I love Mashable. It’s probably my favorite blog on social media and technology, and yes, I’m not ashamed to say that the fact that the oh-so handsome Pete Cashmore is the founder and head of Mashable does play a SMALL, small role in why I love it.
But Mashable, from what its founder says, is doing very well. Take a look at what Pete Cashmore has to say about the success of his blog. He makes the act of making money on the internet so easy.
Is Pete leaving something out? Or is this business model only applicable to smaller staffed sites? Could a similar model be applied to newspapers?
I don’t think he’s leaving anything out. I think that this model just works really well for smaller sites and those focused around the topic that they are covering, technology and social media. These sort of topics spread through the Web quickly and get a ton of pageviews.
The reason why Mashable works so well is that they are essentially a community model. They make it easy for users to give feedback through Disqus commenting system, they show ways that readers can connect through SM, they do a lot of reader polls, etc. Also, business wide, take a look at all the sponsorships that they have, which also bring in money. They are doing really well and have been doing well to spread their content with social media (makes sense).