Demand Media Is Mad as Hell and, Well, Pens a Manifesto (And Here It Is!)
Demand Media CEO Richard Rosenblatt said he has had it with some mainstream media depictions of his social media content company, especially one report that called it a “content mill.”
So, what did he do? Well, he wrote a manifesto, of course!
“There has been so much misinformation about our model and what we actually do, that I thought it was a good idea for our company and those who work for us to lay out our principles,” said Rosenblatt in an interview with me last night. “We are so different from traditional journalism, which I have nothing but admiration for, so it was time to make people understand that.”
The role of Demand Media, said Rosenblatt, is to help readers solve problems, laugh and get good advice, while figuring out how to create a profitable media business in the digital age.
The longtime serial entrepreneur has raised an eye-popping $355 million to do so at the Santa Monica, Calif.-based Demand, which seems to be aiming for an initial public offering or merger with another company–AOL (AOL), perhaps?
Demand has also been eyed by Yahoo (YHOO) and others for acquisition in the past.
Rosenblatt is tight-lipped about all this, but not about what he considers twisted reports about Demand.
“What is wrong with coming up with a way for thousands of writers–who have been laid off, by the way, from news organizations–knowing exactly how much they make, selecting their own topics and publishing when they want?” asked Rosenblatt. “We’re trying to find a new and innovative way to make content.”
In fact, I agree with Rosenblatt (and some Demand writers do too), because Demand Media content is simply the basic how-to guide of service journalism that really has nothing to do with the investigative work that media giants are finding it harder to fund.
And Demand’s success has almost nothing to do with creating or fixing that problem. Demand is, of course, an easy target for a snarky takedown, but is entirely beside the point if you want to really talk about where serious journalism is headed.
In fact, Walt Mossberg and I have invited Rosenblatt to share the stage at the eighth D: All Things Digital conference this June, along with former Wall Street Journal editor Paul Steiger, who is trying to save investigative journalism at a nonprofit called ProPublica, to talk about it all. (You can see Steiger talking about this subject here.)
Until then, here is the manifesto, as well as a video of an interview I did with the smooth-talking Rosenblatt in mid-2008 and a spoof music video Demand made to attract writers:
The Demand Media Manifesto
From the very beginning, we set out to create an entirely different kind of media company. Now that our rapid growth has demonstrated our approach works, people have noticed our success, and they are talking about us. We’ve been listening. And we’ve seen all shapes and sizes of feedback about our business–everything from investigation to imitation, from congratulation to condemnation–all of it essentially trying to figure out what makes Demand Media tick. So let’s get right to the point. Here’s what makes us tick. Here are the principles that have always governed how we run our business, make it grow, and make it great for the Internet.
Start each day listening to the customer.
We believe that consumers tell you exactly what they need–if you’ll just take the time to ask or listen. The Internet is the world’s greatest market research platform; so we immerse ourselves in the billions of signals of consumer demand that it provides each day. While more traditional media companies focus on supplying experiences they believe consumers might like, we’re unapologetically dedicated to delivering the ones they already demand. This core trait guides the content we create, the social applications we develop, and the communities that we nurture. It’s incredibly liberating to operate this way, knowing that everything we do satisfies the real world interests of over a 100 million consumers each month.
Make content that is unequivocally useful.
We love the Internet because it allows us to improve people’s lives in large and small ways–every single day. So we create content that solves problems, answers questions, saves money, saves time and makes people laugh. Consumers become attached to us because we have helped them manage their diabetes, find a rewarding job, plan the perfect family hike, fix a cranky garage door or shave the last five strokes off their golf game. We aren’t here to break news, lay out editorial opinion, or investigate the latest controversy. Our target audience tells us they want incredibly specific information and we deliver exactly that–in a style that the average consumer appreciates and understands. So, while we love to read The Economist, The Washington Post and Wired–we have little in common with their missions or business models.
Build superior web experiences.
While our approach to content creation has captured widespread industry attention, the bigger story is the rabid fan base and rapid growth of our core media properties. Paying careful attention to the consumer has led to the development of category leading sites like eHow, LIVESTRONG.com, Cracked, Trails, GolfLink, and Mania. These are destinations where members return each day to learn, share and interact with compelling programs that include some of the most popular applications for the iPhone and Android. They research. They discover. They make friends. They buy the official t-shirt. They’re getting what they want. Demand Media’s content is very much at home on award-winning websites where engaging social applications and passionate audiences combine into an experience that visitors crave.
Invest heavily in our professional freelancer community.
Most consumers initially encounter Demand Media through the online brands fueled by our large professional freelancer community. We know that a quality experience begins and ends with these qualified professionals, so we expend extraordinary efforts to attract, serve and nurture the right people. Choosing from hundreds of thousands of assignments each day, our freelancers enjoy interesting work on the widest variety of topics and are paid twice a week. We transparently pay a range of rates for various roles and assignments, and we generally target an hourly rate comparable with the average salary of a journalist. We’ve even created a program that enables frequent contributors to gain access to affordable health insurance and a grant program that helps them pursue their creative aspirations. We don’t think these practices are necessary to have a good creator network; we know they’re necessary to have the best and biggest professional creator network. Now operating as a vibrant community of peers, our creators tell us that we’ve put a new kind of freedom into freelancing–freedom from the tyranny of pitching for every assignment, chasing invoices and waiting months to get paid–and all the other frustrations that waste their time, and never earn a penny.
Insist on being profitable.
A business mission is sustainable only when you are profitable. Making money allows us to attract the best employees, content creators and investors–and grow the business to match our vision. But Demand Media is native to the Internet. So we don’t have the crutch of an off-line business to subsidize what we do. We don’t believe our target consumers will pay for Internet content. And advertisers have told the world they are fed up with soft promises and underperforming campaigns. Put simply, to be profitable we must be truly excellent at what we do. On a daily basis we translate this mandate into a repeatable approach that gives users exactly what they want, attracting an audience that advertisers desire and that can be delivered with a sustainable cost structure. Some people act like this is revolutionary, or even heretical. We think it’s just common sense.
Never rest.
We are just getting started. There are nearly limitless opportunities to serve consumers in places we don’t reach well today, including mobile, social networks, and international markets. There are dozens of attractive vertical niches we don’t even attempt to cover. There are thousands of big companies still trying to figure out social media. Our technology and algorithms today are doing a fraction of what we know they can accomplish tomorrow. Our burgeoning content creator network is really just learning to work this way. We believe the opportunity to create life change and business impact through the Internet is bigger than ever. Consequently, we don’t see what we have accomplished; we see what have left to do.
The critics are outnumbered. For every one of them, there are millions of consumers, satisfied and returning to our award-winning sites. For every skeptic, there are hundreds of content creators who go on record saying Demand Media is a hero for them, their families and their careers. Demand Media employees, content creators and end-users are pouring themselves into profoundly and positively changing the shape of online media–in a world that has almost given up on this idea. Unlike many around us, we aren’t worried about the future of the Internet because we are too busy trying to create it.
Comments
After the initial hoo-ha about Demand Media–mostly from McManus in ReadWriteWeb, and then Arrington on Techcruch–I tool a look at Demand and found that Demand's content wasn't as much a threat to journalism inasmuch as it was being used for marketing or simple how-tos (then again, maybe marketing communications are a threat to journalism on the web–who knows?) And that it was keeping many laid-off journalists still in business. Further, Demand has partnered with Pluck, which came up with and ran BlogBurst, a blog syndication service. BlogBurst was one of the first B2C blog syndication svcs working w/newspapers, and having talked with Dave Panos about it when it started, I found out that the intention was to start to expose new writers who could not break into newspaper or other publications through customary channels. A couple of my blog posts made it to the Chicago Sun Times, thanks to BlogBurst. So, all the nonsense and hoo-ha about Demand by the big names seemed to me to be a little bit of stomping on the thing that many of them used to tout: “citizen”-powered content. Maybe the importance of citizen content has changed? go figure.
Posted by tishgrier at January 11th, 2010 at 1:41 pmWhat I find amazing is this manifesto doesn't address how Demand *really* makes money! Their largest business is a registrar (enom) that competes with GoDaddy to sell you cheap domain names and their largest profit center (which funds all this “vision”) is one of the largest portfolio of parked domain names that have Google Ad Sense on them. Beware of the hype!
Posted by busekbrian at January 11th, 2010 at 3:02 pmWell when I highlighted Demand Media's efforts recently it seemed like they had a bit of an admission of guilt…they deleted their informationless-information video about making doughnuts that I mentioned on my blog.
Mr. Rosenwhatever can talk about saving people time, but that video wasted over a month of human life
seobook.com/evolution-man-media-sweet-infographic
I like his energy, just not a fan of his “content”
Posted by aaronwallseo at January 11th, 2010 at 4:45 pmThe whole part about how they pay writers is downright lies and deception. I've never seen or heard any of this when writing for eHow.com……
They posted US eHow articles to their new UK website with no knowledge of the writers and NO COMPENSATION either.
So….the part about them making money—YES, YES, that is all true.
Posted by EXeHowWriter at January 16th, 2010 at 2:47 amDemand Media's concern for the freelancer community stops at the US border. If you play to a global audience, you should accept global input. Other online mags do it. They should least tell people on their apply form that only US residents are welcome; so, applicants don't waste their time.
Posted by smclaugh at January 25th, 2010 at 3:23 pmThis is such a great article, thank you for sharing.
Posted by cashloans at January 27th, 2010 at 6:35 pmKara,
Please write about THIS:
eHow messed up REAL bad:
http://www.imsickofthis.net/?tag=ehow-sucks
http://www.innovativepassiveincome.com/ehow-pub...
http://www.conversationmarketing.com/2010/01/eh...
http://crunchydata.com/what-should-happen-to-ehow/
http://carsonbrackney.com/?s=ehow
http://freelancewriterswanted-freebieoffers.blo...
….just to name a few….
Posted by formerehowwriter at January 27th, 2010 at 9:06 pmDemand Media and its workers are a pack of liars. On eHow it has decieved its writers for at least 6 months by stealing their the revenue share articles and without telling the writers, or paying them one penny, cloned and posted them by the millions on a new site they, Demand Media, set up in the UK. After months and months of complaints by writers, about their earnings eavorating into nothingness, eHow was forced into an admission of guilt just yesterday buy several eHow writers who have threatened lawsuits. The community moderators on eHow have a policy of deleting community posts on discussions if the posts are even slightly slanted toward being negative and have disallowed open discussion on their forums.
Demand Studios, the strong arm center for writers, hire and pay writers a pittance of what the market pays for articles, require unreasonable research and editing of articles from writers being paid peon wages and holds up articles in writing queues, sometimes for a week at a time, delaying their editing process and payment for articles written in good faith by their authors. Overall Demand Media is very much a content mill spitting out article after article on the same topic with slight alteration of the wording of the title, all in an effort to make money from readers clicking on ads.
Do NOT let the DM CEO try to convince you that his company is doing anything but climbing on the backs of the little guy to build an financial empire where people don't matter, only dollars do. My only wish for Demand Media is that someone has the balls and the money to take them down.
Posted by deceivedbydemandmedia at January 30th, 2010 at 2:26 pmDemand Media and its workers are a pack of liars. On eHow it has decieved its writers for at least 6 months by stealing their the revenue share articles and without telling the writers, or paying them one penny, cloned and posted them by the millions on a new site they, Demand Media, set up in the UK. After months and months of complaints by writers, about their earnings eavorating into nothingness, eHow was forced into an admission of guilt just yesterday buy several eHow writers who have threatened lawsuits. The community moderators on eHow have a policy of deleting community posts on discussions if the posts are even slightly slanted toward being negative and have disallowed open discussion on their forums.
Demand Studios, the strong arm center for writers, hire and pay writers a pittance of what the market pays for articles, require unreasonable research and editing of articles from writers being paid peon wages and holds up articles in writing queues, sometimes for a week at a time, delaying their editing process and payment for articles written in good faith by their authors. Overall Demand Media is very much a content mill spitting out article after article on the same topic with slight alteration of the wording of the title, all in an effort to make money from readers clicking on ads.
Do NOT let Rosenwhatever try to convince you that his company is doing anything but climbing on the backs of the little guy to build an financial empire where people don't matter, only dollars do. My only wish for Demand Media is that someone has the balls and the money to take them down.
Posted by deceivedbydemandmedia at January 30th, 2010 at 2:28 pmI work for eHow, one of Demand Medias properties. I love it! I get to write about topics that are of interest to me and am paid well for my work. It is a vibrant online community unlike any other that I have encountered on the web. There are some disgruntleds in the community, as with any community. Most of them are people who, for some reason, ignored the rules and suffered as a result of it. My experience has been nothing but positive. I hope to have a long relationship with eHow and Demand Media.
Posted by dianecass at January 30th, 2010 at 5:18 pmAs an eHow writer, I certainly agree with Rosenblatt's point. I have high praise for a company who understands, and provides the everyday needs of everyday people.
Posted by nancycarol at January 30th, 2010 at 8:31 pmI'd like to know what 'rules' the disgruntled writers for eHow supposedly ignored. I read the forums, and it appears most disgruntled writers simply didn't take kindly to having their articles pimped out to another country without being paid for it. Others are frustrated by not knowing what their pay is based on to begin with.
But you can thank them when you receive back compensation in February, because it is those 'disgruntled writers' that caused eHow to announce yesterday that they would pay back 'some' vague amount of stolen earnings.
Mr. Rosenblatt conveniently fails to address eHow writers when he claims- “We transparently pay a range of rates for various roles and assignments, and we generally target an hourly rate comparable with the average salary of a journalist. We’ve even created a program that enables frequent contributors to gain access to affordable health insurance and a grant program that helps them pursue their creative aspirations.”
eHow writers do not get any of those perks.
Posted by glorybug at January 30th, 2010 at 11:05 pmI quite eHow because of their smarmy business practices, such as the way they discriminate based on how much traffic your content pulls in. They have all these guidelines, but if you're a doctor who was thrown out of the practice, and who breaks every single guideline they espouse, but you're pulling major traffic, they just ignore the thousands of requests they get from their writers to take you down.
Posted by 1oftheminions at January 31st, 2010 at 4:21 pmThank you, martyphis, that makes more sense. I feel sorry for anyone who had a well-written article swept, but considering some of the really bad articles still up on eHow, I wish they were even more strict about quality. I've seen one writer who wrote 330 articles last year. All about credit, mortgages, money, etc. Not one has ANY information in them, and every article has 4 separate sentences ordering the reader to click on the affiliate link they list in resources. That's 330 articles breaking eHow rules, yet they're still there. I've seen articles I can't even read because of the typos, lack of info, and not speaking English well. I really liked eHow when I first started. Then I saw how low their quality standards are, how they allow flat rate writers to compete directly with eHow writers, how they use inner ads to divert readers to flat rate writers' pages… by the time the UK thing happened, I didn't like them so much. I want to be associated with sites that have standards, values and ethics- all of which Demand Media is lacking right now. They own eHow, and they allow eHow to be a content mill, so it's ridiculous that they are angry about being called out on it.
Posted by glorybug at February 1st, 2010 at 2:39 amTHE ART OF THE $80 SCAM Posted by THE PREACHER at 05:26 AM on March 06, 2010 comments (0)
Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water, along comes that greedy ehow shark once again. This time they are pulling off the art of the $80 scam. Say what? Sounds kind of silly, until you begin to see the entire picture.
Back a while ago ehow announced it would begin to pay out $80 per article to hand selected ehow writers. Needless to say, many became excited at the thought of making $80 per article compared to the peanuts they had been paid up intil now. So people began to ask, how can we get in on the deal. Well, don't saddle up the horse just yet. If you know anything about ehow, its that they have mastered the art of double speak. No no, we didn't mean you ehow writers, we meant DS writers who also place their articles onto ehow.
that's what we meant to say when we said ehow writers. DS writers. So many just threw up their hands and passed the whole thing off as yet one more example of ehows lack of communication.
But was it really a lack of communication, or was something else much darker taking place, something well thought out ahead of time? Glad you asked. Breaking in blogs and news stories all across the UK yesterday was stories cheering on the arrival of ehow, proclaiming that ehow pays its top writers $80 per article. Now I would like to think my mama didn't raise any fools, and you can smell this skunk a mile away. Ehow knew exactly what it was doing when it announced ehow writers would be making $80 an article, when in fact it wasn't talking about ehow writers at all. That statement was put out there so they could feed it to a news hungry media over in the UK, and the UK took the bait without as much as asking any questions at all of ehow. In bold pring, ehow to pay writers $80 nan article. Unbelievable, Once again ehow the esow has proven they are indeed the kings when it comes to making dimes do the work of dollars. And talk about free press.
I have news for our over seas friends, they are about to be hit with one of the biggest scam machines out there. ehow writers do not get paid $80 per article nor will they ever get paid that much.
Another story put it this way, some ehow writers will get paid $80 an article, while others can expect to make between $3 to $75 per article. Say what? Poor bastards, they don't know what's about to hit them. This sow can't squeal, and there ain't enough scraps in the UK to satisfy its hunger.
Check out this news story and see how misleading ehow has been with the $80 per article scam they are now running. http://psmithjournalist.com/2010/03/exclusive-d...
Posted by thepreacher56 at March 6th, 2010 at 11:48 pmTHE ART OF THE $80 SCAM Posted by THE PREACHER at 05:26 AM on March 06, 2010 comments (0)
Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water, along comes that greedy ehow shark once again. This time they are pulling off the art of the $80 scam. Say what? Sounds kind of silly, until you begin to see the entire picture.
Back a while ago ehow announced it would begin to pay out $80 per article to hand selected ehow writers. Needless to say, many became excited at the thought of making $80 per article compared to the peanuts they had been paid up intil now. So people began to ask, how can we get in on the deal. Well, don't saddle up the horse just yet. If you know anything about ehow, its that they have mastered the art of double speak. No no, we didn't mean you ehow writers, we meant DS writers who also place their articles onto ehow.
that's what we meant to say when we said ehow writers. DS writers. So many just threw up their hands and passed the whole thing off as yet one more example of ehows lack of communication.
But was it really a lack of communication, or was something else much darker taking place, something well thought out ahead of time? Glad you asked. Breaking in blogs and news stories all across the UK yesterday was stories cheering on the arrival of ehow, proclaiming that ehow pays its top writers $80 per article. Now I would like to think my mama didn't raise any fools, and you can smell this skunk a mile away. Ehow knew exactly what it was doing when it announced ehow writers would be making $80 an article, when in fact it wasn't talking about ehow writers at all. That statement was put out there so they could feed it to a news hungry media over in the UK, and the UK took the bait without as much as asking any questions at all of ehow. In bold pring, ehow to pay writers $80 nan article. Unbelievable, Once again ehow the esow has proven they are indeed the kings when it comes to making dimes do the work of dollars. And talk about free press.
I have news for our over seas friends, they are about to be hit with one of the biggest scam machines out there. ehow writers do not get paid $80 per article nor will they ever get paid that much.
Another story put it this way, some ehow writers will get paid $80 an article, while others can expect to make between $3 to $75 per article. Say what? Poor bastards, they don't know what's about to hit them. This sow can't squeal, and there ain't enough scraps in the UK to satisfy its hunger.
Check out this news story and see how misleading ehow has been with the $80 per article scam they are now running. http://psmithjournalist.com/2010/03/exclusive-d...
Posted by thepreacher56 at March 7th, 2010 at 7:48 amEhow writers? You mean those that submit content on their own without the benefit of being edited? Demand Studio writers do get paid (twice a week like clockwork) and we do have health insurance and we do have a grant program for creative projects. If the EHow writers who are self submitting want to be paid, they should apply to become Demand Studio writers. We really do have fun over there and it is a good way to earn some cashola.
Posted by demandwriter at March 16th, 2010 at 5:05 amthank you
Posted by reklam at May 20th, 2010 at 9:54 am