Why Content Farms Are Here to Stay

Granted Ken, I was just pointing out that, like with newspaper articles, what is being reported is often one persons perception of an event or occurance and not necessarily everyone else's, or indeed the right perception.

If it helps, I'm a very optimistic person.

Let me know when you want to catch up on Skype sometime.

Most "content farms" were built and developed, over the years, with little to no semblance of a viable quality control process. Not only were they notorious for accepting low quality content, but they really didn't have any mechanisms in place to ensure that it was kept out of their databases. Just think...in the early days, it was in their best interest to simply go for VOLUME...the more pages, the places that Google Adsense could be hosted, and the more money that could ultimately be made. So, many of these sites built their authority off of the volume...with many good pieces of content, but quite a bit of low quality content, as well.

"Content Farms" has a negative connotation...just like anything, the industry is evolving and the intelligent entrepreneur is realizing the holes/gaps in the business models that have come before. Having a viable quality control means that growth will be SLOW, and earnings will be low....but, in the long run, those sites that ensure quality the best will safeguard their collective authority and rise to the top.

I think it's an interesting article. The author isn't arguing in favour of content farms; he's just analysing the economics.

We call them content farms, but essentially, most of the big players are just volume publishers who've been using automation to crank out mass content. They've been getting away with a lowest common denominator approach until recently, but, as the author points out, if the figures stack up, there's nothing to stop them using their considerable financial muscle to employ whatever tools and resources are required to cross any new Google quality threshold. If that means hiring better writers, for example, then so be it.

As he puts it, it's simply a case of monetizing attention and scaling up.

Most of us might like to think we're offering quality, but it all comes down to the user experience. And I stopped trying to second guess what a visitor might find useful some time ago.

But I see no reason to believe that consumers of online information are going to start acting differently from how they've traditionally responded to the output of offline publishers, where profits have been achieved across all bands of the quality spectrum.

Of course, quality content will always have a place and it may well be the best route for independent publishers looking to differentiate themselves and grab a worthwhile slice of the "attention". But mass-market publishing isn't going away and I don't expect to witness any great dumbing up of the internet anytime soon.


Frank