To Care Is To Curate - CM #7
Insights, trends, tools and real-world examples of how to create profitable online projects by organizing existing information.
Welcome to issue #7 of Curation Monetized.
I am Robin Good, a passionate researcher of content curation since 2004, writing you from Holbox island in Mexico.
My goal is to assist indie entrepreneurs who are expert about a topic in creating valuable resources that are useful for others and that are also economically profitable.
With this newsletter I share useful insights, trends, tools and real-world examples of apps, resources and digital products that generate revenue by collecting and organizing existing (already published) information.
Who is this for:
indie entrepreneurs
journalists
subject-matter experts
consultants, advisors
trainers, teachers, coaches
The Free edition of this newsletter offers:
- key insights and trends
relating to content curation, organizing information and related monetization and business models.
The Premium edition provides:
- additional insights plus
- a unique selection of tools and apps
- 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 Curation Insights
1) Why To Curate
When I looked closely at why some people spontaneously curate content it did strike me that most of them do not curate their stuff for the direct purpose to save time, to appear more authoritative or to gain more customers.
Why then, do they do so?
It’s simple.
They curate because they care.
Information curators are personally interested in what they do, and curating is the only reliable mean they have to deeply learn about their resources, to vet bad ones, to uncover true gems and to organize them in ways that allows them to find, pinpoint and to share important, unique ones, easily among thousands of other ones.
They curate their resources because they can produce better and more satisfying results for themselves, and when they share them, they can automatically extend these benefits to their customers, contacts, friends.
Source: Robin Good - “Why To Curate Information”
2) Become the Trusted Advisor
To make good choices, you need to have comprehensive and reliable information at your disposal.
But when the choices are in the tens or hundreds, what do you do?
You go to someone you trust, who you believe is an expert in that field, and you ask that guy what he advises you to choose.
Why?
“The toughest thing to do in life is to make choices.
Take decisions.
Not letting others make decisions for us.
But if you look at the data we naturally refrain from situations where there are more decisions to make and prefer to let do it for us.”
Source: Diogo Gonçalves - Psychology Today
Key Curation Trends
1) Crowdsourced Research
Community-curation platforms may gradually become great resources for distributed, user-driven (crowdsourced) research. Here some relevant examples:
Glasp
Share what you learn, discover, find with others while highlighting key concepts, commenting and contextualizing your resources.
Startupy
Discover user curated highlights on topics such indie entrepreneurship, the creator economy, Web3.
Upcarta
Find books, articles, videos, podcasts, tweetstorms, movies – created and recommended by the people you trust.
Column
Explore and uncover great stories and resources with other passionate researchers.
Producthunt
Learn about new apps and tools hunted by a community of expert digital tools explorers.
Yup
Dive into the best of Twitter, Farcaster, Lens, NFTs, and more in one feed. A social network for curators.
2) Rise of Curated Digital Products
More and more indie entrepreneurs are betting on creating commercial digital products that are nothing but curated collections of resources that solve a specific need for a specific audience.
Here some real examples:
SaaSFrame
generated ~$14,000 with SaaS marketing inspiration resources.
Xavier Coiffard
made $25,000 with Spread the World and UserBooster.
Patricia Mou
reached $5,000 ARR in one week with Rabbit Holes.
Ana Bibikova
made ~$1,000 in 1 day with Marketing Playbook.
Sudharshan
made $3,000 in 2 weeks with Community List.
GrowthList
generated $10,000 with growth tactics.
Quentin Villard
made $5,000 with TIMS
Source: Trends.VC Pro Reports
In the May Premium Edition:
Recommended Curation Tools & Resources
Interesting curation tools and apps available in the May Premium Edition:
Web Scraping Tools
Personal selection of 26 data extraction tools capable of capturing automatically any kind of data from any website.
With these tools you basically provide a reference URL of a specific web page and then you point and click to indicate which exact data you want to be captured and extracted.
This task can then be automated and applied to entire catalogs, databases, directories or entire shops like Amazon or Etsy. It is possible to extract data about people, their profiles and images from most any social network as well as real-estate or job offers from any number of websites on a periodic basis.
Get the details / Premium subscription
Curation Monetized: Real World Examples
Profitable curation projects available in the May Premium Edition:
Research Catalog of Modern Logos for Designers
a 3K+ modernist logo designs searchable archiveList of the Best Free Internet Educational Resources
Ranked and categorized super-list of best free online learning resourcesShoppable Directory of World e-SIMs
Online store of telephone e-SIMs for 210+ world countriesBest Examples of Product Design
Massive catalog of thousands UX patterns, UI elements, digital screens and types of web pages from real, existing productsLibrary of Integration Apps for No-Code Tools
One-stop shop directory for the handiest online integrations for no-code toolsCatalog of Call-to-Action Examples
Categorized library of 300+ CTA (Call-to-action) examples for marketersThe above 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 and to support my work in this direction.
To get a look at a Premium issue check out the first issue of CM.
Poll
P.S.: Feedback and comments are always welcome.
Just reply to this newsletter email or write me at robingood@substack.com
from sunny Holbox island (MX)
Robin Good