May 2011 income from content sites

This was my best month for content-site earnings since I started this blog last July. Almost all of the income came from Demand Studios, where I tried to keep a slow but steady pace.





May Earnings:

more after the jump:

Google gives more detail on Panda

On the Google blog, they've posted a list of questions to help people "step into Google's mindset" about quality.

No big surprises.  I think it really does come down to common sense.

The post is here:  More guidance on building high-quality sites

Helium gets 10 million dollar investment; Demand Media cleans house, hires Google guy

Helium just got a 10 million dollar investment. According to an SEC filing, it's all from a single (unnamed) investor. I'm stunned. Who would invest 10 million in Helium post-Panda? Apologies to any Helium fans who may be reading this, but Helium seems like the epitome of the kind of "mill" that Google has in its sights -- its content is often thin, badly-written, and sometimes wildly inaccurate. Plus the site is clogged with ads that make it almost unreadable, a likely trigger for Google oblivion.

Does someone at Helium have a rich uncle?

Or does the company have something up its sleeve -- has it secretly branched into something more lucrative than content milling? Maybe they've discovered oil under the company parking lot.

Meanwhile, over at the content mill that is most likely to survive, Demand Media is cleaning house. They're pulling all the old user-written eHow articles, either taking them off the site entirely or sending them through their editorial checking process. They're also purging writers, sending Demand Studios writers who are doing poorly on some unnamed metric(s) into probation, where they will have to prove themselves or be given the boot.

They also hired an ex-Google guy. That sounds, on first hearing, like a really smart move, but if I recall correctly, Associated Content had done something similar -- and AC has been banished to Google's basement.

So it's no panacea. All in all, though, I think that Demand Media is the mill that is taking Panda most seriously and is making the changes that are the most likely to work.