Demandmedia: Making money by hot words on the internet

This reporter Zhang Jiao "' carving knife cut my hand, make pumpkin lantern is really a chore." ' On Halloween, many housewives complained. Must the Halloween pumpkin lantern be carved? Let me give you some inspiration. "This is the beginning of the article entitled" Don't Fret, don't make a fuss: the New pumpkin template, "Jerri Farris, Jerry Faris, October 22, 2012. The article more than 400 words, but succinctly describes the Halloween pumpkin lamp production of the 11 skills. Jerry Faris doesn't have to worry about the lack of clicks on her "condensed" article because it covers multiple keywords for the hottest topic of the moment. In fact, the ehow site is only part of the demand media site. Demand Media is an American web site cluster that produces about 5,000 articles and videos a day, along with 64 other social media sites. The site has more than 100 million clicks a month, more than Disney, NBC, ESPN and other media sites click-through. However, it has been dubbed "the fastest growing content factory in the Internet media" by foreign media, and the search giant has repeatedly ridiculed it as a "cultural dump". Ironically, in 2011, the "dump" completed its IPO, when demand media market value of nearly 500 million U.S. dollars (now $769 million); According to foreign media reports, internet media giants, including Yahoo and AOL, are starting to dabble in this business model. So what kind of business model did demand media, founded in 2006, have been able to join the ranks of Internet upstarts in a few years ' time? Can its vitality be long? Cultural creativity or writing line? As the message of the name "Demand Media", its founder Richard Rosenbratt (Richard Rosenblatt) changed the production model of journalists and editors as gatekeeper news sites, Demand Media no longer told readers " Should think of anything. " Simply put, it creates a lot of content, supplemented by gatekeepers, by studying the user's search data and concerns. Earn advertising revenue by attracting search engine traffic. In order to ensure that the article can appear in the "Google search" on the home page, but also in order to generate a "profitable" article, Demand media always closely monitor the Internet traffic, using proprietary software at any time to find popular search and advertising keywords, using a certain algorithm to select the possible popular keywords, And by the hundreds of title editors to combine these keywords into a coherent article title. The title of the approved article is uploaded to the free Writer's action page. The website designs a uniform format template to help writers write the work they want. Finally, original works that are tested by plagiarism software will be uploaded to the site for publication. Because demand Media content is highly correlated with web hot search keywords that maximize traffic, and as long as users search for a popular word, a link to a site that points to demand Media's published article appears in the search results. When the article generates traffic, and advertisers pay for advertising costs, freelance writers and network editors get paid. It is understood that Demand media nets more than 10,000 freelance writers, daily production of 4000~6000 articles, scattered sites under the site, editors to ensure that the quality of the article balanced unity. According to Alexa (the website that publishes the World rank of website) November 1 rank shows, Demand Media's biggest ehow website global synthesis rank is 122, in the United States, its traffic already ranked 44th. "We combine the essence of media production with new technology," said Jeremy Reed, vice president of the Demand Media Content production department, Jeremy Ride. Supporters of Demand media said: "Undeniably, Demand Media has created a cultural creative model that has made it commercially successful." It builds a virtual authoring organization that allows creative people in isolated environments to collaborate through the web, allowing freelancers to replace professional elites in the creation of cultural products. However, some insiders commented that because the demand media site does not pursue the content of its creation of how high "nutrition", only the pursuit of high clicks, "this poor article to earn search engine money, like a cultural pipeline of large ' content dump '." In this regard, Richard Rosenbratt has published a number of "revisit rate", he said: "We have a rough statistics, at least 800,000 users per month are willing to visit the site more than two times." This means that Demand media visitors are not only found through search engines, but also that information about the site is useful. "Demand Media is the essence of the article, or garbage?" Netizens may have a better say. Demand Media by keyword content is the way to create cultural creativity, or cultural assembly line? The answer to this question may have to do with the durability of demand media. Google is a risk factor, "Demand media and Google are symbiotic relationships. I don't think demand media is a content farm. "February 25, 2011, Google adjusted the search algorithm," The goal is to reduce the rankings of low-quality sites, and Google's disclosure on the website of the "bad site" screen capture is considered to be from demand Media. For the outside universal recognitionFor "Google's War on demand media," Rosenblatt responded. However, no matter how Richard Rosenbratt, it will not change the fact that demand media in the eyes of investors "parasitic" Google. The next day of the Google adjustment algorithm, Demand media shares fell 4%. In fact, as early as August 2010, Demand Media filed an initial public offering application report to the Securities and Exchange Commission. Demand Media This move surprised everyone, and was teased as "wild Lily Spring." It is noteworthy that in the "Risk Factors" section of the report, Demand Media also admits that "about One-fourth of the revenue relies on Google keyword click ads." Google may use its expertise in keyword search to compete with algorithms-driven content providers such as demand Media. In response to the 2011 Google search algorithm changes, there are foreign media said: "Google algorithm changes interrupted demand media's ' one leg '." "To meet the demands of Google and advertisers, Demand Media has to spend a lot of time and money on the quality of the article." According to Demand Media 2011 Annual Report, Demand Media revenue 3. . 2.5 billion dollars and a loss of 19 million dollars. "We are adapting to the development trend of the Internet to diversify the flow of traffic." The Ehow Web site's article attracts traffic from Facebook, Twitter, Digg sites, and apps like live fervent. "Rosenblatt said. Statistics show that 51% of demand media traffic came from Google in 2012, compared with 59% in 2011. Google's threats, however, cannot be ignored. It is understood that Google chief economist Hall Varian (Hal Varian) and the web Spam group responsible for a patent-"identify the lack of search content"-through the use of search engine statistics, to find the search "insufficient theme." Whether or not Google will make this information available to publishers or content providers, Google's use of its dominant position in search trends and the prospect of control in the "Content generation System" market is a demand media jittery topic. The author notes Demand Media mode is difficult to achieve successfully in China the combination of editing mode and UGC (user production content) is the way demand media works. In a nutshell, Demand media is a "new medium" that walks traditional media lines. "Eyeball + yield" is the characteristics of demand media production content. At first glance, DeMand media on the key words to determine, and we are concerned about Google Hot List, Baidu is similar to the list, but we do far less than demand media professional, effective. In the country, through search engine to determine the key words and profit from a few sites, the basic model is: Search engine to find the keyword-collection "Other site articles + part of the original" Create Content-through SEO (Search engine Optimization), exchange links, soft text to promote the way to obtain traffic-earn advertising fees Domestic Small Encyclopedia (www.baike.com) do more "style", it and demand media like the launch of various encyclopedia open platform, invite the experts to provide knowledge and solutions. It is understood that the small encyclopedia is currently not profitable, the future will be targeted to provide accurate advertising marketing services. The author thinks, the problem that the domestic copy demand Media mode needs to solve is: how to realize the fast aggregation of quality, original content, and form scale effect? First, Demand media is different from fast, low-cost replication mode (such as group purchase), it requires a lot of input, the threshold is higher. For example, accurate algorithms and website operation and maintenance require a high level of technical development team. Second, to some extent, Chinese-style demand media lacks the necessary profitable soil, and Baidu's "bidding rankings" undermine a fair and impartial search mechanism, making it hard to replicate the flow-splitting profits of Google, which is less likely to interfere with search results; Baidu Encyclopedia of the development of Chinese-style demand Media commercial risk is great. Because there is no more information, so the author is difficult to carry out in-depth analysis. Controversy or imitation, it is undeniable that Demand media has a strong ability to operate content, he relies on content generation mechanism and content operation system, formed a perfect from content production to content operation of the virtuous cycle system.