Marketing is crucial in everything we do these days. Ignoring online marketing is like opening a shop without telling anyone about it. So, online businesses and brands need to make their voices heard. Online aggregates offer an excellent platform for that. But how do online aggregates work?
This is what we are going to discuss in this article. The best online aggregators can really boost your marketing efforts. Audiences are flooded every day with marketing content. So, it is really challenging for them to filter this information and make the right buying decisions. The internet is so immense that we sometimes need guidance to navigate it.
Online aggregator sites present an exciting type of content guidance for clients. Moreover, they pose a great opportunity for online business owners. They can showcase their content on these online aggregates and thus promote them. Do aggregators make any money? Yes, and we’ll discuss how aggregators make money in the following.
How do online aggregates work
Online aggregates are websites that gather data from other online sources. The purpose? To arrange and organize information in a manageable way. This way, users can easily find what they’re looking for, like flight tickets or vacation deals. This is a simple online aggregator’s definition.
The online aggregates charge commission from the sellers. The sellers have another platform to showcase their products. So, it’s a win-win situation.
So, how do aggregates work from a technical side? They basically pull data according to certain variables. These could be certain hashtags, user accounts, or keyphrases. They could be channels from a specific niche, playlists, products, etc.
Online aggregators examples
Well, one such example is a list of Instagram hashtags for, say, cats. If you Google “cats Instagram hashtags”, you will find a website that can help you with a list. Youtube playlists are also a very basic example of online aggregators. Let’s take “work songs” playlists as an example. Let’s say you’re looking for some tunes to work to. Instead of searching for separate songs, you simply search for a Youtube playlist of 100 nice, lo-fi tracks to listen to while toiling away on your projects.
However, these are very basic examples. Let’s look at something more advanced.
The 5 best news aggregators of 2021
This is an interesting list of aggregators. In fact, news aggregators are some of the most-used aggregate platforms out there.
1. Feedly
So, this specific example is a sleek, modern platform that makes it super easy for you to follow the world news. You can have it aggregate up to 100 sources for free.
2. Flipboard
Flipboard is a news curator that you can install on your iOS or Android device. You can stay up-to-date with every piece of news that comes up on social media or in the press. It allows you to flip through certain topics and industries. Therefore, you can choose what type of news you want to see every day. It is perfect for cutting through the noise.
3. Google News
Google News is just one of the tech behemoth’s features. But it’s a good one. It pulls thousands of articles from some of the best news organizations worldwide. These include blogs, magazines, or news broadcasts.
4. Apple News
Apple News comes with most iOS devices. So, it’s an excellent place to start. You get access to a wide selection of news publications, from the most prestigious to indie magazines. It’s good fun, and you can personalize it to your needs and interests.
5. Reddit
Reddit is probably one of the most famous online aggregates out there. It harbors some of the purest forms of content coming straight from direct users. Some are news; some are comments. So, it’s more than a news aggregator. It’s a form of Social Media.
Anyways, we hope these online aggregators’ examples are enough to make a point. Most of them function based on subscription. So, this is how online aggregates make money.
Furthermore, online aggregators like HotDeals make lots of money from commissions.
How do online aggregates work vs plagiarism
Let’s not confuse plagiarism with content aggregation.
So, plagiarism implies using somebody else’s content without their approval. Moreover, plagiarism does not give due credit to the rightful owner.
By contrast, online aggregators always mention who the author of the content is. Whether it is a news publication or a specific seller, you know whose product, service, or article you actually read. So, this is a big difference, and you can’t confuse plagiarism with content aggregation anymore.
When you see the owner’s links, names, and websites next to the content, you know that’s aggregation content.
Step-by-step guide
Ok, so how does it work specifically? The technicalities are up to you, but here are the main principles.
1. Start with a thorough web scraping and research
First, you have to decide what type of news aggregator you’re going to create. News aggregators? Then, first, get enough information on your main competitors out there. Develop a strategy that will put your news aggregator up there at the top.
You also need a bit of know-how on web scraping to pull this off.
2. Choose your niche and main sources
After you’ve researched it through and through, it’s time to pick a niche. Moreover, choose your most credible sources and begin pulling data.
If you’re building a news aggregator, here are some niches: art and music, weather and environment, sports and healthcare, breaking news, technology, and science, etc.
3. Always mobile-friendly
In this day and age, mobile-friendly means user-friendly. Your users need to be able to read their news from a small mobile screen. Otherwise, they just won’t bother.
Moreover, you must make your platform very pleasing to the eyes. So, don’t underestimate design and how it intertwines with functionality.
4. Decide on monetization
So, how do you turn your news aggregator into profit? You can have one or all of these:
- Ad-free subscription
- Ad placements
- Content with sponsored content
- Paid links
5. Functionality and features
These are the secret sauce that can make your aggregator stand out.
The basic functions of any news aggregator are:
- newsfeed
- filters for search
- subscription structure
- comment section
- sidebar
- social media share
On top of these, you need to add other bonus features that will make your app stand out.
So, this is mostly how online aggregates work. The best solution for hosting is Namecheap.
It offers some of the best domain names on the market, WordPress special features, hosting, security features, and apps. You’ll love it.
Let’s just take a short peek at its main apps.
Namecheap apps
1. Site Maker
This is a site maker that asks for no design or coding skills. You can quickly select the sections you need and follow a step-by-step process. So, you can get your website online almost instantly. It’s an all-in-one package that’s perfect for beginners.
Moreover, the app functions by adding and removing blocks. These blocks are your different website elements, like contact forms or photo galleries. So, you basically play around with these different blocks to customize your desired final product. Then you simply press “publish”, and there, right there, you’ve got your website with Namecheap.
Nevertheless, you can’t really build an online aggregator without any coding skills. You’ll need at least some web scraping knowledge. However, you need to start from somewhere, right?
2. Supersonic CDN
Supersonic CDN is another Namecheap app that offers superior content delivery. You can safely store your website on multiple servers across the globe. Moreover, the bandwidth delivers some pretty good speeds. It takes under two seconds to update your content on every edge server in the world network.
Supersonic CDN is perfect for any eCommerce website and business. Furthermore, you get 24/7 customer service, powerful security, instant activation, and improve SEO ranking.
3. Relate
Relate is a Namecheap functionality that you receive for free once you sign up with them for hosting.
Basically, Relate helps you power up your business with a suite of easy-to-use online marketing tools.
So, as part of the suite, you’ve got RelateSocial which you can use to schedule and publish all your Social Media posts from one place.
RelateReviews is another tool that helps you manage your business’s reputation through reviews.
4. EasyWP
This is a very fast and reliable WordPress Hosting tool. It provides easy backups and restores SFTP and database access and an interactive dashboard to manage all your WordPress websites.
Moreover, EasyWP supports any domain name provider. Namecheap assures 99.9% uptime and three times the speed of traditional hosting. It sounds very good, doesn’t it? The priciest subscription gets you 100 GB SSD storage, support for over 500K visitors/month, 2 CPUs and RAM, and free CDN, and SSL.
5. Validation.com
So, this is a very useful tool that enables you to stay on top of customer ID verification. So, it is basically an anti-fraud assist that’s easy to set up and use.
6. Stencil
Stencil is a graphic design tool that will come in handy in many of your online marketing activities.
It enables you to create fast and engaging visuals for your business, whether it is a blog or an eCommerce platform.
So, basically, Stencil removes the costs associated with hiring designers to take care of your visual identity.
How do account aggregators work vs online aggregates
Finally, the last on our list is the confusion between online aggregates and account aggregators. They’re two different things, from different industries.
So, we’ve seen how online aggregates work. Now, how do account aggregators work?
Well, account aggregation is a finance process that implies the collection of data from an individual’s financial account into one place. Certain apps and financial services like Mint or Quicken or other financial institutions offer this service. Basically, you have an app to check all your banking data from all your accounts, including savings, brokerage, etc.
So, as you can see, the principle is pretty much the same, only that account aggregators are regulated differently and more strictly than a usual online news aggregate.
This is all you should know about how online aggregates work. Now, back to working on your online business and dreams, right?
