Content Farms Are So Annoying!

Ever made a dosa or crepe on a steam iron box? 🤯

Welcome to the world of content farms, where all it takes in 60 seconds or five minutes to get started with life hacks and DIY crafts.

But before we process, it’s best to give a disclaimer: content farms can never compete with creative individuals.

And yet, we cannot deny how viral their content is!

Despite trying hard to wrap my head around their content, I don't understand their purpose or why they fetch millions of views and thousands of comments. As I write this, I realize the internet shares this sentiment — look up content farms on Reddit, you'll stumble upon Redditors raging against them. They don't understand the virality or popularity either. Except those videos are satisfying to watch — something I've heard a friend say.

What are content farms?

Content farms or content mills are agencies that produce high volumes of content to appease the SEO or algorithm. You may have stumbled upon articles that usually offer little (or unhelpful) information but know all about keyword placement — and naturally, you see them in the first 1-2 pages of Google Search. Most of these content farms publish thousands of articles in a day. Content farms usually underpay their writers or creators.

Check out this infographic for more details.

Years ago, Google introduced Google Panda to tackle these content-farms and lower their ranks, but some of them still flourish. The pandemic created a market for videos like never before, and content farming businesses obviously saw an opportunity there.

Sample this: If a creator and a content farm release a video on 'baking a cheesecake', chances are the latter's video performs better than the creators. Besides, an average user might watch 10 five-minute DIY craft videos than a long-form video that offers an actual, tangible solution. 😓

AI tool Jasper made a compelling argument about ditching content farms. 👇

An oldie but worth reading: A content farm that had about 20M monthly visitors

Content farms & clickbait

The number one priority for a content farm is having clickbait(ish) thumbnails that catch your fancy but amount to nothing. You’ve all heard of So Yummy, a YouTube channel with about 9.1M subscribers. If you’re into cooking or baking, you already know most of their recipes aren’t practical but that’s how they cater to the algorithm—with quick videos that may not be accurate.

Watch this video to know more. 👇

Rest of World talks about Chinese content farms behind Factory TikTok in one of its essays, and says, “The #factory hashtag alone has over 930 million views on TikTok. Under that umbrella are viral videos of stuffed animals getting injected with white fluff, a clip of a bright orange wig being detangled by a plate of metal needles, and several accounts devoted exclusively to the niche subgenre of glove-dipping content.”

There’s a subReddit called DiWHY that exactly emulates my feelings: why? what’s the purpose of these videos, and what makes them so addictive? Watch the following craft video — I mean, there’s no point but can you stop watching it? Perhaps not.

And then, there’s 5-Minute Crafts or Bright Side. Owned by a Russian publisher The Soul Publishing which has about 1.5B+ followers, they produce original content in over 20 languages. That’s massive, but that’s not all — The Soul Publishing is an award-winning agency that works with global brands.

Content farms are a cash cow! Apart from garnering or monetising views and gaining advertising, they also grab brand deals. Their popularity makes you wonder if the world really loves crafting or discovering lifeless life hacks — and while the world around you refuses, the larger chunk of the world finds this content agreeable.

And that’s a challenge, because these content farms rub shoulders with your favourite creators or celebrities. While most-followed celebrities can cross this barrier, small-sized creators’ traffic take a hit.

What do you think about content farms and do you have a favourite? Let us know.

🥁 We Dropped a New Video!

Ever wondered if MrBeast and anime have something in common?

Well, we have! And that's what our host Aadil Verma discusses in our latest video. 👇

That’s it for this week! We’ll be back with another story next Tuesday. 👋🏼

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