anything like blog post even my text book.But when I got mail from you I become very excited to read your post and what I like most while reading if your post so long. And wish not to finis your post so quick. You are one of my favorite person in IM world. Awesome post man. There’s lots of thing to learn from you. Not to mansion that I’m a newbie.
Thanks from me.
I do SEO as my day-job and have done a lot of freelance work on my own. As someone who has never made passive income online, it’s a little intimidating to spend a few hundred dollars on advertising right from the beginning. These are great insights though!
I am really looking forward to your next case study update. I have a few niche ideas and now I need to force myself to make a decision and just start creating.
I’m a little confused – can you really take content from redit and post it on your own website (and make ad revenue as a result) just so long as you include a link? What are the legal implications of intellectual property rights?
kicking article you got there Glen I’m just suspicious that he is selling so fast. Maybe he will get his AdSense account banned soon? Lol
I see a lot of people selling their websites on Flippa but few of them got their Adsense banned because of the curated content.
Cheers
in order to get large number of audience then better is to create a gag site and promote through Facebook by building a huge number of fans base for the Facebook page
If I started such a site, who would I target on Facebook, with the website being so broad?
This is very interesting …
One question is, how do they monetize (before being sold of course) ?
the 1.1M people on facebook is interesting for sure but how good is the engagement?
the same for Ads… it could be nice to know if user actually click on advertise or actually buy something
what ‘s your take on it ? I m very Curious
manolo
Hey , Glen should i copy/ paste their old articles ?
I’ mean they are mostly pictures , so should i copy pics ?
plz elaborate
No I’m not suggesting that. Please see the latest post
Damn, your blog is so addictive.
I just opened like 5 of your pages (the ones you or people here mentioned) and they are all waiting to be read, so… no real work for me today
Btw. I am also a bit torn apart by the question “how cool is to do such a thing”. Obviously curation works, there are literally thousands of sites that work with this method… somewhere I read that the safest way to go is just add a little of your own comment.
But yeah I am intrigued to try something like this, see if it could fit on my “special pile of urgent projects that need attention TODAY”
Off to read the follow-up now…
Nenad
Nice article, thx.
Out of curiosity why are you recommending promoting the fan page and not the posts via fb ads?
Is the idea to build your fan audience then boost internal on your fan page?
Yes, I think I mentioned this about 4 times in the comments
Hi Glen, amazing article, as always.
Could you clarify something for me though please?
Sorry if this is a silly question and I’ve missed something obvious.
I get why you’re saying we should promote our Facebook page with the Facebook ads, and not the individual posts on the Facebook page. That makes sense.
But why is it better to promote the Facebook page instead of having the Facebook ads link directly to our websites? I’ve seen Facebook ads that do just link directly to websites.
Thanks.
Thanks for the comment, Sam
I did say it’s something you should test. Just on my limited test I found it better growing the fan page.
Also, the plan is not to be using ads forever. If you grow your fan following then they can help you promote future posts.
I see your point. Thanks very much for your prompt and helpful reply Glen.
Thanks for sharing this post and this information. I did stop at the point where you were going to tell people how you’d go about creating it because I wasn’t so interested in even thinking about trying to build anything like this. As you mentioned quite a few times, it does pull articles from other sources and I find that kind of thing tantamount to stealing, especially since they’re posting all the content of someone else’s without permission.
I’d also wondered why it seemed like these sites were popping up so fast and out of nowhere. I’m on CNN often and I see all those links at the end of articles. I guess they would be massive income generators but it just seems a bit smarmy if you know what I mean. Still, it’s hard to condemn someone who came up with an idea and made a lot of money off it.
@Sam you know why its better to send them to your FB first? Well its not secret, you click will be away cheaper!!! Tested for several clients:-)
Cheers
Hey Glenn,
great article as usual.
This made me curious: “Started a browser-based game in 2009 that still makes $500/day now in 2014″
I find it very impressive.
What’s the name of his browser game? I was looking to build browser games myself, would be great to see an example of an already monetized browser game.
Sorry Gabriel I don’t know.
Scott is quite responsive on Twitter though if you want to ask him
It looks great and simply, but i don’t thing that it is. 1 milion likes it’s an astronomical number. You will need very good lack and a lot of money!!!!
Great! I’ve started my site since 2011 and it grows slowly. My problem is I don’t know how to build a fan page for my site. I learn much about social network from your post. Thank you.
There are 1000s of websites trying to replicate this model, many that cater to single geographies… it needs mostly luck, hardwork and money to advertise… the competition is extreme but still there is room for everyone
OH. MY. GOD.
I’s kinda late, but this post just gave me an idea to search the internet for an image created by me that went on to the Hot Page of 9gag back in October. HOLY SHIT. It’s been copied on to thousands of websites.
What was the picture? You’ve got me curious
One of the last things we’re considering before going ‘live’ is the ‘comments’ aspect of things.
First: Comments – Yes or No? And, feel free to back up your reason with ‘why’?
Ok, so if the answer is ‘Yes’, now that brings in more thoughts (ugh!)….
Fb comments take approximately a year and a half to load on each page – which sux.
Then there is disqus and livefyre. Again, which and why?
I’m trying to figure out if the comments section of the site even matters at all. ViralNova doesn’t have comments, but there’s always ways to improve.
Thoughts…?
Thank you so much for sharing the detailed report with us we are really learning something from all the information that you have been producing all along.
We will be here frequently to get some of the free tips that you will be sharing to us.
I’m giving this a shot. I picked up the domain http://www.viralcop.com I created the logo now Im just trying to get a good theme. I already have a fan page on FB with 550 fans (celebrity gossip) so I’m just going to re-brand it and spend $1000 on building up the fans.
Now to my question. Do you have any theme you can recommend and do you know what plugin or widget these sites are using on the sidebar to show the popular post or recent posts?
Great article, its crazy how fast posts on sites like viralnova can go viral. I am planning to try it on a few domains but focused on my main business too. Hopefully one at least becomes big like viralnova and the others.
The question for me isn’t should I enter this niche, it’s why haven’t I already?! That amount of likes in such a short time is mind boggling and I still can’t fathom ever seeing that on any of my sites!
100 Million Unique visitors… seems a big magic
Glen- Great, exciting post!
I’ve created a “viral site” roughly as outlined. I went slightly more niche just to set myself apart. Site is http://dogSmooch.com (facebook.com/dogsmooch)
I’ve got facebook ads running, and my fan count is slowly growing (I don’t have a ton of spare cash per month, so not going wild on ads spending right now.)
Questions:
1. Am I foolish to not spend more on FB ads? Currently doing about $50/mo
2. Currently doing just adsense. Will I be disappointed?
3. How do I know when I’m on my way to success? Certain number of page views? facebook fans? I imagine 10,000 to be the magic threshold where I’d start seeing more significant cheques from google.
Thanks for any info! Mostly wanting your take on how I’m doing thus far, and would LOVE to hear any suggestions. Thanks!
-Robert
DogSmooch.com
Any idea how much I should be spending daily to acquire Facebook likes? I started a campaign for $5 per day and plan to spend about $500-1000. I’ve get maybe 5-10 likes per day which is not bad, but just wanted to know if I was spending too much or too little per day. Thanks.
Glenn,
Very interesting article with immense value as usual. THANKS
first great post Glenn,
I am just wondering what is the dmca option and how would i add it to my wordpress website and also if i was to set up a website like this how would i prevent myself from getting done for copyright.
It is tempting to jump on the bandwagon for some quick cash. But I like what I see in the mirror. Someone who wants to add value, help a few people along the way and make some bucks too!
Interesting post Glen! Thanks.
Perhaps I missed something in the article, but where did you get the data to back up the claim about Viral Nova using Facebook Ads to promote the site? Did you use a certain tool to analyze their advertising history? Awesome post BTW !!
Hey Glen,
I launched http://www.ViralWorthy.net a week ago or so and just came across your article. Thought I’d share a few things!
Instead of going for the typical websites which just want people to come on and go off, we decided to encourage people to stay a little longer! We are currently testing out a few things but the results are great!
We are currently doing better than ViralNova AND Upworthy! Check out the comparison:
ViralWorthy.net
Pages / Session: 4.18
Avg. Session Duration: 7:48
Bounce Rate: 53.14%
% New Sessions: 60.69%
Viralnova
Pages / Session: 1.89
Avg. Session Duration: 3:31
Bounce Rate: 68.90%
% New Sessions: -
Upworthy
Pages / Session: 1.66
Avg. Session Duration: 3.17
Bounce Rate: 74.30%
% New Sessions: -
As you can see, there is a significant difference between ViralWorthy.net and Upworthy/ViralNova. I should note, to be fair, we are still new and the numbers may change but I believe we will (try our best) to maintain and improve our numbers relative to others.
We are currently building a feature which will allow visitors to vote on the posts whether it is “ViralWorthy or not”. So all the stuff with deceiving headlines going around, eventually will be voted on to see whether they deserve to be viral. That way visitors will have better content and quality to search among!
Let me know what you think! Open to feedback and suggestions!
Anthony
1 week update:
Still growing! We average about 1000 visitors a day on http://www.viralworthy.net and reaching 500 likes on Facebook.
Still trying to figure out ways to encourage more sharing though!
Anthony
Hello,
Had a look at your site – good clean layout. How do you find the pop ups to follow on Facebook – do these work? Do you get more followers? Also noticed you used Taboola – was it easy to set up with them and how does the income compare with normal Google Ads?
One thing I noticed is that if you are on the site and not signed in to Facebook there is a blank space top right and also the pop ups are all blank – suppose not a lot you can do about this?
thanks for keep us all posted on your sites progress – great to see real case studies in action.
Wanted to view your site but it’s not resolving. Is your website still running or is it unreachable because of all the unexpected traffic you are getting?
The main source to get high traffic is to build a Real network of Fans in Facebook
Hey Glen,
Just wanted you to know that I have really enjoyed this post and the follow up post. I actually decided to give this a try. I basically only use embedded videos, tweets, and images rather than just stealing anything and everything which hopefully will allow me to avoid any legal issues. So far I have 600 uniques in the first 2 days, so it is slow going, but I can build from that.
There are some interesting techniques that I really want to start trying from this post that works with my type of content marketing, thanks for these wonderful tips
Wow, very interesting post!!
I will not start such website anytime soon, but it gives ideas to use more “shocking” and phenomenal blog posts title in the future.
Thanks for this awesome post!
Glen,
Awesome post. Thanks for the info.
I’m curious about the Facebook promotion you ran to boost Page likes. What creative were you running on campaign? Your standard page banner or you created something unique to draw viewers in?
Well, the news has always been in the top of the interests of people, in any media.
In any case, thank you Glen.
Hello,
I started earlier this month and I’m learning a lot (WordPress, Themes, Writing) etc.
I’m a one man team and it is a slow start.
Any other feedback?
After reading your article I will be looking into DCMA and saving money for a Facebook ad!
Thank you,
Great post, Glen.
We launched http://www.viralhaze.com about a month ago and have roughly 60,000 pageviews and 3.5k FB likes. No where near the 1M that Scott got but I am not a SEO coder or guru (interested in hiring one by the way if anyone wants to email us: weareviralhaze @ gmail)
It seems Facebook algorithms have definitely changed so we have begun using more video tactics.
If anyone checks out the site, please let me know what you think of the layout and content and suggestions.
-VH
glenn
but how come adsense will accept such websites(without original content) as adsense tos clearly violate this.
this question has been asked by several other users above bt not answered.
so please comment.