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How should I market and monetize a news aggregator I built in Google Sites?

by fsir
15 replies
Hi everyone,

I'm new to the forum but not that new to selling scripts and unestablished websites online. Still, it's been a while since I sold online. I'm trying to determine the best way to approach marketing/monetizing an 11 page news aggregator I created in Google Sites that works off of maybe 90+ rss feeds in Google Sheets.

My main question is: Should I try to get traffic to the site and attempt to get it to succeed on its own (probably a much harder prospect given all the competition) or should I just clone it forever and sell copies? Or maybe I should try to do both at the same time?

It's not the most functional news aggregator (no login, theme color toggle or personal news source customization, yet) but research and past experience tells me most news aggregators are built in Wordpress so one built to work on Google Sites might be a unique and attractive rarity some might like to buy as a clone.

Anyway, I'm curious to know what some online sellers and news aficionados would do with this if anything. I have some talent for building sites but not very good at pitching them or creating a buzz. Thanks.
#aggregator #built #google #market #monetize #news #sites
  • Profile picture of the author Syed Mubbasher Ahmed
    aren't rss feeds consider spam? although the idea is marvelous I haven't seen it while searching for a Google site website template sounds cool.
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    • Profile picture of the author fsir
      Thanks for your reply and to all the other replies.

      Well, there are a bunch of legitimate and popular news aggregators. They are typically not seo-friendly but I don't think they are quite regarded as "spam" since they do serve a legitimate purpose. They basically curate different articles from different news sources in one place so a visitor doesn't have go to each site individually to see what they are covering.
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  • Profile picture of the author jduck1979
    Quit while you're ahead.... market already flooded with Google News / Apple News / Bongino Report / Breitbart News / Twitchy.com / The Post Millenial / ZeroHedge / Gateway Pundit / SarahPalin.com + many others.

    Most of which appear to work on a model of picking out stories from well known popular news websites such as Daily Mail / Daily Express / Washington Post / Los Angeles Times / BBC News + many others.... adding some commentary in the form of a blog post..... embedding some related posts from twitter, facebook, Instagram & Pinterest.... publishing the post, then sharing to all the usual well known popular social media sites + praying somebody visits it and clicks on the ads.
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  • Profile picture of the author jduck1979
    Quit while you're ahead.... market already flooded with Google News / Apple News / Bongino Report / Breitbart News / Twitchy.com / The Post Millenial / ZeroHedge / Gateway Pundit / SarahPalin.com + many others.

    Most of which appear to work on a model of picking out stories from well known popular news websites such as Daily Mail / Daily Express / Washington Post / Los Angeles Times / BBC News + many others.... adding some commentary in the form of a blog post..... embedding some related posts from twitter, facebook, Instagram & Pinterest.... publishing the post, then sharing to all the usual well known popular social media sites + praying somebody visits it and clicks on the ads.
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  • Profile picture of the author Jeff Polaski
    You should focus on building and growing your own news aggregator site or consider of both strategies to market and monetize your product effectively.
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  • Profile picture of the author Red Planet
    I think you need a proper domain to monetize the news aggregator site....
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    • Profile picture of the author fsir
      I do have it set up at its own domain. I'm going to add a traffic counter to it so I can see if I'm getting any traffic. The feeds have been working flawlessly. I don't have to worry about updating them. And each page has youtube thumbnail channel feeds to relevant youtube videos for that page.

      But other than to click on headlines or youtube thumbnails, there's not much else for a visitor to do at the moment. I suppose I could try to saturate the pages with content like some more famous news aggregators.
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  • Profile picture of the author Maria MIltondon
    It depend on what purpose you have. What type of lead did you need?
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  • Profile picture of the author DABK
    How did you think you'd make money from it before you built it? What was your goal then?


    Originally Posted by fsir View Post

    Hi everyone,

    I'm new to the forum but not that new to selling scripts and unestablished websites online. Still, it's been a while since I sold online. I'm trying to determine the best way to approach marketing/monetizing an 11 page news aggregator I created in Google Sites that works off of maybe 90+ rss feeds in Google Sheets.

    My main question is: Should I try to get traffic to the site and attempt to get it to succeed on its own (probably a much harder prospect given all the competition) or should I just clone it forever and sell copies? Or maybe I should try to do both at the same time?

    It's not the most functional news aggregator (no login, theme color toggle or personal news source customization, yet) but research and past experience tells me most news aggregators are built in Wordpress so one built to work on Google Sites might be a unique and attractive rarity some might like to buy as a clone.

    Anyway, I'm curious to know what some online sellers and news aficionados would do with this if anything. I have some talent for building sites but not very good at pitching them or creating a buzz. Thanks.
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  • Profile picture of the author FourthWorld
    Popular aggregators go broad.
    The opportunity, if there is one, is to go deep.
    Signature

    --
    Richard Gaskin
    Developer of WebMerge: Publish any database on any site
    http://www.fourthworld.com

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  • Profile picture of the author mubin
    Not a good idea, there are hundreds of free plugins for wordpress that would allow anyone to do this without having to buy your site.

    You need to work on a USP, if you have been out of the game for awhile its time to immerse yourself back into the game and understand what the consumers want.
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    • Profile picture of the author fsir
      "Not a good idea, there are hundreds of free plugins for wordpress that would allow anyone to do this without having to buy your site."

      Funnily enough, my first news aggregator was a wordpress clone I bought off a seller of different auto-updating clone sites.

      Not sure how well that business model does today. I think the only reason someone in the know might be compelled to buy a wordpress news aggregator clone is that they want to save themselves the labor of setting it all up themselves.

      And of course, I'm pretty sure (from having run one) a Wordpress news aggregator requires hosting fees whereas a Google Sites news aggregator does not.

      But overall you are probably right about the lack of demand.
      Thanks.
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  • Profile picture of the author zainseo
    Might be you just thinking to create a PBN structure. Although cloning is an option out there but you should try to go with the unique ones (separately).
    If you have a potential to develop site's, make future strong to explore the field by just practicing of WP sites. It's quite easy for sure! Good Luck...
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  • Profile picture of the author NicheNirvana
    It seems like a fairly niche project that not many people are going to be looking for or convinced they'll need so I think you'll struggle to sell many copies of it's clone, especially if you said it's not fully fuctional because most newbies will get confused.

    I would try and get it to work for yourself and drive traffic to it personally, if you really believe in the product.
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    • Profile picture of the author fsir
      By not fully functional, I meant it just doesn't have all the bells and whistle of some other news aggregators. It still serves its function as a basic news aggregator.

      In any event, I have been posting on twitter and getting a trickle of traffic that way for a few weeks so far. Only one follow, though. Lol. Baby steps.
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