How to start a news website: This tutorial is a practical guideline on how you can build and run a successful local online newspaper portal , including the likes of CNN, Washington Post, Reuters etc. All you need to know and implement are all discussed.
A quick summary on the requirements to launch a news website or online news portal:
- Your true desire and unstained passion for journalism; especially of your country, state or local community.
- A unique and short memorable domain name
- A cost effective web server that gives unique webhosting experience
- A mobile responsive newspaper WordPress themes template
- WordPress installation and configuration
- An approximate start up cost of USD150-430
- Hard work, focus and unrelenting determination to achieve success.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Stage 1- Technical
- Understanding your purpose and 10 Facts you should know first
- Getting the right design first
- Choosing the right name, getting domain name and hosting
- Installing and configuring the WordPress website (videos and pictures)
- Configuring your website, installing plugins and adjusting the settings
- Setting up your pages (terms of use, privacy policy, DMCA, Disclosure, About, Contact, Advertisement), categories, menus and widgets settings.
- Setting up account for your writers, editors and contributors
- How to get your news stories – sources
- Publishing your first news, stories or special piece
- Setting up your news website on Google search console and analytics
- How to get Google to index your posts and website
Stage 2 – Promotion / Marketing
- Getting and setting up Facebook Page Account
- Tricks of getting more visitors/explosive traffic from Facebook
- Setting up a twitter account and grow your followers
- How to network
- Making a deal with social media influencers
- Using Press releases
Stage 3 – Money Making
Three proven ways of making money with a news website
- Signing up with Google Adsense
- Direct advertisements
- Press releases
Step 1
Understanding your purpose and 10 Facts you should know first
- 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 the genuine passion for it. Your passion fuels your resilience, persistence, perseverance, commitment and ability to stay focused.
There are some fundamental truths that are painful to know but important for you to understand.
- Start a local news website or blog
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 like 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 expand. You can decide to start your own news blog with focus on your country, your state, your community or a particular niche ( e.g. on Amazon, technology e.t.c.).
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 cost of 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 blogs and websites predicted that trump will win and today, they are seen as an authority when it comes to news.
People subscribes to their news updates because they feel safe knowing that these sites/blogs carries 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 or blog ( 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).
- Consistence is the Key
A news blog or website is different from other niches because 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, it is important you 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 just launching out, please note that you are alone in this project, except if you are a team from the beginning. You will need to invest 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 to 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 the hard truth you probably do not also want to hear. 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 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 at 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, in some countries, starting this kind of business might require you register your business because you will be making money and as a result, you are expected to pay taxes on the earnings.
The summary is this: you are free to start your newspaper website 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 with respect to 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.
- Copy and paste Myth
I once received an email with this question. As I earlier mentioned that because the industry is not regulated, most people often copy stories/news from other sources and paste it on their website, this is unprofessional and is bound to fail.
Let me explain further:
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.
If you want to experience long term success with your online news website, run away from copy and paste, run away from the use of scrapping other people’s stories/articles; the energy you are wasting doing can be used to actually write good and original news stories.
Instead, concentrate and write your own original stories; by doing this, both the search engines, Facebook/twitter and even humans will love and respect your website/blog.
Step 2
Getting the right design first
We are gradually going into the whole concept on 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 30% of all websites/blogs out there ( according to W3Techs).
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 requires you to be paying maintenance fees annually – usually around USD5-50).
Some recommended templates built specifically for this project are listed below:
1
2
3
4
5
5
6
You can get professionally designed themes, built specifically for a news website from the companies below:
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 for the installation and configuration).
Step 3
Choosing the right name, getting domain name and hosting
Now, 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 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 comes 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 exact 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 advice you 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 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.rsadaily.com
- Twitter account: www.twitter.com/rsadaily
- Facebook page account profile: facebook.com/rsadaily
- Instagram account: www.instagram.com/rsadaily
Take time and do 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 happens 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 use Bluehost on my own websites/blogs (including the one you are presently on)
- 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/blog; other website hosting companies starts from USD25 per month.
GET YOUR SITE HOSTED ON BLUEHOST WEBHOSTING PLATFORM AND RECEIVE FREE DOMAIN REGISTRATION
Step 4
Installing and configuring the WordPress website (videos and pictures)
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:
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.
Step 5
Configuring your website, installing plugins and adjusting the settings
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 screen shots 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
For easy guideline, watch the video below.
Demo installation Video
Step 5 (1)
Important Task to carry out immediately
Because you are a newbie ( just starting out ), there are some things you need to implement on your new site or blog immediately.
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 5 (2)
Plugins
Plugins are the core factors and tools that makes a WordPress powered website to function optimally. The following plugins should be installed on your news website immediately.
- 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, best security plugin.
- Yoast Google news Plugin ( this is very much important, though it is not free)
Step 5 (3)
Setting up your pages (terms of use, privacy policy, DMCA, Disclosure, About, Contact, Advertisement), categories, menus and widgets settings.
I earlier mentioned that I will be using the above template ( newspaper template) for this tutorial. I am also assuming that by now, you have uploaded the demo contents and your website is up and running.
The next step right now is to configure and adjust your online news website to really look like a professional newspaper site.
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 own 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/blogs and use it 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 own information. but if not, follow the guidelines as stated above.
Setting up your categories
A news website is different from other types of website. 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 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 handside of your dashboard, under appearance, locate and click on 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
The widget is the engine room of any sort of editing, adjustment and configurations you want to carry out on any blog or site.
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 this 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 6
Setting up account for your writers, editors and contributors
This is an important development. You must remember that you are the administrator and sole owner of your website, therefore any posts and contents you write is 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 contents and stories on the site from the comfort of their home and work place. 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 about 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 blog.
Frontend submission
If you want people to directly contribute their news and stories on your site, then you need this feature. On some template, you will see ‘submit your stories/news’ at the top of the header ( common with most viral website).
- 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 7
How to get your news stories – sources
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 posts update about life and next line of actions on social media. A very good example is Donald Trump, the present president of 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 new headlines etc.)
- Go to meetings, network with journalists and other website publishers
- Go to buzzsumo ( https://buzzsumo.com/)to get ideas on latest news and trending stories.
Step 8
Publishing your first news, stories or 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 9
Setting up your news website on Google search console and analytics
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 it here. And also from Google directly 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) and videos on how to get this done!!
How to get Google to index your posts and website
Please remember to ‘ uncheck the do not index this site’ option ; I earlier made mention of this and it is important you uncheck it so that Google and other search engines can crawl and index your websites with the posts.
If you submit your websites and blog 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/)
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 websites). In this 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.
Step 10
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 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, however, the following resources are recommended to read:
- Neil Patel: Beginners guide to facebook ads that convert
Please, to run and manage a successful news website, you need to invest in Facebook, get to engage with your followers etc.
Step 11
Tricks of getting more visitors/explosive traffic from Facebook
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 5pm till 11pm)
- 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 posts both on the main FB page and also on the category pages. This trick is what transformed https://www.naija.ng/ into the most popular and successful news site in Nigeria.
Step 12
Setting up a twitter account and grow your followers
Twitter is presently proving to be more effective and efficient in sending massive traffic to a news blog. What I personally discovered is that, twitter has 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, retweets their posts likewise.
However, the major benefit and challenge likewise is 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 on a daily basis, I will not be surprised if your followers becomes 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 13
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 using Facebook and twitter is to network.
This is what I mean.
Anything that has to do with 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 latest news and also be able to make your own site popular.
Go to meetings, conferences, symposiums, launchings and network with other minded people!!
Step 14
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 by leveraging on this simple idea. Why do you think companies and brands pays so much money to celebrities and popular people on social media?
I started off 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 with the aim of helping 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 15
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 contents and stories reach 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:
Premium (Paid) Press Release sites:
- PRNewswire.com
- PRWeb.com
- BusinessWire.com
- MarketWired.com
How to start a news website and 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 on a monthly basis).
With that settled, let me explain all the full details about making money with your newspaper website. Basically, 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 uses it because of the accuracy of the displayed advert and zero efforts from your own end. However, there are certain rules you need to abide with if you wish to get accepted on the program.
If a visitor checks out a story on your website and clicks on any 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. To check out the eligibility and sign up , check out Google AdSense at www.google.com/adsense
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, the online viral website behemoth and other notable giant online newspaper sites uses this money making model to make a killing amount of money every year.
Companies, advertisers approaches 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 publishes it with the links of the product or company.
This is a more effective method because it goes to the targeted audience. You can also embrace this model and you will be surprised with the insane amount of money you will be making.
Conclusion
I think this guideline is a handy and effective tutorial to help you get started with your dream of running and launching your own news website and blog. I am open to helpful suggestions and help.
If you find it helpful and resourceful, please bookmark it, share it with your friends and families and also share on Facebook.