Editor’s note: This article was first published in July 2015. The deal terms, staff numbers, the revenue forecast for “this year”, traffic figures and the Facebook algorithm change are as of July 2015.
ViralNova is one of the many viral news sites out there, in the style of BuzzFeed, created by young entrepreneur Scott DeLong. It has recently emerged that the site has been acquired by social media company Zealot Networks, in a deal under which DeLong could receive around 100 million dollars in stock and cash.
What is the story behind this site?
For a while, ViralNova was just one of many viral content sites, run solely by DeLong with the occasional help of two freelance writers. Yet for some reason they managed to grow the site to BuzzFeed’s level, with around 100 million page views a month. And all of it without a single employee on the payroll and without any outside funding or investment.
All DeLong did was create the site in 2013, produce content and put up a couple of Google ads. In under eight months, the site was making him six figures a month in advertising revenue alone, and millions of dollars a year.
For those who don’t know what viral content sites are: they are the kind that people are now even trying to replicate in Spanish (although these just copy content from the American viral sites), and they usually carry eye-catching headlines designed to make you click, such as:
“What this mother did for her son will make you cry”, or “20 things you didn’t know happen when you drink water with lemon. Number 12 blew my mind.”
These sites feed entirely on Facebook users, and some of them rack up millions of likes, sometimes by making you “like” a page before you can watch a video. In a few months they can gain millions of fans on Facebook and make money hand over fist from Google ads. Ironically, most of them push the limits of Google AdSense’s own policies, placing ads in areas Google prohibits and not even producing original content.
Facebook itself cracked down on these viral sites and made a major change to its algorithm so that content from these pages would not go viral so easily and quickly, something that has already hit many of them.
Curiously, ViralNova was one of the smaller sites in this business and didn’t look likely to overtake its competitors. But Facebook’s algorithm change ended up hurting its rivals much more than ViralNova, and right now it looks as if it could become the most successful of the viral content group.
Now media companies are buying viral content sites.
EliteDaily, another big viral content site, was recently acquired by the Daily Mail for around 50 million dollars, while Twitter offered to buy Mic.
This entrepreneur almost gave up.
As mentioned above, ViralNova wasn’t always the favourite, and DeLong seriously considered throwing in the towel with the site, even though he had sold other websites before.
ViralNova launched in January 2014, and eight months later DeLong felt that, with the growth in users, it was too much for one person, on top of the technical problems caused by so much incoming traffic.
The entrepreneur admitted in an interview with Business Insider that although he was making millions by the end of the year, he was working 16 hours a day, every day, including Saturdays and Sundays. He says he burned out and decided to hire a domain broker to find a buyer for the site.
Some Silicon Valley venture capitalists offered to help DeLong turn the site into a real business with employees, but DeLong admits he doesn’t have an entrepreneurial mindset and doesn’t want the responsibility that comes with a business like that and with hiring people. He says he doesn’t want to open an office or have employees: he likes doing his own thing and doesn’t like pressure.
(Read: How entrepreneur Sara Rotman did it)
That was when Sean Beckner of Zealot Networks came along and tried to persuade DeLong to stay in the business by offering to buy a piece of the company. After months of negotiations in which each side set out its terms, they reached an agreement.
Sean Beckner will become ViralNova’s CEO, and the company will also have a vice president.
Sara Heddleston, one of the freelance writers who helped make ViralNova a success, will become editor-in-chief. They have already hired 12 new writers and an ad sales team to better monetise those 100 million visits.
The company now has 22 full-time employees and will generate 35 million in revenue this year. DeLong has committed to staying on board, although Zealot is giving him the well-deserved break he needs, as well as the roughly 100 million dollars.
Scott DeLong now says he is happy with his new way of life, with much more free time, which leaves us with a lesson we already knew: “Think like a big company.”
Further reading
Featured image: Mackenzie Kosut, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Flickr.
