How to start a news website: This tutorial is a practical guideline on how you can create and run a successful local online newspaper portal like CNN, Washington Post, Reuters, Aljazeera, eNCA, etc.
Steps To Make An Online News Website
Before opening and launching out, please know that the approximate starting cost is between USD150-430
Step 1: Choose A News Niche
There are typically two types of news and that is; bad or good news. There are typically three forms of news niche and they are:
- Online Newspaper Portal
Online newspaper portals are typically run by the print media houses. In essence, the main newspaper company has a print paper version ( which is their main business model) and they publish/post the print version contents on their websites.
- Local News Website
I always and will always recommend that starters or Journalists intending to launch in this niche should start locally. Running a local news website is quite different from having a newspaper parent company. Anybody, with little financial capital, can start. Starting locally gives you higher leverage and an easy way of launching out.
- International News Site
CNN, Aljazeera are examples of an international news site. One thing about them is that they are not running a physical newspaper print version. They only concentrate on the website and their media outlet ( basically TV).
Copying News From Other Websites
One thing should be understood and known; A news website, online portal, and or local channel is respected for undiluted, original, non-partisan news and stories. This is why copying news from other websites should not be practiced by you at all. If you are aiming for a long term goal and building it to be a successful business, why stain and kill your journey by plagiarism from the beginning?
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Though I started by copying and scrapping other content from authority sites, I was both penalized by Google, search engines, and humans. I learned painfully and since then, I decided to do the right thing. If you want to run a news aggregation website, you can read this guideline and if you want a news blog, check here.
During the trump/Clinton campaign in 2016, Facebook, Twitter, Google, and other major internet search engines/social media sites improved their algorithm to detect plagiarized content and weed them out. The issue of copying and pasting news stories used to work before this time, but from then, it has stopped.
Even, if you have millions of followers on Facebook and Twitter, you will discover that little traffic is coming from them even if you share your posts on them.
I explained the issue of permission, laws, and legal developments when opening this type of niche business below.
How to Create a News Website in India, UK, USA, and others
Whether you are based in India, UK ( United Kingdom), USA, or other countries, the same guidelines you are about to read in this tutorial apply to all. You may probably need to find out about the regulations as earlier mentioned above.
- Without purpose, abuse is inevitable!!
One thing you should know is that you should not try to go into this kind of business just because your friend is doing that and he/she is successful. You must have a genuine passion for it. Your passion fuels your resilience, persistence, perseverance, commitment, and ability to stay focused.
Some fundamental truths are painful to know but important for you to understand.
- Start a local news website
This is just a personal suggestion from my own experience. You may not like this suggestion because you are probably thinking of running an online news website similar to the New York Times, Washington Post, Huffington Post, CNN, e.t.c
Note, these are major corporations, and to run a site like them, you will need to invest a lot of money hiring writers, getting an expensive server ( stand-alone server), maintaining it, etc. The best suggestion is to start from the local perspective and as you grow, you scale up your growth and expansion.
From personal experience, starting a local news website should cost approximately USD180-450 per year (excluding fee for writers and to some extent Facebook Ads). I am taking into account the cost of a domain name, website hosting, premium templates ( WordPress themes), cost of your internet connections (data).
- Be the First to Break a news story
No matter how popular or unpopular a story might be, always try to be the first person to publish such news. It carries more weight and you are seen as an authority. During the trump election campaign, some notable independent news portals and websites predicted that trump will win and today, they are seen as an authority when it comes to news.
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People subscribe to their news updates because they feel safe knowing that these sites carry well-researched news and stories.
To be a success factor in this niche, try to always lead the way!!
- Have a plan
This simply implies that you should have a solid plan for the immediate short term and long term. Some of the things to consider in your plans are: how to get fund to start ( especially if you are bootstrapping everything all by yourself), how to maintain the funding for almost a year ( before consistent and reasonable profits start rolling in, this is needed if you are considering boosting your posts on Facebook, running Facebook Ads and probably paying your writers), maintenance and daily running of the website ( are you going to run it by yourself 24 hours a day or get help from your girlfriend/wife and/or probably outsource these tasks to a third party).
- Consistency is the Key
Please note that punctuality and consistency is the life blood required for the survival and success of the site.
You need to have a plan on how you are going to handle this aspect. For a beginner, you must post at least five ( 5 -10) stories/news in a day. You need to get your audience on social media busy and engaged with your consistent postings.
- You are alone
When you are about to start your news website and launch out, please note that you are alone in this project, except if you are a team from the beginning. You will need to invest a considerable amount of time to write your articles, news stories/specials all by yourself before editors, columnists will start contributing.
- Build a Team
No man is an Island!!
To be honest with you, doing everything all by yourself will cause fatigue, burn out, and slow growth to you and the site.
The best option is to start with your spouse, girlfriend, or friend that believes in your dream project.
- Forget About making money in the first six months
This is one of the bitter truth you may not want to hear when starting a news website business. I am not saying your news website business will not give you money in the first six months, but you should not even think of it. Your focus is on building and growing the site on a daily and consistent basis.
And to be honest with you, you may realize that only trickles of earnings will be dropping to your account for the first six months, this is normal for any business and this online venture is not an exception. Do not give up, maintain, and pump up the momentum.
- Legislation and Laws
As of now, the online news business segment is an unregulated niche and there is no legislation stopping anyone from launching out.
That is why most individuals even the big online behemoths (Facebook, Google, Amazon e.t.c) are fighting the government that ‘the government should not censor or try to regulate the industry because it is going to affect them, including you and me!!
However, one thing I know is that once you start making money and profit from your news website ( or online newspaper), you need to do the right thing by filing taxes, reporting revenue, and probably getting it registered as a company/business entity.
The summary is this: you are free to start your newspaper website portal without being caged by any law or legislation; once you start making money, obey the laws of the land you are and do the RIGHT THING!!
- Be a thorough Professional
By being a thorough professional means you should run the business concerning people’s privacy, publish only genuine stories, do not use the medium to harass people, blaspheme, or trying to use the medium to support a particular political party.
The essence of journalism and news is to be transparent and report up to date, accurate news/stories; stick to this and you will be recognized as an authority very soon.
Step 2: Buy WordPress News Themes
We are gradually going into the whole concept of how you can build your site. Getting the right design is of importance because of branding, professional perspective, and your long terms success (from search engines- Google, Facebook, etc).
In this 21st century, designing your news website is no longer an impossible task if you do not know about website designing or programming. The answer is in the use of WordPress platform.
WordPress software now powers more than 30% of all websites out there ( according to W3Techs) and I am going to show you how to create a news website in WordPress. Virtually all online news portal is a WordPress news website built with this simple to use the software.
What you need to do is to approach WordPress designing companies and buy their professionally looking templates ( it is called WordPress themes) for as low as USD 35-USD120. The fee is usually a one time fee and you will use the themes forever ( though, some companies require you to be paying maintenance fees annually – usually around USD5-50).
Some recommended online news templates built specifically for this project are listed below:
1
2
3
4
5
6
You will find all the templates/WordPress themes above at MYTHEMESHOP COMPANY
7
8
9
You will find all the templates/WordPress themes above at STUDIOPRESS
10
5
You will find all the templates/WordPress themes above at Themeforest
When you visit these companies, search for your preferred designs (you can type newspaper, news, magazine keywords in their search box), buy them, and download the ZIP files on your computer. Once done, just relax; continue reading the tutorial (we will come back on how you will install it in the course of this tutorial)
I will be using the first template (template 1) as an example of the installation and configuration).
Step 3: Buy Domain Name And Webhosting
The best Webhosting company for a news website is Bluehost. Before going to hosting, you need to think of the sort of name you will call your news website. The name you give it is also going to be the technical name the web understands.
For your hosting, Use my link below and get started for just $2.95/month (63% off your hosting plan) from Bluehost AND also get a free domain name registration
For example, www.nytimes.com, www.washingtonPost.com, www.huffingtonPost.com, www.reuters.com, www.timeslive.co.za, www.facebook.com, are all called New York Times, WashingtonPost, Huffington Post, Reuters, TimesLive, and Facebook respectively.
In essence, the name of your site will be used for the technical name registration, in what is called the domain name.
The first task is to:
- Sit down and think of a good, reasonable, short, memorable, sweet, and brandable name that can be used for your domain name and also your name.
- Write down different names that come to your mind on your notepad or your diary
- Then, you will need to search if the name is available to be used ( and whether other people are not currently using it)
- At the same time, you will also need to check if you can use that same name for your Facebook page and twitter account ( this is important because of the branding advantage I earlier talked about)
To do that, use the form below to check if the name is available ( if it is available, I strongly advise you to buy it and register immediately).
If the name is available, take that name and try to register it on twitter and Facebook page. To do that, type twitter.com/thename and also facebook.com/thename on your browsers, if it is not available, it will show a 404 error but if used, it will bring about the profile.
Thereafter, go to twitter.com and facebook.com (page) and register using that name. What I am trying to explain is shown in the scenario below:
- Name of website: www.haceweb.com
- Twitter account: www.twitter.com/haceweb
- Facebook page account profile: facebook.com/haceweb
- Instagram account: www.instagram.com/haceweb
Take time and do a thorough search to get the perfect domain name, and then register it immediately!!
Use the search box below:
Web Hosting of the Domain Name
When registering the domain name, hosting for the website to be also happening at the same time. This is because without web hosting of the domain name, no one will see it and the domain name will not be accessible on the internet.
The act and process of website hosting of the domain name is just a way of buying a space on the internet to store your domain name, the contents (including pictures, videos e.t.c.) and make it available for people to visit, read and download.
With the company mentioned above, Bluehost, they give you a seamless / hassle-free experience of both getting the domain name and hosting the domain name. I recommend you buy the hosting because:
- I am personally using Bluehost for my news website ( it is based in CapeTown, South Africa).
- They are reliable, economically friendly, dependable and highly secure
- Once you buy the hosting, they waive the fee for the domain name (approximately USD17) for an entire year. This means the domain name becomes free ( this is a good deal)
- For as low as USD3.5, you can get started with a brand new website; other website hosting companies start from USD25 per month.
For your hosting, Use my link below and get started for just $2.95/month (63% off your hosting plan) from Bluehost AND also get a free domain name registration
Step 4: Install WordPress
Now, for the domain name registration and hosting of the same, just follow the step by step guidelines shown on your screen by Bluehost.
For further understanding, I have screenshots the steps you need to take below:
Skip this; you are going to use the purchased themes
The overall summary of everything is this:
- You will be given the login for your Bluehost account ( please keep it safe)
- You will also be given the username and password for your WordPress login account ( yournewwebsite.com/wp-admin); in most cases, your username is your email address or just admin. Please keep it safe
- Sign out of your Bluehost account because you are done with them, and from your browser, type in the login for your WordPress account ) in most cases, it will be yournewwebsite.com/wp-admin
- Type your username and password, once successfully login, you will now be shown your dashboard and from here, real work has just started.
Forget about any other thing they are telling you, follow the next steps below.
From your dashboard, the first thing you should do is to upload the website design template (themes) you bought earlier. Locate your ZIP file ( the downloaded purchased template) and upload the design.
Follow the screenshots below and also the video.
For best result, it is advisable to upload the demo ( so that your new news website will look exactly like the design displayed from where you bought it, however, after uploading the demo, you will need to delete those contents one by one as you start uploading and posting your own stories. The demo is sometimes good for easy guidelines).
To do that, follow the steps below:
- Go to your ZIP file ( locate where you downloaded it on your PC or laptop)
- Unzip it or simply double click it to reveal the contents
- Find and locate demo.xml ( on some, it may not show demo, but just locate anything looking like .xml)
- That is the demo, upload it
Step 4(1)
They are mentioned below:
- Go to Settings ( from the left dashboard), to permalinks; change the default permalink settings to ‘ name’
- Go to ‘ reading ( under settings), select ‘ search engines should not index this site’; This is important because, at this stage, you are still configuring your site and would not want the demo contents and others to start appearing on Google search.
Remember to come back later on after you are done with the configurations and demo stuff to uncheck the box ( please, do not forget, it is important or else, Google and people will not know and see your website).
Step 4 (2)
- Yoast SEO: You need it for SEO.
- W3 total cache: It turbo speed your site to an incredible level.
- Sumo Me: The best social media sharing plugin; highly mobile responsive.
- No follow: Makes outgoing links nofollow
- JetPack: Multipurpose plugin
- Akismet: Stops malicious attempt and fake login, the best security plugin.
- Yoast Google news Plugin ( this is very much important, though it is not free)
Step 4 (3)
To create a news website and have it running, some important things need to be implemented and they are:
Setting up your pages, this includes:
- About pages
- Privacy Policy page
- DMCA page ( Very important for this niche )
- Disclosure ( very important)
- Advertisement page
- Contact pages
e.t.c
In the uploaded demo, they have most of these pages, so, just look out for these pages and edit them to your contents/style.
But if not, follow the below steps to create a page:
- From the left dashboard, locate and click on pages
- Click add page
- Fill in the details required ( as shown below)
- Publish the page
If you do not know how to craft out the contents of some of the pages e,.g DMCA, privacy policy, advertisement etc.; I recommend you check out the pages from the websites below and use it to write your own ( do not copy and paste, but simply rewrite and redraft yours)
- www.nytimes.com (see the privacy policy, DMCA, terms of use, advertisement pages e.t.c.
- www.washingtonPost.com (see the contact page, privacy policy) e.t.c
However, the contact page has a different concept because you may need to use a form. To do that is easy, follow the steps below
- Create the contact page as usual (following the above step)
- Make sure you have installed the Jetpack plugin ( it is among the list of plugins I recommend you install); after installing the plugin, connect it to wordpress.com and activate the Jetpack plugin features ( don’t do anything on wordpress.com you are directed to).
- Come back to your website, go to Jetpack settings, and activate the contact, click save and then go back to your newly published contact page.
- Refresh the page and you will see an icon to insert the contact form (as seen in the image below)
- Follow the image below to create your contact form and then publish the page.
- You can also study the contact pages of other websites and use them to design yours. If you need help, you can contact me through the live chat box below.
NB: first, check if you have a published contact page, if you have, then go there and edit to your information. but if not, follow the guidelines as stated above.
Setting up your categories
When you want to create a news website, you must understand that this niche is different from other types of websites. Any published story, news or articles is being categorized or arranged under a particular category.
To get started, you will need to create the following categories:
- News
- Business
- Politics
- Local
- Relationship
- Metro ( transportation)
- Investment
Those are the ones I can remember, for now, you can check other websites for more ideas:
To create a category, follow the steps below:
- From the left dashboard, locate and click on categories, then click on create new
- Create your category as seen below, then click on publish
So, any story, news, article, or specials you want to publish should fall under a particular category.
Setting up your Menu
Your menu gives practical navigation to the entire website structure. The image below is an example of what is called a menu. using the theme examples I listed earlier, the following images are a brief explanation of the menus.
On most templates or newspaper themes, the standard menu is usually known as primary and secondary menus.
On a menu, you can adjust and set your categories and pages to show on it. A practical example is shown below:
In the template we are using for our practical guidelines, the menu is shown below:
- If you want to edit this particular menu, follow the steps below:
- From the left-hand side of your dashboard, under appearance, locate and click on the menu
- The menu will be displayed as shown below, follow the image below to edit any type of menu you want to use.
- Click on save, then refresh your page (please note, if you do not always refresh your page after doing any work or editing, it will not show or reflect)
- Then check your homepage to check out the new changes
And if you want to create a new menu, you will also follow the above guidelines.
Widgets settings for a news website
The widget is the engine room of any sort of editing, adjustment, and configurations you want to carry out on any news website. From the widget, you can set up a news website properly ( including adverts sidebars, etc.)
Every template or theme you buy contains the widgets and it is from here you can carry out adjustments like:
- Adding information or details to your right-hand sidebar e.g. Facebook like widgets, Subscription form, latest posts, trending topics, etc.
- Editing or configuring the entire homepage
- If your template is Google AdSense ready, optimized, or configured ( that is why I have already recommended those themes to you), it is from these widgets you can add your codes and do anything you want to do.
- It is even from the widgets you can upload your logo to the header and practically carries out anything you want to do.
All that is required from you is patience, study diligently, persevere and use your common sense to set things up properly.
Remember that we are trying to build and set up our news website or online newspaper and we have also uploaded the demo contents ( probably), going to the widgets makes it easier to edit and remove any details, objects we do not want.
Step 5: Account Set up ( Writers/Contributors)
This is an important development when thinking about how to make a news website. You must remember that you are the administrator and sole owner of your website, therefore any posts and contents you write are being ascribed to you.
But, if you want other people to be featured on your site e.g. editors, columnists, contributors, and all attribution to be given to them, then you need to create an account for them.
Creating an account for them makes it easy for them to upload content and stories on the site from the comfort of their home and workplace. This is what is called front end submission
The below picture will be of essential guidelines:
To do that, follow the steps below:
- From your dashboard, go to settings, locate users and click on it
- Create users ( chose whether they will be editors, contributors, writers, columnists e.t.c.)
- Type in their emails
- Upload their picture ( passport-sized photographs)
- Give a brief description of them and click publish
A notification email will be sent to their email address containing the login details; with this approach, they automatically become privileged to start writing and posting on the news website.
Frontend submission
If you want people to directly contribute their news and stories on your site, then you need this feature. On some templates, you will see ‘submit your stories/news’ at the top of the header ( common with the most viral website).
- The first task is to get a template that has this feature as seen below:
Secondly, if you do not have it, then you can simply install the Front end submission plugins ( https://wordpress.org/plugins/frontend-uploader/), ( https://wordpress.org/plugins/pipe-video-recorder/
Go to the setting page of the plugins and adjust the settings ( e.g. disabling automatic post of submitted content until you approve it etc.)
Step 6: How to get your news stories
This is one major source of headache; I got to know about the trick from my former boss and mentor. He runs africaoilgasreport.com; follow the below steps to get ideas:
- Subscribe to latest updates on most companies websites and press release sections
- Follow most companies, celebrities, politicians, businessmen on their social media accounts. Most of them post an update about life and the next line of actions on social media. A very good example is Donald Trump, the present president of the USA (he is a twitter addict, www.twitter.com/realdonaldtrump)
- Subscribe to most press releases
- Study other top websites, study trending posts/articles and copy their latest posts (but rewrite and redraft it completely, with news headlines, etc.)
- Go to meetings, network with journalists and other website publishers
- Go to buzz sumo ( https://buzzsumo.com/)to get ideas on the latest news and trending stories.
Step 7: Publishing your first news, stories or a special piece
If you follow the above instructions and guidelines, then I must congratulate you on your perseverance; I think by now, everything should be set, and if you need assistance, you can contact me through my contact page or chat live with me on the chat features at the bottom of the page.
Now, it is time for you to publish your first news, stories, piece, or even articles; to do that, follow the guidelines below:
Open your dashboard (if you have closed it), and if not, locate posts (towards the left-hand side of the dashboard), click on ‘add new’.
Give the posts a title, select, and chose a category, upload a featured image. The image below will be of help.
Step 8: Website Set Up on Google
Now, everything is getting interesting, now if everything is actually according to the detailed guidelines above, then I once again congratulate you because you have turn yourself to a self-tutor.
Now, it is time to get Google involved in your news website. There are two practical stages:
- Submitting your news website to Google News ( there are tough and stringent conditions required); I suggest you check out their requirements and check if you qualify, read here.
- Going on Google search console to get your site indexed and recognized.
For Google search console, follow the steps below;
- Go to Google search console at google.com/console ( https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/home)
- Click sign up (you must have a Gmail account, and if not, just sign up for a free Gmail account)
- Once signed up, you will need to submit your website for verification, submit your sitemaps (the sitemap can be configured from the Yoast SEO plugins I earlier recommended)
- Follow the below guidelines (pictures) on how to get this done!!
How to get Google to index your posts and news website
Please remember to ‘ uncheck the do not index this site’ option; I earlier made mention of this and you must uncheck it so that Google and other search engines can crawl and index your websites with the posts.
If you submit your news websites on Google search console, remember to submit your sitemaps, and publish your posts consistently, Google will naturally crawl the site and all your news stories/posts. For faster indexing, make use of the “fetch as Google” tool as seen below.
I recommend you read and install these plugins ( https://yoast.com/wordpress/plugins/)
For your hosting, Use my link below and get started for just $2.95/month (63% off your hosting plan) from Bluehost AND also get a free domain name registration
MARKETING / PROMOTION / SUCCESS TIPS
We are done with the above task (which I prefer to call the technical aspect of setting up an online newspaper website). In step 2, I call it the marketing and growth step because it contains proven strategies and steps to take your news website to a successful level. Creating a news website is easy as demonstrated above, but the real test of running it successfully depends heavily on the promotion and exposure to the internet.
Step 9: Getting and setting up Facebook Page Account
Facebook is the powerhouse and the blood line of all successful news website out there. Trust me, If Facebook should die today, 90% of websites will die along with it.
With that said and done, it is important (not negotiable) you open a Facebook page. To do that,
- Go to Facebook.com, scroll down, and click on Page (or rather if you have a Facebook account, you can simply open a Facebook page for your business).
- Create a page for your news website ( remember to use the name of your site, I made mention of this important point earlier)
- Use a creative background and profile picture to represent your brand, logo, and purpose of business
- Complete the profile information
Creating Facebook Ads
Just setting up your Facebook page is not enough; you need to let people know about your new page and website. The first task to do is to send an invitation to your friends, family members, colleagues, etc. for them to like the page and be a follower. Please note that you can only run Facebook Ads from your FB page and not from your own personal Facebook account.
After this, you need to spend money (invest) to get lots of likes (followers) on FB. From my experience, 1000-1200 dollars will give you approximately 35,000 – 80,000 followers. I will not be able to discuss at length on how to get lots of likes from running a Facebook Ad, just visit Neil Patel’s blog to learn more.
Please, to run and manage a successful online newspaper portal, you need to invest in Facebook, get to engage with your followers, etc.
Step 10: Getting Facebook Traffic ( Tricks)
If you want to make a successful news website, this guideline on traffic generation using Facebook is essential. Please note, that without Facebook, your news website can never become successful. You need FB more than you think. However, with the recent Algorithm tweak, it is becoming increasingly difficult to get traffic from the world’s largest social networking website.
However, you can follow the below guidelines to get the best out of FB.
- Do not automate posting of your articles/news stories to FB ( this means you should not use third party automated tools. Do it manually.
- Share and posts your articles at optimal times to get the best exposure (notably in the morning and also anytime from 5 pm till 11 pm)
- Try as much as possible to commit time in engaging with your followers by responding to their likes, comments, shares, answering questions, etc. ( you can hire a staff to do this for you)
- Another trick is to focus on Facebook groups; join many FB groups related to your niche, become a friend to the Admins of the group and convinced them to be sharing your posts for you to their group members
- Another trick is to open more than one Facebook page for your news website. This is what I mean; instead of just opening an FB page for the site, open also FB page for each popular categories and share each post both on the main FB page and also on the category pages. This trick is what transformed https://www.legit.ng/ into the most popular and successful news site in Nigeria.
Step 11: Twitter Account – Set Up And Followers Growth
Twitter is presently proving to be more effective and efficient in sending massive traffic to a news website. What I discovered is that twitter has an organic influence on Google search rankings than Facebook.
I use twitter a lot and I recommend the same to you.
Go to www.twitter.com and sign up (remember to use the domain name for branding purposes). If you want to get the best out of twitter, you need to also engage with your followers, reply to their comments, like them, retweet their posts likewise.
However, the major benefit and challenge likewise are getting lots of followers. To do that, I will never advise you to use twitter Ads because it is crazily expensive, but the most recommended way to get twitter targeted followers is to use an App called Manageflitter. I recommend you check them out (Manageflitter Apps).
If you grow your follower diligently and non-stop daily, I will not be surprised if your followers become 30,000 in two (2) months
After this, anytime you publish a story, share, and tweet the story on your timeline and you will be surprised with the viral effect sensation you will get.
Step 12: Leverage on Networking Potentials!!
Remember that the focus of this stage is to share with you proven ways to market your news website, give it maximum exposure, and get massive traffic to it. One of the ways to achieve this, aside from using Facebook and Twitter is to network.
This is what I mean.
Anything that has to do with the newspaper, news, etc. has something to do with Journalists and their associated groups. So, your first task is to become friends with most Journalists. By doing this, you will be able to get first-hand information on the latest news and also be able to make your site popular.
Go to meetings, conferences, symposiums, luncheons, and network with other minded people!!
Step 13: Make a deal with social media influencers
Have you heard the phrase ‘Work Smarter and not harder!!’
I am a personal testimony to the powerful effects of leveraging on this simple idea. Why do you think companies and brands pay so much money to celebrities and popular people on social media?
I started with FB Ads, but over time, I embraced this idea and to my amazement, the flood of traffic from Twitter and Facebook blew me away.
How do you handle this?
Look out for popular individuals with lots of followers, fans, and subscribers on YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter. Reach out to them to help you share and spread the contents of your site. You can read more about influencers, how to get and engage with them in my earlier post on how to create a successful video website like YouTube. Read it here.
Step 14: Using Press releases
Sign up with major press release websites; get to receive first-hand information and updates about events, trends, and issues. However, the best use of PR is to help your content and stories reach a broader global audience.
Due to the research made by mequoda.com, the following are the best and most recommended PR sites you should check out ( they are excellent to even help your contents gets on Google news):
Free Press Release sites:
- PRLog.org
- PR.com
- PR-Inside.com
- Newswire.com
- OnlinePRNews.com
Premium (Paid) Press Release sites:
- PRNewswire.com
- PRWeb.com
- BusinessWire.com
- MarketWired.com
How to start a news website and make money
Someone sent me a message saying; ‘how can a news website make money’? I understand that the essence of business is to make money and be profitable. Please understand that it is most likely that in your first six months, you will not make money (or at least make reasonable money every month).
With that settled, let me explain all the full details about making money with your newspaper website. There are three proven ways and methods of making money in this niche and they are;
- Using Cost Per Click (notably the use of Google AdSense)
- Direct advertisements
- Press releases
Cost Per Click (Google AdSense)
This program is run by Google and it is by far the most reliable, effective way of making money on the internet.
Nearly 98% of all news websites use it because of the accuracy of the displayed advert and zero efforts from your end. However, there are certain rules you need to abide by if you wish to get accepted into the program.
If a visitor checks out a story on your website and clicks on an advert (provided by Google), you get a commission and get paid for that click.
I know websites that are making more than USD10, 000 – USD100,000 per month using this program alone. However, most of these publishers make use of mobile responsive WordPress themes that are optimized for Google Adsense earnings. You can check out these Google Adsense Optimized WordPress themes ( if you want to use them or build a site with a focus on using Google Adsense monetization.
Direct Advertisement
This is where the main money and earnings are. Offering direct advertisement gives you more control and you are well able to set up conditions e.g. running a 360 by 360 Ad for one month etc.;
The major advantage of direct advertisement is that you are in direct touch with the company or advertiser and you also stand the chance of making more money with your online news website.
Press Releases
Buzzfeed and LadBible, the online viral website behemoths and other notable giant online newspaper sites use this money-making model to make a killing amount of money every year.
Companies, advertisers approach them and pay a high amount of money. So what they do is to come up with a solid well-researched post about the product, company, etc, and then publish it with the links of the product or company. If you want to run a successful news website, I highly recommend you give premium press release a priority in your initial marketing effort.
This is a more effective method because it goes to the targeted audience. You can also embrace this model and you will be surprised by the insane amount of money you will be making.
Conclusion
If you want to run a news website, I think this guideline is a handy and effective tutorial to help you get started. I am open to helpful suggestions and help.
If you find it helpful and resourceful, please bookmark it, link back to it from your blog and site, share it with your friends and families, and also share it on Facebook.