What Mahalo Needs To Do To Succeed

Jason Calacanis has described Mahalo as a "human powered search engine" -- but isn't Mahalo just another glorified content mill?  How does Mahalo really differ from sites such as Squidoo, HubPages, eHow (now Demand Media), FireHow, BrightHub, Associated Content and all the rest?  Well, it really doesn't.

The problem with Mahalo is that much of the content it produces is just SPAM.  Mahalo seems to have focused on creating pages that will produce good Ad Sense revenue (coupon, sale, and product pages), instead of actual, useful content.  I realized this when,  months ago, I mentioned to my teenage son that I was writing for Mahalo, and he said something along the lines of, "I hate that site.  Mahalo sucks."  And this was because Mahalo pages kept coming up when he would search for something, but the page never quite gave him the information that he needed.  Which is true about many of the pages that are being generated on Mahalo. 

Let's take coupon pages for example.  What is a consumer looking for when they search for coupons?  Well, they are looking for actual coupons - a place where they can print coupons or get coupon codes - but Mahalo pages don't give them that.  All Mahalo coupon pages give them is a 400 word description of the coupons and the products they are searching for.  And maybe, if they're lucky, there might be a link to another site that might give them what they are looking for.

Experiences like this just turn people away, and once they realize that this Mahalo site isn't going to give them what they want, they will not even bother to click on links to Mahalo pages anymore (just like my son, who now ignores any Mahalo pages that show up in his Google search results).

So what does Mahalo have to do to succeed?  Well, first of all, get rid of all the spammy pages.  Leave coupon pages for coupon sites, and stick to creating useful content.  BrightHub is one of my favorite sites to write for.  They don't do anything "spammy" from what I can tell, and their content is very useful and well-written, and best of all you keep your content.  Under no circumstances do they revoke your pages and give them to someone else (and neither do any of the other sites I write for).

Which leads me to my next suggestion, which is to hire freelance writers, but give them ownership rights to their content.  Most freelance writers want to write for sites where they get to keep their content.  People are proud of the work they do, and want to be assured that their work belongs to them and won't be taken away for mundane reasons like not having enough words in a video description.  "Stealing" content from writers is not a good way to do business.  You can't put the words "You own your content" in your Terms of Service, and then turn around and take it away.

People also like the idea of residual income from their work.  It's great to get that upfront pay, but it's even nicer to know that you will earn income from your writing for life (or until the site shuts down).   So whether it's from sharing ad revenue, affiliate revenue, or page view revenue, some type of residual income should be implemented to keep writers motivated.

Most importantly, don't harass your writers to the point where they become fed up with the whole thing!  The Vertical Manager thing may have been a good idea in theory, but all it did was cause (1) a loss of revenue to writers; and (2) constant harassment.  This method does not exactly instill motivation.  You should have some faith in your writers that they know what they are doing without having to be "nudged" everyday.  I've written a lot of articles online, some of which haven't been updated in months (or years), and they still show up on the front page of Google.  So having to update constantly is a ridiculous requirement. 

Also, the whole "25 pages a week" requirement is way too demanding and will most likely result in poorly written content.  Quantity over quality is never a good thing.  You can't expect people to be able to produce 25 pages a week (plus the other requirements) without getting totally burned out.  These type of requirements and deadlines are going to turn people away.  They may put up with it for a month or two, but eventually they're going to realize it's just too much, and will move on.  And what happens when a writer doesn't meet their 25-page goal?  Do they then not get paid?  Mahalo really needs to rethink this part.  Instead they need to hire more writers, but let people write as many or as few pages as they can (no quotas), and pay them a flat-rate per article.  Anywhere between $10 to $15 is the market rate right now on other content sites.  

And that brings me to my last suggestion which is to hire freelance writers who are experienced in writing.  Have they written for other sites?  Can they produce examples of their work?  Do they understand SEO?  Can they write with proper grammar and spelling?  This was Mahalo's problem from the get go.  They just let anyone create, claim, and manage pages. The whole "human-powered" thing was also a great idea, in theory, but you can't let just any "human" create pages.