I remember reading Wired’s article about Demand Media in 2009, which seemed ingenious and insanely profitable at the time. Find desperate freelance content producers struggling with the death of traditional media, pay them as little as possible, then sit back and reap the AdSense rainbow of wealth. Fast-forward to 2011 and a Google algorithm update, suddenly things are not looking so cheery.
The content farm business model is built around keyword advertising potential, which in turn relies on organic search results to monetize. That’s great when your SEO-baited content is performing, but traffic to eHow.com is reportedly down 29% since the algorithm update, dragging Demand Media’s stock prices down to their lowest levels ever.
Looking ahead, crowdsourced Q&A sites are well-positioned to overtake the content farms, and they produce extremely insightful and highly accurate answers to even the most obscure questions.
Whenever I have a programming problem, it literally takes about 5-10 minutes of browsing on Stack Overflow to find the exact answer I’m looking for. Likewise, Quora is emerging as a valuable tool for insight into many industries, with answers provided by professionals who are passionate to help the community. Do you honestly think a freelance videographer being paid $200 for 10 videos really cares about the quality of the content? There’s very little long-term value being created, just a steady flow of keyword-optimized text.
Content farms were quite successful in seeding the web with mediocre fodder, essentially staking claim to uncharted regions of valuable search revenue. Now it looks like they’re about to be left stranded out there on the frontier, as the infrastructure winds its way to more fertile lands.
Illustration: Stephen Doyle via Wired
