Article marketers versus Demand Studios

geomark

geomark

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Jul 12, 2008
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Read an interesting story about Demand Studios. Gist of it is they are a huge content farm that cranks out thousands of articles a day using members/freelancers who write B-grade stuff for cheap. They monetize by surrounding the articles with advertising. Their edge is they have a very good algorithm that looks at search volumes, ppc bid prices, and search engine rankings to decide what articles and videos have the highest value and need to be produced. Then they farm those titles out to thousands of freelancers. They are working on scaling to 1 million articles a month in the near term. They have relationships with the search engines that enable their algorithm to continuously comb through vast numbers of searches and bids.

Question is, how in the hell can individual article marketers compete with this? Demand have huge resources, picked up $200 million in VC a while ago, have firehose access to keyword volumes and bids. When they are producing 1 million articles a month on every subject that will rank and draw advertisers they are going to kill. Or maybe a better question, is it possible to leverage off these guys?
 


geomark said:
Read an interesting story about Demand Studios. Gist of it is they are a huge content farm that cranks out thousands of articles a day using members/freelancers who write B-grade stuff for cheap. They monetize by surrounding the articles with advertising. Their edge is they have a very good algorithm that looks at search volumes, ppc bid prices, and search engine rankings to decide what articles and videos have the highest value and need to be produced. Then they farm those titles out to thousands of freelancers. They are working on scaling to 1 million articles a month in the near term. They have relationships with the search engines that enable their algorithm to continuously comb through vast numbers of searches and bids.

Question is, how in the hell can individual article marketers compete with this? Demand have huge resources, picked up $200 million in VC a while ago, have firehose access to keyword volumes and bids. When they are producing 1 million articles a month on every subject that will rank and draw advertisers they are going to kill. Or maybe a better question, is it possible to leverage off these guys?
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They say that McDonalds spends millions of dollars per year studying demographics, traffic flow etc, to determine where to build their new restaurants. Burger King spends nothing and simply builds wherever the new McDonalds go up.

The fuck does that have to do with article marketing? Simple, use their fancy algorithms for free, and copy their business model. Whatever articles/videos they'll pay for, you'll pay for - except you have no development costs. There's your leverage - my fee is 5%, PM me for my paypal info.
 
Still find it pretty hard to believe. Can it be simply farticle lol ? When I will read it on Google site - I will believe, recommend you to do the same.
 
Article is on Wired here

Quite a ways into it is this section:

"YouTube executives noticed that Demand was uploading hundreds of videos every day — pre-scrubbed by Demand’s own editors, explicitly designed to appeal to advertisers, and cheap enough to benefit from Google’s revenue-sharing business model. YouTube executives approached Demand, asked the company to join its revenue-sharing program, and encouraged it to produce as many videos as possible. Since then, the two companies have grown even closer. When YouTube’s sales team bemoaned the tiny supply of Spanish-language videos for it to run advertisements against, YouTube’s Hoffner called up Demand. Within weeks, Demand Studios started issuing Spanish-language assignments. Soon it had uploaded a few hundred clips to YouTube — everything from how to be “un buen DJ” to how to fix a bathroom towel bar. “I know we do deals with the ESPNs and ABCs of the world, but Demand is incredibly important to us,” says Hoffner (who is married to wired’s executive director of communications). “They fill up a lot of content across the site.”
 
Pretty amazing stuff. Someone that's taken article marketing and made a real business out of it. Bravo!

I love it... fantastic.
 
you mean like there's more opportunity for us to advertise our shit on these content pages? sound like an awesome news to me...
 
If they were doing off-page SEO for all the articles then I might feel nervous but they can't SEO every page on that kind of scale. And if they are outsourcing b-grade b.s., then why would the search engines give them so much love? It seems to me that their strength is simply size, but if you target specific topics/kw's with more precision than them then why wouldn't you be able to compete?
 
How does all this correlate with Google ranking algoritm ? So it means somebody BOUGHT their way to the top ?

Aren't that already hapening with articlesbase and ezinearticles ? They rank pretty high always.
 
Bombastic said:
If they were doing off-page SEO for all the articles then I might feel nervous but they can't SEO every page on that kind of scale. And if they are outsourcing b-grade b.s., then why would the search engines give them so much love? It seems to me that their strength is simply size, but if you target specific topics/kw's with more precision than them then why wouldn't you be able to compete?
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What he said.
 
I love stories of scale. When everyone else is just trying to make a couple bucks with rehashed article marketing. These guys thought big and went big. If article marketing works lets make an assembly line.

They're giving google what they want. As far as SEO I'm assuming by the process they go through they're not amazing but pretty decent. So they'll naturally gain backlinks from people that use the info. Even shitty content often naturally gets backlinks. Also, the power of the root domain will give them a lot of weight as well.

As far as buying their way to the top, by no means did they pay Google for anything. They found out what Google and the world wanted and then built a system to faciliate building that. Just like any other business.

Fucking Awesome! I love their creativity and gusto.

Don't hate congratulate.
 
Bombastic said:
And if they are outsourcing b-grade b.s., then why would the search engines give them so much love?
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That's something that just burns me. Little guys try that and get crapped on by Google. But because Demand is so big and fills gaps in YouTube content, at the request of YouTube no less, they love them.
 
And the content is utter crap. Here's one of the current featured articles on eHow, Demands main property. It's titled "How to Write Yourself a Check". Here it is in its entirety:

"Check your bank balance. You can do this in a number of ways. The easiest is to log onto your bank account online and check the balance. Or you can always call the number on the back of your ATM card to check the balance. Also, you can ask a bank teller at the bank to provide you with your balance.


Get your checkbook out. You will need a blank check and a pen to write yourself a check.


Write yourself a check for the amount you need. Enter the amount in words and again in figures in their respective sections. Date the check and sign it. Make it out to either your name or to "cash."


Cash the check. All you have to do is take the check to the bank and cash it, and you are all set.Be sure to bring a photo ID if you have lost your bankcard. Make sure that you enter the amount of the check in your check register."


I shit you not, that is the actual article. Link here


Not hatin' on Demand, actually think their approach is cool. Just hatin' how the big guys get away with crap the rest of us can't.
 
Too bad there is no advertising except google ads and those free-loto banner on top center.

But yeah, article is like "Sun is shining" lol
 
Demand Media is valued at something like 1.5 BILLION and it was started only like 4 years ago. All they fucking do is create shitty content.

I need to re-think my business model... lol
 
smaxor said:
I love stories of scale. When everyone else is just trying to make a couple bucks with rehashed article marketing. These guys thought big and went big. If article marketing works lets make an assembly line.

They're giving google what they want. As far as SEO I'm assuming by the process they go through they're not amazing but pretty decent. So they'll naturally gain backlinks from people that use the info. Even shitty content often naturally gets backlinks. Also, the power of the root domain will give them a lot of weight as well.

As far as buying their way to the top, by no means did they pay Google for anything. They found out what Google and the world wanted and then built a system to faciliate building that. Just like any other business.

Fucking Awesome! I love their creativity and gusto.

Don't hate congratulate.
Click to expand...

I agree, this is an awesome Business model. Anyone who hates it just hates themselves for not being the one to think of this.

Definitely a great idea.
 
Awesome awesome story.

Shows what scalability really means.

I definitely won't forget this story.
 
1.5 BILLION this is nuts, now think about other languages, there's money to be made here
 
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