Viral is the buzz in town, actually around the globe. Why not create a viral news or content website? Benefit from tonnes of visitors and loads of advertising revenue that such websites generate. A good viral website can earn $100-$1000/day in advertisement income.
Online content is one of the most promising avenues of income. A large number of individuals and companies are making lots of money online generating content and making them go VIRAL! Why should you be left out?
In this post, we will learn the basics of how to create VIRAL websites with content that siphons traffic from multiple traffic sources such as Facebook, Pinterest & Twitter, and generate loads of money for you from the first day itself. You can get extremely high-quality traffic from the most trusted and popular sites on the Web, such as CNN, Huffington Post, Yahoo & The Guardian for just a few cents ($0.01).
We are going to create a viral website similar to Upworthy.com & Viralnova.com, and many more similar viral content websites.
How to Start a Viral Website
Creating an awesome viral content site that suckers traffic like anything isn’t rocket science. Actually, you can build such websites in a matter of a few hours with an investment of around $100.
What you need:
- Shared web hosting for around US $100
- WordPress.org CMS (FREE)
- WordPress themes from WordPress.org or any theme of your choosing
- Basic WordPress plug-ins for SEO & other additional features
If you are new to building/creating websites, you can hire someone to install WordPress on your hosting and also provide you a custom logo and some general design improvements to make the site look good.
You can hire freelancers on Fiverr.com (just $5), Elance & oDesk, etc. You may want to learn to make websites, so that you can have creative control in the future — getting the right automated software testing tools and learning HTML is a good start.
Be Social on Facebook & Twitter
Be active on social media websites and get your readers join an email newsletter which updates them whenever a new post is added. It will serve as a ready traffic source when you have a good fan following on such social media websites.
Let us say your Facebook page has around 100,000 fans. Such a fan following means each page will get at least 1,000 views instantly. This is a captive source of instant traffic. Whenever you add a new content, just share the link on social media to get some traffic instantly. The bigger the fan base, the more traffic and ad revenue you generate. When people share your content on Facebook and Twitter, they help you bring more traffic to your site and help you earn more.
Get a newsletter and ask people to sign up for instant alerts about new articles. You can add a pop-up inviting your readers to join your newsletter. You can send an email when you add new articles and drive instant traffic to your website.
- Get your own Facebook fan page.
- Join Pinterest for viral image referrals
- Create an account on Twitter
- Ask your visitors to join an Email Newsletter
Viral Content Website: Curated Content That’s Interesting & Engaging
Once your site is ready, it’s time to add great interesting and engaging content that will attract readers and will persuade them to share it on their social networking profiles. With engaging content and some advertising to buy traffic, you can start making money from the very first day you start adding content.
For viral websites, its content is the backbone of traffic and revenue. It is important to ensure that the content you add is interesting and engaging to visitors. Your visitors should be compelled to share and comment on the posts.
Most of the viral sites rely on content curation to add interesting articles and posts that go viral and generate tremendous amount of traffic. For such websites, we need content that elicits curiosity.
Explore the popular viral sites on the Internet and discover what kind of content are they spinning day in and day out. Scour the web, Youtube and Facebook to see what is trending. Look for ideas around the web to generate interesting content for your own website.
Look at the latest trends. Refer to Google Trends and see what is most popular nowadays. Weave some interesting content around latest events and happenings to engage readers and draw eyeballs by making the content more relevant in the present context.
If you are not very good at writing content, hire a local freelancer or outsource the content work via websites such as Fiverr.com, Elance or oDesk.
Let us do some basic maths of viral content business.
You added around 100 posts over the period of a month. All of these posts are interesting and have the potential to go viral. However, not all of them will be a success. Assuming you paid $5 per post to a writer, you spent $500 in total. If just 10 of them go viral generating 10,000 page views each, you can earn $100 only.
If one of the posts went balastically viral and reached around 100,000 page views, you get $500 from just one post. In this viral content business, our objective is to have a good number of viral content that bring 100 times the money spent on generating that article.
1. Viral Content & List Post Websites
Go viral with interesting list posts that are easy to generate. Such posts are also proven to arouse curiosity and persuade readers to share with their friends. Some sample titles/topics for list post will be:
- 10 Freaky Haunted Homes
- 10 World’s Most Expensive Homes
- 10 Notorious Serial Killers in History
- 10 Awesome Places for Honeymoon You Never Heard
- 10 Wealthiest People in World You Didn’t Know About
2. Alternative News Websites
Mainstream media ignores lots of news stories that you can pick and publish on your news site. Demand for alternative news websites is catching up and there is an immense potential to create a niche in this space.
Unlike list post sites, you will have to focus on a geographical region for sourcing your alternative news content. Though this niche is more resource intensive and requires more work, it can be used to generate a good and viable business in the news industry.
Here are some successful alternative news websites:
- ZeroHedge.com
- Trueactivist.com
- Infowars.com
Advertise for Quick Traffic
If you are interested in the viral website business, you cannot ignore promoting your content using various avenues such as Facebook sponsored posts, Twitter and traffic generation through content recommendation widgets driving traffic from popular websites on the Web.
Traffic to content can be driven using networks that advertise your content across the web on some of the most visited sites. You will be driving high-quality traffic through these websites, which is almost unlimited amount of traffic.
You do not have to pay for your traffic but most successful viral sites do promote and advertise their websites. You can continue paying for ad-based traffic until you reach a critical mass with a solid social media presence and lots of newsletter subscribers.
Monetize Your Site
One of the most popular way monetizing websites is placing ads from Google AdSense. If you don’t have an account with Google Adsense, get one. You can apply for an Adsense account from any website with original and interesting content. The website should be at least a month old and it should be generating a decent amount of traffic. Google Adsense is less likely to let you in with a dead website with no content and traffic.
You can also join ad networks such as BuySellAds.com, Chitika.com and Media.net
Do you know any company or advertiser that would be interested in placing ads on your site? If yes, go ahead and ask them for sponsored ads or banner ads or any other advertisement contract. Direct selling ads with a long-term contract can also be a good source of reliable income.
Testing & Improvisation
Once you have your website ready and start generating traffic, optimise and experiment with your sites. What type of content is most valuable for your website? Where should the ads be placed to generated most revenue? Should your theme color really works in your favour? Could you benefit from a better website design?
Don’t turn complacent. Keep your website up to date and keep improving it to stay relevant online.