Google recently announced that it’s going after content farms lowering the ranking of sites its new algorithm has identified as low-value. You know those annoying sites that offer absolutely nothing to the reader but a bunch of Adsense ads. This could make highly capitalized companies like Demand Media, Yahoo! and AOL shake in their boots as they continue to use their content development workflows to cram out crowd-sourced McContent purchased at, what I consider, sub-par wages.
As I enjoy my first day of corporate freedom and ponder which ventures to take on next I say ‘it’s a bout time!’ and ‘I love you Google’!!!
I am a Reformed Spammer
I admit I used to spam the Internet. My most evil accomplishment was, in 2002, scraping Amazon’s entire Apparel & Jewelry category and remixing its 40,000 products into a snazzy ‘Catalog of Everything’. Within only 14 days, I was making a lot of affiliate dough. I cannot take credit though because I was doing this at a strategic time before Amazon.com was fully SEO optimized and before they had even officially launched the Apparel section. It was easy pickings…
What was most interesting to me during the 3-4 years where I earned part of a living from affiliate revenue was tracking behaviors and purchases from women consumers. In fact I was ALWAYS involved in building sites for women because I was not interested in making money from dubious offers or from practices I didn’t agree with (what SEO peeps call PPC: Porn, Pharma & Casinos.) Jewelry was my thing and, as a jewelry obsessed gal myself, I noticed how shopping channels use completely empty benefits as ‘pride of ownership’ to sell what are basically useless objects. I fully knew that my riches came from people buying stuff on the Internet and filling up their credit cards, a practice that was not sustainable and as the debt clock ran out of spaces to display the U.S. national debt, I erased more than a quarter million pages on 75 women-targeted ‘affiliate revenue gardens’ I owned. Part of my decision also came from my research into the totally unethical practices of large-scale gem traders. I still wonder how, diamonds, the most unethical products in the world has remained a symbol of unity and love across so many generations.
So I moved on to using my WordPress ninja skills and coaching solopeneurs to build online businesses by blogging rather than just building boring static product catalogs. I now had to work with highly-motivated individuals who have the skills to produce sincere high-quality content (or re-mix their intellectual property for a new audience). As a coach, my implication is minimal compared to the time it takes to drive a blog on a daily basis. Sure, it’s easy to make 500$ per month with a website but… who can live on 500$ a month. In order to get beyond that point you need an engaged audience. This audience of engaged readers will help you develop your niche content over the few years it might take to earn a full-time revenue from your media property.
The Hardware Revolution
I am in awe of my former partner’s blog Hardware Revolution. Mathieu used to tell me all the time that he wanted to be like me and ‘work from home’ (at 20 and without a high school diploma, he was working as a barrista at Second Cup). He would ideate a bunch of potential ideas for an online business. Together we built a business around selling alpaca sweaters a neighbour brought back from Ecuador. The product was beautiful, the profit margin was ideal, the deal seemed perfect! As we started I was set on ordering custom patterns and even making an awesome line of dog sweaters. Unfortunately, the said sweaters were not made of 100% Alpaca. Without a reliable source of exceptional quality products, we closed the shop because what’s the point of selling crap… everybody sells crap these days. However, during that time, my sweetie would burn my ear off with talks of building his next state of the art overclocked and water cooled monster of a computer and all I heard was ‘bla bla bla’. He did build such a machine and it became obvious to me that Mathieu’s unique ability was figuring out how to build an ideal computer by choosing the best bits from a million possible parts.
Success online can be attributed to passion. Over the years I have built countless websites about different things I was passionate about from antiques to flowers. I always found it fun to reach an audience with whom to discuss OUR passion. None of my ventures were very commercial (it was long before easy affiliate monetization) but the attraction for me was practicing development, building a CMS that would crap out html pages automatically, building widgets, scraping websites and whatever else I though would be cool to do. The skills I developed during this period would serve to build two different SaaS systems (in 2000 and 2002) that had subscribers but died for lack of start-up financing.
Mathieu would have to be 8 times more successful than others to realize his goal of living from his venture!
Since I had the experience, skills and tools to build a system to support a content venture, I set out to help Mathieu build a website that guide others to build their own computer. For readers, it would provide much more satisfaction than ‘pride of ownership’ or that quickly fading jolt you get from buying something at a point of sale. With Hardware Revolution Mathieu would exchange with others who are on their quest to build the most awesome computer they could imagine but without the expensive deception that could come from let’s say mismatching voltage! Please understand here that there are thousands of sites dealing with computers on the web and that affiliate revenue from computer equipment is 7-8 times less than other products (typically 1-1.5% as opposed to 7-8% for books and apparel) and you will understand that this venture was not at all obvious from the get go. In practical terms that means Mathieu would have to be 8 times more successful than others to realize his goal of living from his venture! But Mathieu’s knowledge of, and passion for, the topic was what we figured would set him apart from the rest.
The first 6 to 8 months were slow and then one spring morning in 2008 I was in my garage helping my ex-husband start up his hibernating vintage Ferrarri and I heard a shriek of laughter coming from the upstairs office. Hardware Revolution had just made it to the front page of Digg! Mind you that didn’t mean instant success and riches, just that it would help Mathieu reach a new audience as he continued to produce quality content. Awards, kudos, compliments, tips and getting ‘Dugg’ really help bloggers stay the course and continue the hard work of blogging. In 2009, Mathieu scaled up his hosting and maximized his affiliate potential working a full schedule to keep up the blog and taking I.T. contracts on the side to supplement his income. In 2010, Hardware Revolution sold more than 2 million in parts netting Mathieu, who is now 23, a salary equivalent to someone who has an engineering education and good I.T. job. As someone who does not have a university degree (I studied Tourism in tech college) and works really hard to earn, as an oft discriminated against ‘old’ woman, a salary that matches my 16 years of experience building complex web systems, I totally admire Mathieu for building such an empire in only a few years. I want to make it clear here that Mathieu is 100% independant and that over 99% of his revenue comes from hardware sales, the rest comes from ‘happy reader’ tips and banner ads. Mathieu does not receive ANY promotional consideration, manufacturer bribes or products. He does not attend trade shows or drink the corporate beer at industry events. I have yet to find anybody else in Canada who has built the same kind of independent business. (If you have, I would love to know you and write about you as well.)
In 2011, we will work to expand on the brand and I am sure we will benefit from the help provided by our Publisher Account Executive at Commission Junction.
The Next Adventure
I am still waiting to find interesting affiliate opportunities in Quebec that would make it worthwhile to build a content site in French. But in the meantime, I will benefit from Google’s decision to kill content farms because it creates a wonderful opportunity to build, with my spouse, a sincere high-quality 100% original content site. Google’s improved spam algorithm give me (and my clients) a better chance of reaching more readers and earning enough money and engagement to survive the first 12 months of labor.
The last secret I will share is that while I worked in a company that catered very well to women consumers and tried, without much success, to push my employer to take it to the next level, I will now concentrate on building niches for guys 🙂