After who, what, when, where and why, there's the often forgotten question "how"?
That's where Atlanta-based HowStuffWorks.com comes in. How does digital television work? How is beer made? How do you repair an electric furnace?
The site has 171,000-plus articles about virtually anything you can think of. Topics range from existentialism ("How do we die?") to politics ("What are mid After who, what, when, where and why, there's the often forgotten question "how"?
That's where Atlanta-based HowStuffWorks.com comes in. How does digital television work? How is beer made? How do you repair an electric furnace?
The site has 171,000-plus articles about virtually anything you can think of. Topics range from existentialism ("How do we die?") to politics ("What are midnight regulations and how do they affect the next presidency?") to pure science ("Should I be afraid of strange matter?")
The result: 15 million unique visitors a month, up from 2 million in 2002.
Credit the site's growth to Jeff Arnold, the Atlanta man behind WebMD who became insanely wealthy after selling the medical portal back in 2000, just as the dot-com boom was cresting. Arnold spent hundreds of millions building the WebMD brand, which remains a popular site.
But when Arnold's company purchased HowStuffWorks in 2003, he decided to market it with no advertising at all. Instead, he looked to Google.
He hired a team of experts in Chicago who could ensure that certain phrases people type into search engines lead them to HowStuffWorks.com. The goal: getting the site to land in the top three of thousands of Google search results. Advertising cost: zip.
"We put a lot of effort understanding what people search for," Arnold said. "Quality rises to the top. You can't trick the Google algorithm. You have to have editorial votes and a good legacy. We got good at it."
John Strain, a 35-year-old Alpharetta software developer, is the ideal user for HowStuffWorks, someone the company would call an "information seeker" or "life learner."
"What appeals to me about it is the idea that it's useful trivia," Strain wrote in an e-mail on Facebook. "I don't have the time or patience to learn something as in depth (and useful) as engine maintenance or carpentry, but I can learn a little bit about a lot of things on HowStuffWorks. ... If I'm just browsing, I can always find some interesting trivia that I didn't know before."
Strain also recently began listening to HowStuffWorks podcasts ("Stuff You Should Know"), a recent addition that is among the most popular on iTunes. "They have preempted all my other podcasts, " he said, "because they're almost always interesting and I like the sense of humor of the guys who do them."
HowStuffWorks is hardly alone as a replacement for those musty encyclopedias that may still be sagging on your bookshelf. The site's most obvious competitor is Wikipedia, where anybody can update the articles. Both howtodothings.com and ehow.com rely on a battery of volunteers while about.com uses a network of 750 paid subject area "guides." HowStuffWorks stories are primarily written by dedicated in-house journalists.
"We pride ourselve on a quality editorial staff," Arnold said. "Our answer to user generated content is being far more trustworthy and providing an editorial voice." In terms of Wikipedia, "if 1,000 people are editing an article, you're literally editing out humanity and personality. We want knowledge and information to be compelling and engaging."
HowStuffWorks wasn't Arnold's idea. Credit a computer science professor appropriately named Marshall Brain. In 1998, Brain started the Web site as a hobby. His first article: "How Car Engines Work." He even did his own primitive illustrations — "eventually expunged," he noted.
When www.coolsiteoftheday.com deemed his site "cool," Brain said traffic began to build. In 1999, he turned HowStuffWorks into a business.
Four years later, Brain sold the site to Arnold's company for $2 million. Arnold built the company and in late 2007, sold it for $250 million to Discovery Communications, based in Silver Spring, Md. (Primary operations for HowStuffWorks remains in Buckhead.)
Arnold, who remains the company CEO, liked that the audience for the Discovery Channel is similar to that of HowStuffWorks. To spice up the site, it has added 35,000-plus videos from Discovery archival footage and purchased articles from the likes of World Book and Reader's Digest.
Plus, in November, HowStuffWorks has started a new TV show on Discovery Channel, beginning with basic commodities such as corn, wood and wheat.
The goal this year is to get up to 20 million unique visitors a month.
"We want to create a defensible brand," Arnold said. night regulations and how do they affect the next presidency?") to pure science ("Should I be afraid of strange matter?")
The result: 15 million unique visitors a month, up from 2 million in 2002.
Credit the site's growth to Jeff Arnold, the Atlanta man behind WebMD who became insanely wealthy after selling the medical portal back in 2000, just as the dot-com boom was cresting. Arnold spent hundreds of millions building the WebMD brand, which remains a popular site.
But when Arnold's company purchased HowStuffWorks in 2003, he decided to market it with no advertising at all. Instead, he looked to Google.
He hired a team of experts in Chicago who could ensure that certain phrases people type into search engines lead them to HowStuffWorks.com. The goal: getting the site to land in the top three of thousands of Google search results. Advertising cost: zip.
"We put a lot of effort understanding what people search for," Arnold said. "Quality rises to the top. You can't trick the Google algorithm. You have to have editorial votes and a good legacy. We got good at it."
John Strain, a 35-year-old Alpharetta software developer, is the ideal user for HowStuffWorks, someone the company would call an "information seeker" or "life learner."
"What appeals to me about it is the idea that it's useful trivia," Strain wrote in an e-mail on Facebook. "I don't have the time or patience to learn something as in depth (and useful) as engine maintenance or carpentry, but I can learn a little bit about a lot of things on HowStuffWorks. ... If I'm just browsing, I can always find some interesting trivia that I didn't know before."
Strain also recently began listening to HowStuffWorks podcasts ("Stuff You Should Know"), a recent addition that is among the most popular on iTunes. "They have preempted all my other podcasts, " he said, "because they're almost always interesting and I like the sense of humor of the guys who do them."
HowStuffWorks is hardly alone as a replacement for those musty encyclopedias that may still be sagging on your bookshelf. The site's most obvious competitor is Wikipedia, where anybody can update the articles. Both howtodothings.com and ehow.com rely on a battery of volunteers while about.com uses a network of 750 paid subject area "guides." HowStuffWorks stories are primarily written by dedicated in-house journalists.
"We pride ourselve on a quality editorial staff," Arnold said. "Our answer to user generated content is being far more trustworthy and providing an editorial voice." In terms of Wikipedia, "if 1,000 people are editing an article, you're literally editing out humanity and personality. We want knowledge and information to be compelling and engaging."
HowStuffWorks wasn't Arnold's idea. Credit a computer science professor appropriately named Marshall Brain. In 1998, Brain started the Web site as a hobby. His first article: "How Car Engines Work." He even did his own primitive illustrations — "eventually expunged," he noted.
When www.coolsiteoftheday.com deemed his site "cool," Brain said traffic began to build. In 1999, he turned HowStuffWorks into a business.
Four years later, Brain sold the site to Arnold's company for $2 million. Arnold built the company and in late 2007, sold it for $250 million to Discovery Communications, based in Silver Spring, Md. (Primary operations for HowStuffWorks remains in Buckhead.)
Arnold, who remains the company CEO, liked that the audience for the Discovery Channel is similar to that of HowStuffWorks. To spice up the site, it has added 35,000-plus videos from Discovery archival footage and purchased articles from the likes of World Book and Reader's Digest.
Plus, in November, HowStuffWorks has started a new TV show on Discovery Channel, beginning with basic commodities such as corn, wood and wheat.
The goal this year is to get up to 20 million unique visitors a month.
"We want to create a defensible brand," Arnold said.
