Content Curation: Can you really build an online business this way ???

If you think about it, content curation has happened for decades. Everytime you read an opinion article from someone there is a bit of curation going on.

When you read an article that tries to rebate another article ( as it happens in discussion in scientific circles for example) the other article is pretty much the basis for yours, where you add the opposing view and your reasons. A newspaper that gets infor from a press Agency like AP and then gets their writers to look at different angles to write new content based on that piece of news are also using curation.

In chess, many times an commented game will be reviewed by another expert where he might find new subtleties not noticed before that he will add to make the analysis more complete.

Hell, Pérez Hilton cannot write a post about who said what without having seen it in print ( se he can elude lawsuits for libel), unless he is giving a personal opinion ( he does this a lot though).

To make curation workable all you have to do is ADD VALUE to a previous piece of information. If all yu do is spin it around for your own benefit without adding anything substantial to it you are not doing curation, you are doing something else.

Disclaimer: I am chess player and coach and I use curation a lot, finding the same game commented by different masters, then running the game to a search engine to find possible errors or omissions and then rewriting the game analysis for personal use when I teach kids. I cureently work on a project to bring a lot of this material to the web, with original articles and crediting and with new comments added.

Hope this helps.

There are some sites who does it. They seem to have decent traffic.
But I have my doubts if it would work well as a business; mainly because of the competition.

Dear Roni,
As far as I am able to comprehend you want to know or guess the effectiveness of the content curation. Secondly you are looking forward for a career in it also?
If I am right then let me tell you that yes content curation is an effective way of bringing traffic to your site or blog because of the following reasons

• search engines prefer web pages with heavier key words. Content curation will help you add more weight age to the set of particular keywords.
• link sharing also helps you get more traffic.
• Content curation makes sure that your blog or site is updated with the latest stuff which increases your credibility as a blogger. Also search engines also prefer the updated pages.

Now to answer that whether you can take it as a career and you should be able to make money out of it or not depends upon many factors like.

• The topic you are working on
• How much efforts, dedication and devotion you are putting in?
• And your presentation skills or writing skills how much creative you are in presenting the words or research of somebody else?

Yes I have earlier curated content and it worked fine for us one of the blogs I was working on was entirely cut, copy paste from some other sites. We had to wait for a little while till we started to top in search engine rankings.

The most important thing in this is ability of content curator to relate the different articles and give them a new form (if required).

To sum up I will just say that it depends upon individual’s own creativity.

Dear Roni,
As far as I am able to comprehend you want to know or guess the effectiveness of the content curation. Secondly you are looking forward for a career in it also?
If I am right then let me tell you that yes content curation is an effective way of bringing traffic to your site or blog because of the following reasons

• search engines prefer web pages with heavier key words. Content curation will help you add more weight age to the set of particular keywords.
• link sharing also helps you get more traffic.
• Content curation makes sure that your blog or site is updated with the latest stuff which increases your credibility as a blogger. Also search engines also prefer the updated pages.

Now to answer that whether you can take it as a career and you should be able to make money out of it or not depends upon many factors like.

• The topic you are working on
• How much efforts, dedication and devotion you are putting in?
• And your presentation skills or writing skills how much creative you are in presenting the words or research of somebody else?

Yes I have earlier curated content and it worked fine for us one of the blogs I was working on was entirely cut, copy paste from some other sites. We had to wait for a little while till we started to top in search engine rankings.

The most important thing in this is ability of content curator to relate the different articles and give them a new form (if required).

To sum up I will just say that it depends upon individual's own creativity.

I've done a lot of content curation in my time. To answer your question, yes... but mainly no.

Don't listen to the hyped up content curation software and guides launching on here. Most are crap, stuff that won't work in a few months.

Like others said, you can curate high quality articles from other relevant sites and reference them in your own articles or write articles about them.

But what people have been talking about lately is taking a 500 word article off another website, sticking it on your site and just adding 10-50 words before and after the article.

It did work for a long time and it seemed to have more or less the same effect of a 100% unique article. All of my large sites that relied on that kind of content create are effectively sandboxed.

So no... you shouldn't build a business by curating content like that for ****ty niche sites etc. Many people do it for the sake of quickly building sites, ranking and "making money". Really you need to have the majority of your content to be your own.

Then you can curate bits of other articles. Just not other people''s articles with a few editions to make it "curated" like a few sentences before and after.

I have a curated blog. It's a news/politics blog. I find articles that I want to comment on, I quote excerpts from each article and then add my two cents to the mix so each post is at least 50% my commentary with the excerpts.

Most of the recent news about content curation has just been autoblogging in disguise.

I've seen 3 software releases recently that were for old autoblogging pluggins, rebranded as content curation tools lol. They aren't of course, they just say they are.

Sbucciarel's description of content curation above is the correct one. The version hitting your inbox at the moment, stating "Hands free," "Automatic," isn't. Just in case any of you are getting these emails and believing it's content curation, I thought I'd point that out.

Curation is nothing new, as others already said... It's just the way you are doing it... also, curation has a lot of sense, especially if you want to build your own interesting characted, like someone different, with unique thoughts and views on common things... or you just want to provide your visitors with quality content... It's much better, in any way, to do content curation than to think of new article ideas every time you want to add new post...

Since we are talking about content curation here. Can i just ask how do you actually get around the keyword density with it?. Is it still applicable for curated content?.

It looks to me like a good model. Finding the niche designing your site so it is appealing and you still have to get traffic to it. But I see no reason that Curation as a model would not work.

I am a newbie so please forgive these naive Qs. Regarding the cupcake site, I see they have flickr pics with links to the flickr page. Are posting those considered copyright infringement? Is posting a link enough to make it so it is not a copyright violation? Some people on flickr explicitly note whether a pic is copyrighted and others do not say anything. It made me wonder because in the Flippa write up, the seller said that "only 3 bakers wrote and asked me to take down the photos." Do you think she meant they did this because of copy right violations?

Also, some of the other pics are not from flickr but from other cupcake websites. She posts the pic on her blog and posts a link to the website where she got the pic. Is that allowed (i.e. not considered copy right violation?)

It is hard to be a newbie...I appreciate any info you can provide.

Thanks

This is awesome...

But how did they get so much traffic to that site ? I mean... Giving great content to my readers won't be a problem but getting so many people to give me a chance ? That is another story...

I have personal experience with content curation and it’s a really amazing way to create new content. It is important, however, to properly understand how content curation works. Many people think of curation as just re-posting other people’s work, but that’s a false assumption. Bear in mind that curation means you improve the content you use in some way, either by adding some more information or your own commentary. Also, remember that re-publishing someone’s entire article is violating the copyrights,rather than that use only chunks, quotes and fragments of the original. In the end, always acknowledge the original source by adding a link. If you’re really interested in the matter there’s an interesting blog post about curation here: rubymediacorporation.com/blog/why-content-curation-should-be-a-vital-part-of-your-marketing-strategy/

Unlike autoblogging, content curation is no easy alternative. You need a solid understanding of the topic in order to select the right material and put it into context for your readers.

Say you have a health blog and come across a press release or news item on new findings on acid reflux. You could just provide a link to the original source and tell your readers to check it out. It would be more useful to quote a portion of the text and then explain its importance how this affects them. This is the kind of curation that adds value.

Ideally, the curated material should make up a small part of the post or article. In that way there's never a problem with duplicate content.

It is all about adding value... that is what seems to be said over and over again...

I use curated content to stay up to date with the latest trends, news and events in my niche.

I would keep the curated content to about 30% of the overall content though. The other 70% will be my own original content.

As with anything online these days the trick is do it with quality in mind.

Take your time to find the best possible resources, say why it's the best, weave the curated links together into a cohesive and useful post and add a little something of your own to the mix.

When users realize you're a time-saving and credible source of information they'll become frequent visitors.

Curated content should be rich, valuable content for your readers.

If your website visitors like it, and link back to it via social media, etc., the search engines are certain to pay attention.

What's key is making sure your site is valuable... not just the individual links and excerpts. Your posts should be so interesting and content-rich, people link to your post instead of just sharing a link or two from it.

Regarding the copyright question, I've answered that in my book. In a nutshell, a lot of images at Flickr are licensed under Creative Commons licenses that allow people to re-use those photos under specific terms.

Just randomly copying-and-pasting other people's graphics (or, worse: hot-linking to them) will get you in legal trouble pretty quickly, and possibly get you banished to Google's outer darkness, as well.

I've been using curated content at my websites since the mid-1990s. It works well. It respects the value of your readers' time by summarizing (and perhaps commenting on) the most relevant content -- website posts, videos, audios, magazine articles, etc. -- in your niche.

I believe that curation is going to become more and more valuable in the future. Search engines just can't filter as effectively as humans can, within any given niche or sub-niche.

How much curated content you use... that's going to vary from person to person. So will how you include it at your website. That's also what differentiates your website from others who are curating, as well.

The basics are covered in my book, but if you have specific questions, feel free to PM me. I'll answer as best I can.

The best way to add value to your website through curation is to add a news blog, I do it very successfully. You need to make your main blog credible, use your own unique content, than build a separate blog in a sub directory and use some curation software to create articles about your niche, you can then post a few times a day without it affecting your main blog, but also allowing google to crawl it a few times a day will bring traffic.