Xconomy on WikiHow, the little how-to site that pulls in more visitors per month than Zynga, Yelp, or NYT.
Call me harsh, but I’ve never found much value in how-to sites, most of which are filled with spam and subpar content. The biggest culprit, of course, is eHow which has managed to build a multi-million dollar business on the backs of what amounts to digital slave labor and blatant spam. WikiHow is arguably much better because of a more transparent business and editorial model along with ‘optional advertising’ that doesn’t intrude on the user experience, but that’s like having to pick between Perez Hilton and Paris Hilton; it’s not much of a choice.
But the criticism over content can’t take away from the fact that WikiHow has managed to build: a lean business that remains massively popular while consuming minimal resources. Despite attracting 30M unique visitors a month, it has just 12 employees, or 1 employee for ever 2.5M visitors.
