Now I know many successful adsense publishers have websites with thousands of pages and they are successful because of all that content. I can't imagine however that they are generating all that content themselves. Given that creating enough original content to bring in strong traffic is difficult and using other peoples content is not exactly the best thing, what exactly are they doing? Both? Neither?
Why is creating enough original content 'difficult' ? All it requires is hard work, willingness to learn and do research, and creativity. I am sure successful publishers use a combination of content. However, many or most of the successful publishers I know of make original content. The fact is that google loves new original content better than anything else out there.
Many of us work our butts off creating content. I write at least one article every morning and a minimum of seven original articles every Friday. In addition, I have numerous reports that I need to transform into articles. Now, revenue of all types generated by my site(s) is enough to justify working at it on a full time basis. But, that was not the case when I started and I still had no choice but to be prolific in order to build the business. If you have no writing skills, you will need to hire freelancers to generate material for you. There are small number of successful sites which do not generate their own content. But, it is usually the case that only one or two per market area are successful. For example, how many YouTubes is too many? Two More? It could be that small. But those sites required a prodigious amount of programming and marketign effort. And that is the real point -- if you are not prepared to work for it, the internet will not reward you.
I agree and have found this to be a very successful business plan. Maybe one doesn't gain instant wealth this way, but it has had some very good long term dividends for me.
I mix original and unoriginal content. Sites like my wikipedia mirror and dmoz mirror (coming soon) don't exist as a serious web venture. They exist as large boulder on the information super highway that many people are bound to run into. I can then direct traffic from those sites to my real web-sites. Sites like that build revenue to a reasonable level which justifies spending time on less guarenteed ventures. Other unoriginal sites such as turnkey sites can serve as "value added" content which instantly bulk up your site while you build original content. Eventually you phase out the crap and you have a nice shiney diamond of a web-site.
While people will first find your site because of your original content, they will stay and keep coming back because of YOU. Give your articles/content an original voice, a PERSONALITY, and they will become repeat visitors. They will link to you on their own accord, tell others about you in forums, i.e. they will "spread the gospel" about you, your site, and not necessarily the content you are providing. After all, "original and unique content" is impossible nowadays; anything you can find at one site you can find at another 5 billion others. Ultimately it's YOU that will keep them coming back. Here's an example: Joblo.com is a movie site, that does movie reviews and movie news. Now there are a billion movie sites that does the same thing as Joblo.com, but Joblo.com has a massive readership of people who keeps coming back and linking to them. Why? Because Joblo.com writes as an "everyday joe" (hence the title of their site), and that is attractive to people. So they keep coming back. Joblo.com offers a PERSONALITY that people want to hear from again and again. Content will bring them, but it's YOU who will keep them coming back.
Using copyright articles without author permission is content theft and illegal. So yes it does matter. Even giving credit to article original writers doesn't legalize scraper sites.
Amen to that. For those who missed a discussion on this see: http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=105669 Posts of particular interest from that thread: http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showpost.php?p=1094290&postcount=9 http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showpost.php?p=1099760&postcount=64 For those who are under the mistaken belief that they can steal other people's articles and get away with it, think again. Even if you don't live in the U.S. it is becoming easier and easier to not only find your copyright infringements but it is becoming easier to get your websites and your advertising accounts terminated.
I created all the content for one of my websites and it is doing well. There are many ways to earn money from adsense but the meathod that works for me is. 1. provide valuable unique content 2. careful placement of adsense ads (if you get this right you dont need much traffic to make money) cheers
Orriginal content isnt going to help too much for most people. There I said it. I see soo many posts for people asking if soneone can write 30 article about home loans or any topic of commercial nature. They get the article, pay the $200 to the writter, up load the articles on the server, design a siemap, spend weeks submitting the website to various article directories and after waiting a month for the website to get indexed they get hardly any traffic at all from google/yahoo/msn. Months pass and the webmaster may have accumulated a couple dollars if he is lucky. Alot of people go down this route and then complain that they arent making money. No kidding.
Isn't all about not being tied to one road or the other but being able to pick the best of both worlds. Hiring a ghostwriter to fill in writing articles gives you time to work on other aspects of creating your online world. I, for one, create copy, program websites, do the marketing and wash the dishes. So it is about leveraging your time so that you can accomplish what you want to with your online life. Victoria
The mistake was to believe that one can get rich overnight by creating a website and throwing ads up on it. One SHOULD NOT EXPECT to be racking in big bucks on a new site. When I create a site I'm looking at at least a year before I start to see a return on my investment. If one wants instant gratification they need to get a real job with a regular paycheck. On the other hand, those who are willing to work hard and take the long term approach to web publishing, they can build up a very nice business that generates long term dividends. I've been in web publishing for over ten years now and it took me several years of VERY hard work developing my site before it became popular and started generating significant income. An analogy I like to use is that of a steam locomotive. At first a steam locomotive moves very slowly, but in time it builds up a head of steam and it gets up to speed. Websites are the same. In the beginning I had to keep my real job and only work on my site on nights and weekends. In the beginning I spent a couple thousand hours a year researching and developing my site, but in the end it has been worth it. Those efforts are still generating me dividends and the work I put into my site today only helps to multiply the returns I earn. I have no sympathy for those who are new to this business and expect to be making big money after a few months or even a year or so. Nothing worth doing is easy and any serious endeavor will take time and lots of work.
For those who want to understand the issue of unique content vs duplicate content better but do not like my long rants, here is a very good article on this subject: http://www.websitepublisher.net/article/publishing_longevity/ This article is written by who I believe to be the most successful web publisher I know and he probably earns more per year than anyone here via web publishing.
No need to write anyting.. but.. get your site flourish with information that websurfer need and promote it well... That's the key to success... "Curiosity Kills The Cat"