Get 100 million uniques in 7 months with 'borrowed' content. WOW

Source: ViperChill podcast, episode from Feb 23, 2014.

Success story

Site viralnova.com was founded in May 2013.

After 7 months they had over 100 million unique monthly visitors.

Viralnova is now #403 web site on the planet (alexa.com).

It has 1,2 million likes on Facebook.

Strategy

Make a very simple web site and a Facebook page with the same name.

You need no original content or images. Instead ‘collect’ content from other sites and post them on your web site.

This is the key. One small piece of original content you need to write yourself is a catchy title. Something like:

Here’s Why You Should Never Let Your Cat Drink Beer. Or… Maybe You Should. Hilarious.

On your Facebook page share links to your web site posts with a simple comment. Something like: ‘This is the funniest thing ever!’

Setup Facebook Ads campaign and promote your Facebook page.

Keep creating posts on your web site and sharing them on Facebook page.

Do not give up and some of the posts will go viral.

Bubble

There are many new websites that use similar strategy: distractify.com, boredpanda.com, hellou.com, upworthy.com.

Legal? Risky?

In many cases using content from other sources without permission is not legal.

This business model depends entirely on Facebook which is risky.