We always say, blogs with unique and quality content will sustain in the long run even after going through hurdles in the initial stages. Such kind of sites do not even need much SEO to be done, if the On Page is properly done, the backlinks will be generated automatically. People have come up with many different ideas in various kinds of niche. Whether it may be a coupon site, a jobs site, E-commerce, or any other kind of niche, they created a trend among the bloggers and among the people.
One such unique idea is the “Viral Content” blogs. Recently, in the past 6 months or so, there has been a tremendous increase in the number of sites with viral content like ScoopWhoop, StoryPick, Viral Chronics etc. After a lot of research I have lately discovered various facts, which I am going to share with you, about such kind of sites and how they perform with the different type of targeted audience.
The Origin:
People want entertainment! That’s the main point of these websites. Initially, these kind of viral content was seen in a site called “Buzzfeed” which mainly targeted latest news, humor, entertainment, stories, etc. which has shown tremendous user interaction and has reached the higher level in terms of revenue and traffic.
India, has never seen such a site before and there were very less audience who actually knew about Buzzfeed. 
So this has lead to the origin of ScoopWhoop – India’s Buzzfeed. The concept was entirely new to the Indian audience which was the biggest advantage of ScoopWhoop in the initial stages. The Desi Style of Buzzfeed was a super hit concept for the Indian audience.
After ScoopWhoop, there were many other sites which came into origin with almost similar concept like Storypick, ViralChronics, ViralStories, etc. The scope of these sites is vast, and ScoopWhoop has already proved it.
Traffic Generation & Power of Social Media:
Social Media plays a very important role when it comes to traffic generation of such kind of sites. The main aim of the site is to reach the targeted audience which can be achieved to the fullest through social media like Facebook, Twitter, G+ etc.
Targeting Audience:
Any type of audience can be targeted through such kind of sites. From educated to uneducated, from people who want only entertainment to the people who want to get inspired with the stories, from kids to older people, any kind of people can be targeted and traffic can be generated.
The simple thing is that, if you write content which people generally go through every day in their daily life, then obviously people will read it and also share it with their friends. This is the best way to get viral.
Another option building up a high quality brand of the website in Social Media and should also have a strong background of Facebook pages and twitter followers.
Earning Potential and Methods to Generate Revenue:
Sites with viral content can be kept under the category of a big project, not only depending on the traffic you can generate and the number of creative ideas you need to put in, but also with the earning potential of the site.
Trust me guys, it has a huge potential in terms of revenue! The basic advantages one can carry with these kind of sites it that, it has brand value, quality content, huge traffic. With all these in the bag, we can easily convert it into a high earning website or rather term it as an Online Media.
Different Types of Revenue Models:
1. Google Adsense:
Everyone already know about Google Adsense and how we can generate revenue from it. You can obviously generate high income through Adsense, since the traffic which you pull into the traffic is huge. And also the CPC and CTR for such kind of sites in high, because of the unique content and global content, the targeted audience are all over the world.
2. Sponsored Posts:
I would say, Sponsored Posts in the biggest and the best type of revenue model for viral content blogs. To get these sponsored posts you should obviously get your Alexa Rank down to a very good number and also build a high brand value to your blog.
For instance, when you look at ScoopWhoop, it publishes a lot of sponsored articles everyday. Here’s one of the examples of how they convert a sponsored post into a normal kind of article they usually write. And most of the people reading it, wouldn’t even notice that it is a paid article.
3. Direct Advertisers
Similar to the sponsored posts, you will definitely get many direct advertisers in the form of banner ads or posts. Who will pay you more than you expect depending upon the Alexa and also the traffic of your blog. You can obviously make huge bucks with these.
4. Affiliate Marketing
Another effective way to make money through this kind of blog is through affiliate marketing. Most of you must be already knowing about affiliates and how they can be optimized to its maximum extent, these blogs will enable you to increase your sales with more user interactivity.
For instance, how about writing an article like “10 things you can do with your Iphone 6” and give your affiliate link, with the kind of audience you build to the site, you can definitely expect conversions.
5. Banner Ads
With the amount of traffic you can be able to drive to the site, you can easily go for banner ads, like Buy Sell Ads, Weblogads, etc. Usually, the banner revenue which you can generate through banner ads depends upon the traffic you are capable of driving to the site, so huge traffic is required.
Scope of Viral Content Sites:
Most of you either had an idea of all this before or you have learnt it now, but there can be a lot more beyond just a blog. I have previously termed Online Media. But what does it actually mean?
With the amount of following you build and the brand value you get in the online world, you can expand to an extent beyond having just a blog. The site can be expanded into Youtube channel with creative ideas, pranks, humor, entertainment and inspirational videos, hiring more and more creative people to write better articles, build a better social media in all the platforms enabling much better social interaction.
And it doesn’t end there, you can even pull in investors or stake holders which will lead you somewhere else which you might have never expected. One such live example is ScoopWhoop, which has recently sold 36.5% of its stake to Bharti SoftBank.
You can read the article here: ScoopWhoop sells 36.5% stake to Bharti SoftBank
Conclusion:
So, after all the research and knowledge about the sites with viral content, their pros and cons, I would say doing such kind of project is huge and has a lot of scope even in the future. Working on these sites is not so difficult but believe me, not everyone can do it! As I already mentioned, you are not only building a website to drive traffic, but you are building a Brand in the market, you need to manage the huge social media on various platforms, need to create innovative content to which people can connect easily, maintain an online channel on youtube which is another big story. You need hell lot of skills about marketing as a whole, starting such sites is easy, you can simply do it with Rs. 110 but there is a bigger story when it comes to maintenance, content, videos, writers, etc. So, finally I would say, its a very good project to take up, but not everyone can do it and its not at all easy!
