A strip mall content farm convinced Calif. that McDonald’s was leaving (sfgate.com)
I’ve compiled a list of over 100 content mills providing content to the MSN Start Page. In many cases, I viewed their “author” pages and found the same photos of authors – with different names – on different web sites. I found some of the author photos were AI generated, while others are taken from stock agencies, and a few were even stolen from LinkedIn profile pages or Instagram photos.
Many of these content mills are using AI generated content, while others work with out of country authors who get paid $10 to $25 per article – and many will write up to six of these fluff pieces per day. They often get their ideas by scouring social media for stupid story concepts. And then summarize these as “IG poster said X and here are the responses”. Much of the content is borderline or truly fake. I have cross referenced some of these “authors” via the MuckRack web site and found some were allegedly writing 5 to 10 articles per day, 7 days per week, and have now produced, in some cases, thousands of articles.
The business model is to flood the content distribution sites with click bait stories – if just a few percent “go viral” and get widely shared, they generate enough ad clicks to create a profitable business.
MSN Start and Yahoo News both allow anyone to submit their web site for possible inclusion for distribution through those web sites. It is not clear what qualifications you need – but judging from the content mill web sites you need
- A track record of producing click bait stories
- Use web sites based on blog software like WordPress – as they automatically provide “feeds” that can be quickly read by MSN Start, etc.
- An author page showing that you have huge group of authors – typically all but two of them are fake. The two actual people behind the content mill are typically listed as founder or editor at the top. Most or all of the remaining authors are fake.
That’s all there is to it – I have even thought of creating a fake news site and submitting it to MSN Start just to demonstrate how easy it is to create content mill trash and get it widely distributed!
