You don’t necessarily have to write a lot of original content to be a great blogger and publisher. You can be a news aggregator.
Many popular blogs and news sites work as content curators and gain readers by sharing content.
The key to success is to share great content that is niche-targeted to a specific topic or service.
As an aggregator, your role is to source the best online information and select the most relevant, interesting, and helpful articles to share with your audience.
Becoming a news or content aggregator
There are a few reasons why this type of blog may suit you.
One is that you do not have time to write original content. I know full well how time-consuming this can be.
The second is that you would like to find a way to make a passive income.
Many news aggregators make a nice monthly income from Google Adsense and other forms of advertising or affiliate marketing, so perhaps it might be an option for you.
Third, you would like to become an online influencer on a particular topic.
Attracting comments and leveraging social media can work for any subject, such as cooking, gardening, politics, baby care, or even self-publishing.
Building a great-looking site and finding the perfect WordPress theme for the job will take time.
But after that, it is only a matter of using search engines to find feeds to the type of content you want. Then, you can add a new post very quickly or even automatically.
Before I explain how you can start building a site, here are a few examples to show you how it can work.
The most well-known aggregation websites are news services.
Examples of a news aggregator
You probably read Google News occasionally to check the latest news.
It is a perfect example of a collection of trusted sources at work.
Google scoops up articles from news organizations such as The New York Times, The Guardian, and The Washington Post, among hundreds of other news sources.
Then, it categorizes popular news items into top stories or breaking news and then into different news topics or sub-topics.
But you can also access websites that are similar to Google News.
One example is AllTop News.
Although it doesn’t have the aesthetics of some news sites, it has been around for many years and is a source of the latest news for many readers.
But it is not just news.
PopURLs is a site that pulls content from various sources, including YouTube, Flickr, and social media. It even aggregates Google News (again).
Its site has hundreds of sources and a very slick user interface for an aggregator.
Other types of aggregators
Blog Engage is a text-based blog that gathers web content from thousands of blogs.
It is a site that is a win-win. Bloggers get more traffic, and Blog Engage makes money from advertising.
Some aggregators specialize in niche topics. An example is the Travel Blogger Community.
It curates travel articles from around the web.
Here’s another site that concentrates on games, movies, and music.
How can you create a news aggregator content site?
You can start by manually building site content.
When you do this, it is called curated content.
Whatever your topic, you can find plenty of articles or posts.
You might search online or keep a list of sites on your topic.
All you need to do is grab a small piece of an article and perhaps its featured image.
Then, post it (always) with a link to continue reading the original article.
The Story Reading Ape is an excellent example of a curated site.
You can do this on any blogging platform, even on free sites like Wix, Blogger, or free WordPress.
Tumblr is another option for reblogging content.
How to build and start an aggregator site
To build a multiple-source blog, you will need a self-hosted WordPress site.
The advantage of a self-hosted WordPress website is that you can automate the process of creating article snippets, links, and even posts by using a site’s RSS feed and a plugin.
If you are using a premium site on wordpress.com, there might be plugins available for you, but you will need to check.
When I first started Just Publishing Advice, it was part of my personal site. I used this technique to set it up as a feed for publishing news.
By luck, I was able to find a screenshot of the early days of my site by using the Internet Archive Wayback Machine.
It ran very happily for a couple of years, automatically posting fresh news from several sources every day.
In the end, I decided to change tack and build Just Publishing Advice by writing original content.
But at least you can be reassured that I know how content aggregation works.
To create an automated or semi-automated site, you will need to use a premium plugin. I used the WP RSS Aggregator plugin.
I can vouch for how well it worked. But I have to add that I have no affiliation, so I am offering my opinion as a user only.
There is a free version that only publishes text snippets and post titles.
If you want to add images, set up individual WordPress posts, and style your site’s aggregation, you will need to buy premium add-ons.
I used the Excerpts & Thumbnails add-on, which worked perfectly for me for over two years.
There are so many ways you can use simple RSS feed sources to create stunning content on your blog.
Summary
Is using automated aggregator software for a site cheating?
No, not at all. It is a win-win for you and the content creators you add to your site.
If you can attract reasonable traffic, you will give the original content owner a backlink to their site that will help their SEO ranking and referral site visits.
For you, you want to build your advertising earnings.
However, like any new blog, you should expect that it will take some time to establish and attract enough daily visitors to make it profitable.
Building your social network with Facebook, X (Twitter), or Instagram is often the quickest way to do this.
It is not an option for everyone. But done well, it is a viable and lucrative means of online publishing.
Related reading: Why Content Scraping And Copying Articles Is A Really Bad Idea
great article! Is 8 gig on an intel core 13 enough to get started on a News Agg. site. Also do I need MSN Office? I just purchased an HP laptop and dont want to spend $$ on worthless software that I wont use.
An aggregated site is all online, so it doesn’t matter what computer you have.
Hi: I started a small aggregator political-oriented site (3 sites, one with broadcast media, one with conservative perspective and one with progressive perspective). Each of these three feeds had 10 news sources (30 total), downloaded every 4 hours, and up to 3 articles from each source. So, in 24 hours I could bring in 360 articles. My 1 GB storage on my hosted server filled up quickly. I deleted all 3 sites because I was just practicing with them but am perplexed how people control their server/bandwidth usage. Seems any aggregator service is going to create a storage problem. Any advice? Thank you.
I have to say Ken that posting 360 articles in 24 hours is a LOT! Particularly if your hosting site has such a small limit. Either get better hosting or slow down.
Thank you for the article write up. Very informative. I’m thinking of creating a site myself but I have 2 questions: 1. Will higher ranked sites allow a new unproven site to publish their posts? Why would they say no? 2. Would my site’s ranking go down if I was permitted to publish posts from much lower ranked sites? Any thoughts would be welcomed.
Good question, Zee. I only had one page of my site using an Aggregator feed. It worked extremely well and brought in Adsense income. But I removed it when I changed my site to 100% evergreen advice content. The news feed page was obviously dated and time stamped for each entry, so it wasn’t compatible with the new direction for the site.
great article. One question is to why did you move from New Aggregator to Blog? Was monitization difficult. I am asking because i am thinking of setting up a news Aggregator and want to make informed dicisions.