AllVoices.com Cites Success of Automated Newsroom Model
By Anna Johnson on September 21st, 2010Allvoices.com has claimed success with its ‘automated newsroom performance-based news model’ after achieving record growth in August 2010. The site attracted 7.5 million unique visitors and over 31 million page views during the month.
Allvoices, which bills itself as a citizen media news site, collects incoming reports from users and news feeds, presenting the content in a multimedia format.
With new stories contributed by some 410,000 ‘citizen reporters’ the company optimizes its content for the search engines and social media sites such as Twitter and Facebook.
Sound familiar? You might think of Allvoices as the ‘eHow of news’, in that Allvoices uses a huge army of freelancers to pump out news stories (as opposed to how-to articles in the case of eHow).
Allvoices, which was founded in February 2007, pays its citizen journalists an amount based on a combination of reputation ‘score’ and the number of page views they get for their articles.
A contributor’s reputation largely depends on which of three Allvoices categories the contributor fits into: Stringers (new contributors), Reporters (contributors with a growing fan base) and Anchors (established contributors with high credibility ratings and large fan bases).
Depending on their reputation score and some other factors, a contributor will earn between $1.50 and $3.50 per 1,000 page views per month. AllVoices says that in August, Stringers contributed an average of 9.3 stories and averaged 221 page views per post, Reporters averaged 15.7 reports and 432.8 page views per post, whilst Anchors averaged 47.13 posts and 860 page views.
If the average Stringer gets $1.50 per page views, the average Reporter gets $2.50 per 1,000 page views, and the average Contributor gets $3.50 per 1,000 page views… then the average Stringer is making about $3 per month for 9 reports ($0.33 per report), the average Reporter is making $17 for 15.7 reports ($1.08 per report), and the average Anchor is making $142 for 47.13 posts ($3.01).
Such earnings may seem pitifully low by U.S. standards, but the reports themselves are often just one or two paragraphs. What’s more, according to AllVoices, some Anchors are making over $2,000 per month.
Allvoices founder and CEO Amra Tareen says the site’s growth is a testimony to the success of its business model:
“Allvoices has proven that its automated newsroom performance-based news model not only works, but is thriving. Our month-over-month growth is phenomenal, as shown by the numbers we’re reporting today.”
The company – which has raised $7.5 million in venture funding and is now seeking an additional $5 million – has not indicated whether the growth in site users has been reflected in revenues or profits.
Amra Tareen said the $5 million in extra funding would help the company “build a brand and focus on monetization” indicating that the company may be some way off turning a profit.
Still, the popularity of the site, which has seen it grow from 1 million monthly visitors in February 2009 to 7.5 million last month, indicates that it’s doing something right.
