Former Owner of eHow Says Demand Media Model Is Flawed
Ironically, the original owners of eHow had actually blocked Google’s search engine crawlers, because they wanted to try to monetize the site themselves through a landing page with offers from various advertisers. So Hannah and his partner opened up the site and optimized it for Google, and within two years, eHow had more than six million monthly uniques — without even creating any new content. Most of the articles were “evergreen” or “long tail” content about topics like how to tie a tie, or how to make guacamole. By 2006, when Demand Media bought it, the company had an annual revenue run-rate of about $4 million, up from virtually nothing.
Someone else posted this to Reader, Tumblr or Twitter but I can’t find the source, after searching them all. Apologies to whomever I’m not properly reblogging/citing. I think this is even the part pull-quoted by that other person.
