In this article, I will share with you how to start a new website, get approval from google news and mediums you can advertise.
[Note This Post is not written in detail, hence you may not get everything in details]
The whole process is divided into 4 parts
- News Website Development
- Content Publishing
- Requesting Google News Approval
- Monetising the website
What is a Google news-approved website?
A news website is a portal/website/listicle which publishes information from various industries and the website content gets listed on news.google.com.
Your friend publishing new mobile news updates on blogpost.com or wordpress.org is not a google approved news website.
In order to get google news approval, your website must have a self-hosted website with authentic design and details. You should maintain a self/cloud-hosted site, not a free subdomain. Google has almost no priority for them.
Web 2.0 websites are clearly ignored and do not waste time in getting them approved. It will not be approved.
There are three properties places where your website content will be visible
A. Google News on Aggregator Panel
B. Google News on SERP (On Google Search)
Top stories are usually picked from google news approved websites.
Note: Google announced recently that any blog/article can be picked even from non-google news approved site but getting one probability in 0.0008%. Not recommended for a real business/publishing model.
C. Google Mobile Apps
Google has its own news app called Google News, available on the play store, app store which is quite popular.
D. Discover (Feature available in almost all android devices)
Which comes in the phone(Usually in Android when you swipe right)
A very smart recommendation engine by google that is by default installed in almost all android devices having Android M and other latest OS.
Note: Even if you get approval, you will not get discover a feature in your google news. It is given to publishers delivering high-quality expectations fulfilling news content.
(We got a discover feature for 1 of our google news approved tech sites)
When google news readers will visit your website?
Only when they are on desktop, rest all traffic goes to google apps and amp sites.
1. Your own website (AMP or Non-AMP)
Your own website will be visited only when the reader has opened it from the desktop. By default mobile traffic is redirected to the mobile app.
Note: If your audience is mostly from mobile, the audience won’t be under your control and you cannot do everything you want to do. Google controls the overall experience and it’s something to deal with.
2. Your AMP website
This is just your website with the AMP feature. It is easy to create if you are on WordPress but using tools like AMP for WP. It is the most popular plugin on the WordPress directory.
Fun Fact: I have met that AMP plugin developer Ahmed Kaludi, Mohammed Kaludi several times. (No I don’t get paid to recommend that, I recommend it because it’s the best in the market)
1. NEWS WEBSITE DEVELOPMENT
Example: Engadget, Android Authority These websites publish news about tech and they can be called tech news websites.
You are reading this article to be here.
1.1 How to develop a news website?
Developing a website is easy and you can cut the cost to achieve your goal quite easily. Unlike the olden days, you don’t need to develop websites from scratch. Today you have many prebuilt frameworks available which you can use to make your site.
Example: WordPress, Zoomla, Drupal
If you are a developer then you can get the website on your own by learning how to use the framework. It may take up to 2 months to get for a very beginner to understand any of the above framers.
To save time and keep things fast and running, you can hire a freelance web designer which is the cheapest option available or you can hire a web development company.
1.2 How much does it cost to start to get a news website developed?
A news website may cost you around $500 – $700 USD when developed by a freelancer. The same website may cost you around $1200-$1500 if it gets developed by a software development company.
Note: The cost may change and it will depend on features and functionality and intensity of the project.
2. CONTENT PUBLISHING
2.1 How to hire writers for a news website?
Finding good quality writers may take a good amount of time and remember that not everyone is good at writing. You need to spend days, sometimes weeks to find a good writer in the budget.
But here is the hack which you can use to get the content (not the highest in quality)
- Find a friend who can write content for you
- Find someone in a family who can write for you
- Find professional news writers who can write for you (in exchange for a share on revenue, Future profit)
- Hire interns on a platform like Internshala.
Once you have the writers & website ready, start curating content on the category/industry you are interested in.
Once you have articles ready then schedule them in a gap of 2-3 hours.
Make sure you publish a minimum of 6 articles a day, even on Sundays.
Follow the procedure for 30-40 days.
After 40 days you will have almost 150+ articles on your platform and you will be in a pretty good position to apply for google news.
3. GOOGLE NEWS APPROVAL
3.1 How to get google news approval for a news website?
To get your website google news approved, you should start your own news website, hire content writers, publish content and then apply for approval.
Note: Google news approval is easy for people who follow a procedure but tough for people who are lazy and scattered.
3.2 Things to do before you apply for Google News
- Pages: About, Privacy Policy, Terms of Service, Contact Us
- Multiple Authors: 5-6 authors with description & their photo
- Category: News as category and every other subcategory which falls under news.
ie: News:(the Main category), Smartphone: (Subcategory) - 6-10 fresh articles per day (for 30-40 days)
Approval Process
Section 1: Get the Groundwork done
- Prepare your website for approval
- Go to google publisher center
- Add your publisher name (ie: ABC News)
- Add Basic Information (make sure it’s English and the description is grammatically correct.)
Use tools like Grammarly to check your description - Category (required): Select one main category and subcategory (Chose the one which you are most familiar with as main category)
- Primary language (required): The language in your original content is published.
(In case you maintain a multilingual website, try to select the one which you product first) - Website property URL: Put the website URL
(Ignore google’s description for this field, it will confuse you)
- Location: Select the location of your news website is about.
- Contacts: Contact of person who will deal with google news.
If you are a 4-5 team and you actively manage the whole site, put your URL.
(To Get custom emails, use webmail if you have Cpanel or Use ZOHO, It’s free for 5 people. ) - Distribution: Where google can show your content? Do you want to limit your content to only India, USA, or a specific country? No! Choose Worldwide!
- Google properties: Do you want to show your news only on the phone or other devices also? Generally Choose: Allow All Properties
- Tracking: Google Analytics tracking code?
If you don’t have one and use WordPress, watch this video and get back to this article.
Tracking pixels: (Used for impression/reader tracking, Ignore for now and setup later)
Section 2: Content
Sections are basically categories. Add all main categories and their URLs.
General Popular Categories
- Tech (Abroad Category)
- Entertainment
- Politics
- Local News
- Government
- Business
- Sports
- Science
- health
- Research
Note:
1. You can keep your website related to only a few categories. (Eg: android authority)
2. You should ad subcategories in each to be specific with website architecture.
4. Google News Website Monetization | How to monetize google news website?
Monetization is one of the easiest parts to do in the whole news website development/management process. It’s the process that requires your business mind to perform rather than think in a single direction.
As the website gets traffic, the monetization doors open, and you as an owner of the website have the right to choose the one which performs the best.
Ways to monetize a news site:
- Google Ads (Google Adsense)
- Direct Advertising
- Promoted Content
- Affiliate Marketing
- Link Placement
- Paid Press Release
I. Google Ads (Google Adsense)
Google Ads(Former: Google Adsense) is a platform where you sell your allowed google place ads. Google Ads has the technology to make advertising, publishing, and payment.
Google has millions of publishers on their Google ads platform and some of the show ads to your website. Google gives you this opportunity to earn money but not for Free.
Google pays you 68% of the whole advertising budget and takes 32% as commission.
II. Direct Advertising
Direct Advertising is one of the best ways to make money for your news website and you can do it simply by selling ads to people who are interested in advertising on your website.
Usually, whenever a deal is made directly with the advertiser (the company that wants to show ads on your website), The ad space becomes expensive.
For example, if Google was paying you 68,000.00 INR for your website space then you can charge a client 90,000 INR easily.
III. Promoted Content
Promoted content is also one of the best ways to make money from the news website but you have to be active to play this game. News companies look for branding and they pay news websites to publish news about their products and services.
The ticket size usually goes between USD $100- $150 (7,000-12,000 INR) for every post publishing. You can make good cash this way and support your news website growth.
IV. Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate marketing is another way to make money when you don’t have so many direct advertising deals. Applying for popular affiliate programs like Amazon, Flipkart, Bestbuy, and third-party affiliate websites you can make more money.
To do this, you have to select some products from the industry your news website is and publish content related to the product.
While publishing the news make sure you put the product link (affiliate link) in the news so that people who are reading it can focus on see or but the product.
When they make a purchase, the amount is credited to your account.
V. Link Placement
Link Placement is an unusual way to make money.
I recommend you not to use this technique until you have no options left.
SEO, Search Engine Optimisation works based links also called backlinks. Companies who look to rank high on Google purchase link placement from a high authority website.
As a news website, Your website holds the authority to reach people and gain a lot of branding value. Hence, you as a news site can charge 3X of the amount to publish news about the company even having less domain authority and page authority.
That means if the normal rate of link placement is 2,000 rupees then you can charge around 5,000 – 6,000 rupees for link placement.
Once your site is older than 1 year and has gained authority in the niche and has attracted good quality links in the past then the same amount will jump to 8,000 to 10,000 INR.
Well, I hope the whole idea of starting a news site, maintaining it was helpful for you.
Issues in Google News
1. Google News Approved but not appearing on news.google.com
Recently (Around January 2020) google started approving websites that have fewer standards too. Sounds good, isn’t it!
But those websites never appear on news.google.com which is the worst.
None of my websites are facing that issue so I cannot share a lot of info about it. A lot of people asked me about this on my videos, I considered spending time and found
The website they mentioned
- Do not have any page indexed on google except their home, about page.
- Have controversial content (Not good until you get approval)
- Has semi-adult/nude content (Never recommended)
- Automated Sites
2. There is traffic but no money
These are the following things you can do.
- Start writing where advertise compete with each other for placement ie: finance, cryptocurrency, software
- Place ads properly
- See Amazon and other affiliate opportunities
3. Very Less Traffic, Not as people told on YouTubers.
Few facts you may not like to hear but I care to let you know
Note: Google is slowly taking every click including SERP, News, Review into their atmosphere but it’s not something you can control so realize that and move on.
Tip: Enjoy the rain until it’s raining, there will more competition, more aggregation anyway.
