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How Are The Big Article Sites Doing It?

by Sirr
21 replies
So I've had my own article site for about 5 months, and I'm seeing progressive gains, but even with 4 full time article writers it's getting harder to keep up with some of the big sites.

One of them is WiseGeek ... they've been going for a while, but I find it hard to believe their content is completely unique. They must have 20,000+ articles, and they don't accept submissions. And with their small team, even if the site was to publish 10 unique articles per day that's 3650 a year (if you work daily) it would take about 7 years of constant work every day to do that.

Personally that doesn't seem to add up to me.

What am I missing here? How is it possible a small site (small compared to EZine etc.) is able to get that many articles? Are there any "shortcuts" one can take, whilst keeping in line with Google?

I'm trying to expand my own business but I can't pump out volume on that level.
#article #big #sites
  • Profile picture of the author Matthew Anton
    3 basic ways I see to move forward with this business model:

    1) write them yourself (not very scalable)
    2) hire more article writers. Even the 10 per day can get dwarfed with the right investment
    3) have guest writers submit for free and either earn revenue sharing like Hubpages / Squidoo, or allow accreditation back to their website (link).
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    • Profile picture of the author Sirr
      Originally Posted by Matthew Anton View Post

      3 basic ways I see to move forward with this business model:

      1) write them yourself (not very scalable)
      2) hire more article writers. Even the 10 per day can get dwarfed with the right investment
      3) have guest writers submit for free and either earn revenue sharing like Hubpages / Squidoo, or allow accreditation back to their website (link).
      What's the investment though for say "10 per day". I'd imagine I'm looking at $300+ per month.
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  • Profile picture of the author zimzalabim
    10 articles per day at say $5 for a 500 word article that's $50 per day or $1500 per month ($1550 on a 31 day month). That's a fair bit of investment to claw back.
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    • Profile picture of the author honestim
      I think a site like WiseGeek would have a nice number of full time article writers to come up with the volume of content they have. It's a tradeoff between the budget and the time.

      Best
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  • Profile picture of the author tpw
    If you want to know the secret behind WiseGeek, read its "About Us" page:
    Who Is wiseGEEK?
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    Publish Coloring Books for Profit (WSOTD 7-30-2015)
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    • Profile picture of the author Samuel Adams
      I checked out this link mentioned by one of the others Who Is wiseGEEK? and had a few ideas for how content might be created for this site. For one, you can't say WiseGeek never subcontracted out work. At one time, maybe WiseGeek was spending money on a bigger staff or accepting freelance submissions, much like EzineArticles. Also, one of the bios mentioned the writer having contributed since 2004. So that's ten years of constantly writing. Now imagine if they had a staff of 100 people writing daily for ten years. You would easily have tens of thousands of pages in that time created. Also, ghost writers could be contributing to the site even today. Not every site owner will share their secrets for great content, you just have to read between the lines. Anyway, you seem to be doing fine with your own site, going at a steady pace and adding content over time. And, that will help you compete against larger sites. Just keep at it.
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  • Profile picture of the author Monja
    although it looks like a huge investment you'll get it back soon - I don't think it will take long. when you stick to such a schedule for e.g. 6 months it is well worth, just a huge investment upfront
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    • Profile picture of the author Sirr
      Thank you for the replies people. Really appreciate it.
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      • Profile picture of the author JohnMcCabe
        Originally Posted by tpw View Post

        If you want to know the secret behind WiseGeek, read its "About Us" page:
        Who Is wiseGEEK?
        It's a crazy idea, Bill, but it might just work... :p
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        • Profile picture of the author Sirr
          Originally Posted by JohnMcCabe View Post

          It's a crazy idea, Bill, but it might just work... :p
          I read this long before I posted this. The question was related to whether or not their 20,000+ articles are actually unique. I'm guestimating there's 20,000, chances are there's much more. Their blog post from early 2007 states they had just touched 10,000 ... which is not long after they started adding a constant supply of articles. It wasn't until mid 2006 until they started adding lots of articles. So that's a massive amount of articles to add in that amount of time.

          At least be a bit more constructive before you leave a response buddy.
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          • Profile picture of the author JohnMcCabe
            Originally Posted by Sirr View Post

            I read this long before I posted this. The question was related to whether or not their 20,000+ articles are actually unique. I'm guestimating there's 20,000, chances are there's much more. Their blog post from early 2007 states they had just touched 10,000 ... which is not long after they started adding a constant supply of articles. It wasn't until mid 2006 until they started adding lots of articles. So that's a massive amount of articles to add in that amount of time.
            From that About page, it seems that the authors featured there are only a sampling of the actual contributors. There could be a lot more, and with a stated emphasis on short articles, finding reasonably competent writers who could put out a large volume doesn't seem unreasonable.

            Originally Posted by Sirr View Post

            At least be a bit more constructive before you leave a response buddy.
            Sometimes humor doesn't translate well to the text-only realm, nor to an international audience.

            There are a lot of movies, TV shows and such where the hero will put out a complicated plan to accomplish something. The sidekick will reply that the idea is crazy, so crazy that it just might work.

            Didn't mean to ruffle your feathers...
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            • Profile picture of the author Sirr
              Originally Posted by JohnMcCabe View Post

              From that About page, it seems that the authors featured there are only a sampling of the actual contributors. There could be a lot more, and with a stated emphasis on short articles, finding reasonably competent writers who could put out a large volume doesn't seem unreasonable.



              Sometimes humor doesn't translate well to the text-only realm, nor to an international audience.

              There are a lot of movies, TV shows and such where the hero will put out a complicated plan to accomplish something. The sidekick will reply that the idea is crazy, so crazy that it just might work.

              Didn't mean to ruffle your feathers...
              Sorry bud, humour isn't my strong point. I have Aspergers, I often find it hard to read into humour lol and tend to take everything seriously. Sorry

              Thank you for the input though.
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            • Profile picture of the author tpw
              Originally Posted by JohnMcCabe View Post

              From that About page, it seems that the authors featured there are only a sampling of the actual contributors.

              That is exactly right.

              It said right there on the page:

              We are a team of researchers, writers and editors dedicated to providing short, clear and concise answers to common questions. Over the years, we have had hundreds of contributors; you can read some of their profiles below.

              If each writer were to write slowly and complete one article every two hours, then each writer could produce 20 articles per week or 1000 articles per year.

              With hundreds of contributors, I'd say that they are creating content at far below their peak efficiency or simply not using those "hundreds of contributors" full time.



              The bigger issue is not how fast or how slow they create the content. The question is how they are monetizing their site, so that they can continue to afford to pay staff.

              If the OP's site isn't making money, then it will take him a long time to be able to duplicate the success of those other websites.



              p.s. JohnMcCabe is one of the most helpful people on this forum, so I would caution you to jump to conclusions about how helpful he is being to you. He doesn't have to be here or to help answer your questions.
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              • Profile picture of the author Sirr
                Originally Posted by tpw View Post

                That is exactly right.

                It said right there on the page:




                If each writer were to write slowly and complete one article every two hours, then each writer could produce 20 articles per week or 1000 articles per year.

                With hundreds of contributors, I'd say that they are creating content at far below their peak efficiency or simply not using those "hundreds of contributors" full time.



                The bigger issue is not how fast or how slow they create the content. The question is how they are monetizing their site, so that they can continue to afford to pay staff.

                If the OP's site isn't making money, then it will take him a long time to be able to duplicate the success of those other websites.
                My site makes money, an amount enough to live on at the moment. Not enough to use the money to invest unless I live on baked beans on toast lol. Currently I monetize via Adsense. I am noticing the traffic is growing bit by bit daily, and earnings are slowly increasing. I can't even think of a better way to monetize because often times traffic is quite random and they come from search engines when searching for the keyword the article is about.

                To the other guy who posted above, I like the little tip about writing shorter, yet useful articles over long detailed ones. At least in the short term.
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  • Profile picture of the author Jeffery Moss
    Just take a quick read over some of the articles on WiseGeek and you'll see they are not complicated tutorials or even long convoluted wikis. Many of the articles contain just a few useful tips and barely a few paragraphs long, just enough to comply with Google Adsense quality content guidelines for publishing ads. You might emulate this style by publishing shorter tip style articles for awhile until you have your content built up and then devote a section to longer wiki style articles.
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  • Profile picture of the author MaxFreedom
    They let writers join and write for them and pay them per article.

    https://www.wisegeek.com/freelance-writing-jobs.htm

    More writers, more content, more indexed pages, more SE traffic, more ad impressions, more ad clicks, more money.
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    • Profile picture of the author Sirr
      Originally Posted by MaxFreedom View Post

      They let writers join and write for them and pay them per article.

      https://www.wisegeek.com/freelance-writing-jobs.htm

      More writers, more content, more indexed pages, more SE traffic, more ad impressions, more ad clicks, more money.
      Now this is something I didn't see. Explains it. Thanks Max.

      Wondering if it's worth me opening up a similar thing for writers. I don't think I'd get much interest until the site becomes more common.
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    • Profile picture of the author lastreporter
      Originally Posted by MaxFreedom View Post

      They let writers join and write for them and pay them per article.

      https://www.wisegeek.com/freelance-writing-jobs.htm

      More writers, more content, more indexed pages, more SE traffic, more ad impressions, more ad clicks, more money.
      But if you click the link, you'll see that they stopped accepting new writers in 2013.

      That tells me they could be in a holding pattern. Hard to say.
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  • Profile picture of the author MaxFreedom
    Yeah you'd have to market it I guess or maybe solicit writers from freelancing sites, just don't do it from mine it's not allowed lol

    You can also try hooking up with sites like Real Ways to Earn Money Online, they watch for new sites like yours to share with their subscribers who are WAHMs, freelancers, etc.
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  • Profile picture of the author DawnyaSasse
    What is your site? I would love to read some of the articles!
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  • Profile picture of the author DubDubDubDot
    Originally Posted by Sirr View Post

    And with their small team, even if the site was to publish 10 unique articles per day
    They are doing more than 10 a day. A few years ago they had around 150,000 articles. I have no idea where they're at now, but it could be 200,000+ assuming they've continued moving forward.

    WiseGeek got hammered by Google awhile back. They used to come up in all sorts of search results, but now you almost never see them. Google decided that random people writing random articles on topics they may or may not know anything about wasn't a good thing to feature in the search results. So everything from ezinearticles to About.com got hit hard.

    Originally Posted by Sirr View Post

    What's the investment though for say "10 per day". I'd imagine I'm looking at $300+ per month.
    $1 per article? What kind of quality do you think you'll get?

    WiseGeek at one time accepted submissions and paid out $15 per article. I don't recall if that was standard across the board or the minimum.

    150,000 articles x $15 = $2,250,000

    It's kind of shocking to find out what some sites have spent on development when you look at things a little closer. What appears like something one person could emulate may have actually had millions poured into it to get where they are at.

    Personally, I wouldn't try to emulate WiseGeek or any random info site here in 2014. Several years ago would have been the time to do it. Nowadays it seems like Google is going to get in the way of these sites. It would be pretty risky to make this a multi-year project starting today.
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