Latest Is the Enemy - CM #4
Discover more from Curation Monetized
Latest Is the Enemy - CM #4
Insights, resources and real-world examples of how to create profitable online projects by organizing existing information.
Welcome to issue #4 of Curation Monetized.
I am Robin Good, a passionate researcher of content curation since 2004, writing you from the sunny island of Holbox in Mexico.
The goal I have is to provide a showcase of real-world examples of apps, resources and digital products that generate revenue by collecting and organizing existing (already published) information.
I want to help indie entrepreneurs who are passionate and expert about a topic in creating valuable resources that are economically profitable.
This newsletter is written for:
indie entrepreneurs
journalists
subject-matter experts
consultants, advisors
trainers, teachers, coaches
The free edition of this newsletter provides general updates, news, resources and relevant tools relating to content curation, organizing information and related monetization and business models.
The Premium edition provides additional insights and showcases real-world examples with detailed info (niche, business model, platforms, authors) along with my notes on the curator’s job and connected business opportunities.
Key Insights
One Key Challenge for the Future of Our Culture
Content curation helps to transmit our culture to future generations.
But we are at risk of losing it.
Why?
There are very few companies and tools dedicated to the critical task of safely preserving our most valuable content and digital artifacts for the long term future.
Once an artist or a lawyer dies and nobody pays his website hosting fees, all that he has published disappears. Forever. Leaving no trace.
The same happens to your content it is been banned, censored or blocked, sometimes for political or legal reasons or worst, by algorithmic choice.
In this light, content curation plays a vital role in collecting, organizing, and preserving what we create and like.
Not only. Content curators act as trusted guides, helping society identify and discover what is relevant, interesting, and innovative. And by so doing content curators define our cultural identity and interests.
But, focused as we are on the latest, newest and the next upcoming story, we have forgotten to pay attention to what is so dramatically critical:
How do we make sure that as culture increases its digital footprint, it does not risk of being lost faster than ever before?
Unless we rapidly find effective ways to preserve valuable content we are going see a rapid loss of what we value most: our own history.
It is crucial to ensure the safe preservation of content for the long term.
Robin Good
Old Products, Always New
It’s true. There’s always an opportunity, through curation, to bring successfully back something that is apparently old, but that we have shelved only because it is not our latest gem.
Not only we can update, re-arrange and improve on our or others' original work, but most importantly each time we present something we can look at it from a different angle and perspective.
It could be the type of user we present it to, the application intended, or the association with some other relevant objective.
“Under pressure for newness, brands struggle to actually create new stuff, but by curating the old, they give it renewed meaning and purpose in consumers’ eyes. Curation contextualizes product within a specific time and a point of view.
Curation gives mundane objects, ... value by connecting them with a point of view and a subculture that makes them stand out in the vortex of speed, superficiality, and newness.”
Source: Ana Andjelic - “Creativity Is Dead, Long Live Curation”
Recommended Curation Tools & Resources
Monetize Your Lists
mobile app + browser extension lets you monetize your lists effortlessly.
SortfooDistributed User-Driven Search Engine
A blockchain-based, decentralized web search engine powered by the community.Key advantages:
Eliminates loss of privacy
Enables users to monetize their contribution to the search index
Decentralized: users act as crawling nodes (optional)
Personalized News Feed - 100% free
Create your own personalized newsletter that automatically sends you the news from the sites and the apps you are interested in.
Mailbrew
Visual Organizer (new free version)
Now with a 100% free version allowing up to 10 boards (walls) and unlimited cards (bricks).
Walling
Tools to Create Directories / Catalogs Online
Wordpress Themes / Templates
PHP Business Directory Script - GoClixy
Platforms
Directory Software for the Web - 360 Directories
Workfolio Directory - Workfolio
Local Business Directory Builder - eDirectory
Directory Website Builder - Marketgrabber
Personal Custom Stack
N.B.: In the February Premium Edition find a list of all the applicable and relevant business models for online directories.
Curation Monetized: Real World Examples
Profitable curation projects available in the February Premium Edition:
Curated catalog of high-quality one-page websites to inspire designers
A large collection of newsletters organized by category
Comparative list of best email list cleaning services of the year
A database of one million plus available & brandable one-word domain names
Directory of free online tools for indie entrepreneurs organized by categories
Collection of books recommended by successful individuals
These are all online projects that monetize by organizing existing information.
Subscribe to Curation Monetized Premium to get the details on each one of these projects.
Alternatively look at the first issue of CM to see how I analyze these projects.
Feedback and comments are always welcome, as well as requests for specific solutions. Just reply to this newsletter email or write me at robingood@substack.com
from sunny Holbox island (MX)
Robin Good