As we all know, a content site needs content in order to survive. And most importantly, you need a constant stream of content to grow. There are people who build sites with a certain number of pages and leave them at that. Then they build another site. This type of business model can work if you stick to niche markets where there is very little competition. However, I prefer to build a site and add a personal approach to it.
This creates a problem. How to keep supplying the site with content? I’m going to mention a lot of ways. This is not an exhaustive list. I will simply list the alternatives that I consider to be the most important at this time.
Ways to Generate Content for Blog or Web Business
1.- Write By Yourself
This is the hardest way to create content. It is also the most time consuming, but nevertheless it is the one that brings the most rewards and benefits. If you have mastered the topic you are covering, then you should be the one to write about it. I try to write at least one article or review every week for my tech blog. The advantage of writing the articles yourself is that the article is unique and of quality. The downside is that it takes a lot of time and dedication.
2.- Hire Someone To Write
If you can’t write yourself, then you can hire someone to do the work. How should you pay them? Some sites use full-time writers who are paid a salary and others pay per article. If you choose this alternative you must ensure that there is a contract between you and your writers stating that the articles belong to you once they are finished. I have seen many cases where writers, after they have finished and published articles, use them to create their own websites. This is a situation that occurs frequently and everything must be done to prevent it from occurring.
Another thing I do is hire writers from other tech websites to write articles or reviews for my tech sites. In this way I already know previously the quality of the writer. Hardware reviews take time and a lot of testing. Compared to writing reviews that only take a few hours. This is a good way to take advantage of the tests the writer has already done. This way I know what you can do in a review for the same amount of money. It is a good strategy. However, you can do this only with the approval of the owner of the other website. Some websites don’t like their writers serving other sites that address the same topics.
3.- Urge Readers To Write
A good source for articles can come from your readers. Everyone wants their 15 minutes of fame and writing an article on their favorite site is a good way to do it. The main problem with articles that readers submit is quality. Some of my tech sites get a lot of articles from readers, but most of them can’t be published as they are not good. If you accept articles from readers, be sure to add a page that clearly indicates the characteristics that articles must have in order to be approved and later published.
4.- Trade In Articles
To maintain a flow of content, I sometimes exchange articles with other websites. Each one chooses an old article from his counterpart, to be published. For our readers the old article will be something new. The advantage of this alternative is that it requires very little effort and is only needed by mutual agreement between websites. However, to get the most out of the article and not fall into content duplication, we can do a little writing to update the article content as of the publication date, but it will only be a minimal amount of work.
5.- Re-Publish Old Articles
This is a little trick used to get new content. Reposting older articles is an easy and enjoyable way to create new content. It is also advisable to update the information contained in the article or add additional information to make it more consistent as of the re-publication date.
6.- Use RSS
When it comes to filling a mediocre site with content, many take the easy route by using RSS. They select a number of sites as the source and create a new site with nothing but RSS feeds. There are even companies that sell you an entire RSS-based system. You can find different categories, like technology or cars in which I guess they pull a bunch of channels based on your search parameters and create a site for you. Then you will add Google ads and see a roll of money. At least that’s what these companies say.
This is not to say that you should not use RSS feeds to add content to your site. It simply means that RSS should not be the content of your site. RSS is good for stuffing. It should never be the main content.
7.- Private Label Items
Known as Private Label Rights, or PLR articles which are a new twist on content creation. Specially designed for mediocre sites as PLR offers users a quick and dirty way to generate content very fast and cheap. Private label articles are special rights or licenses that you purchase, which allow and legally authorize you to edit and publish these types of articles on your website. You can even include your own name at the end of each article, as if you were the author of these. You can get 200 brand name items for just 15 cents a piece.
The main problem with PLR is quality. Most of the items are junk. They are designed to take advantage of AdSense ads as they are keyword rich, but have very little really useful content. Another problem is content duplication, as you will not be the only one using the same PLRs. The more people use them, the more diluted it becomes. It also creates a lot of confusion, because people see the same article, but with many different authors. If you are going to use this alternative, then you must rewrite the articles to avoid this problem. However, users of the original article are likely to use your rewritten article as well. I will probably write an article or a case study on this topic of public lending law in the future.
8.- Free Articles Services
Free item services are the favorite playground of many mediocre people because it is free and there are an unlimited number of items that can be grabbed. There are two main problems with using free items. The first is quality, most of them are just rubbish. The second is content duplication. Google frowns on duplicate content and due to the latter the site is penalized.
Free items should only be used as filler material, because it is not unique. Ultimately, it will be the unique content that will drive traffic to your site. And it is for this reason that you should stick to the top five forms of content production and use the last three only for filler (or mediocre sites).