Top Tips for Running Your Internet News Website

So, you want to make a fortune on the internets, eh? Well my friend, then you need to start a news site devoted to internet-related news. That’s right, follow these simple steps and you’ll soon be pulling in enough Google juice you too will make a million dollars a year on Google Ads.

• Republish every press release. Every. One. MSN upgrades their Shopforcrap Beta site? Let the world know!
• Google is perfect. Seriously, the last being that walked the Earth that was as pure and beautiful as Google was instantly killed so its beauty could not be tarnished.
• Everyone loves cell phones. Make sure to publish every photo, rumor, and technical spec, no matter how speculative, on every single phone that could possibly be made in the next two decades. Bonus coverage for being able to insert a new convergence-style phrase your headline. (“Marginal company releases cell phone/matter transporter, with MP3 and direct line to God!)
• Apple has released an operating system that cannot be improved. It is basically Superman in software form. It is immune to hackers, crashes, hyperbole, and radiation. Should nuclear war occur, the only things left will be Twinkies, cockroaches, and OS X.
• The music industry’s efforts to combat piracy should never be editorialized. Take their word for it; they paid for the research you’re going to publish. Never mind if you’re also running an academic study that runs counter to the music industry’s report. All is well. This is not the information you’re looking for.
• Never, ever legitimize gaming. For the love of God, they only make a few billion dollars. It’s still creepy 40-year-olds playing World of Warcraft or blood-red-eyed 13-year-olds training for the next massacre at their high-school playing Socom.
• VoIP is awesome! Seriously, didn’t you hear about it at the last sponsor retreat? Some guy told me all about it. It’s so freakin’ awesome to be tethered to your computer to save a marginal amount of money and talk to your brother over a connection Nextel would laugh at.
• Research your articles. Make sure you know how badly Windows sucks, not why it sucks. Make sure you troll Slashdot for good lines about how BSD could reverse global warming and make pandas have multiple litters annually.
• Firefox all day, every day. Publish their download stats at least weekly. In fact, you could break ground by being the first news site to have a download counter on the homepage. Wow.. Firefox. Bonus coverage for pointing out features Firefox has that Opera introduced. Double bonus for linking to Opera.
• RSS baby! Hell yeah! I mean, it’s like really simple (wink)! You should have no fewer than six dozen RSS feeds on your site, but make sure that the content you deliver via those feeds bears no resemblance whatsoever to the implied content. For instance, if you have a shopping feed for hard drives, be sure to publish your lucrative Japanese hentai soda ads there too.
• And finally, remember who pays the bills. That’s right, the advertisers. Ads everywhere. Homepage, RSS feeds, embedded in the podcast, dripping from tags on the clothing at Cafepress, Photoshopped into photos from SXSW. Get hats, use pop-up ads, pay booth babes to tattoo their… well.. you get the picture. If readers complain that the content is hard to find, screw ’em. Oh, make sure to get those cool Flash ads too; people love those.

Follow these few steps and I guarentee you’ll be as popular as any of the Technorati Top 100. Cross my heart.

The preceding was sarcasm. If you are angry after reading the above, you don’t get sarcasm. Go outside.