The Popularity of Listicles And Similar Content

Listicles are very popular. There is something about a list of information that attracts and satisfies a reader or a viewer. But what is it that makes these seemingly simple writings irresistible to many readers and viewers?

Listicles are pieces of writing or other content which are presented whole or in part in the form of a list. We can arguably say that if a piece of writing has a numbered list no matter how little the quantity is, it’s a listicle.

How about a list then containing only two items? Though I haven’t seen many articles with only two items on the list, it nevertheless also qualifies as a listicle. But what could be the magic number for listicles?

According to articles online that reference Bloomberg’s study on listicles, 29 is the optimum number of items you could have on a list. 10 seems to be very popular with the number 15 being the next popular.

Listicles that contains less than 10 items are not that popular as listicles. Listicles that contain more than 35 are seen as too many. You may want to do your own online research and actual experiments to determine which number works for you.

For example the alux.com listicle YouTube Channel and website seems to have found their success with listicles that consists of 15 items. It has actually become one of their most visible trademark.

There are also other website channels who have a “Top 10” list. The items can present only limited information or very detailed information. It is important that there is a number and a title or name in every item on your listicle.

There have been many articles online that state that listicles are dying or are getting unpopular. But contrary to these articles, there are also articles that assert that listicles won’t die out. But we only have to look at the definition of what a listicle is to know what the answer is.

At its very core, a listicle is an ordered article. Many of the articles we find both in printed books and online articles are ordered as well. In fact, books have chapters to make reading them more digestible.

In essence, a listicle is the most basic way humans digest information, in small chunks. There is no need for wordy introduction or fillings between each paragraph. Listicles are to the point information for the average reader.

This is the reason why there are many websites and YouTube Channels like listverse.com which are solely dedicated to listicles. In case you don’t know, there are articles online that state that there are people addicted to listicles.

These people can’t help it, even though they don’t need the information, as soon as they saw a listicle, they have a strong desire to read or watch it. This just shows the popularity of listicles to people.

With the prevalence of websites and YouTube Channels that present listicles, should you still be doing listicles? One word: shotgun. If you look at the website of ListVerse and many other listicle website and YouTube Channels, it’s like the shotgun approach.

Shotguns are effective at close range because they have a wide blast area. They can hit a lot of persons at point blank range. This is the same strategy that many listicle creators do. They just make a random list of many listicles and hope that a few of them would appeal to readers or viewers.

There are other listicle creators who use a more sophisticated approach. They scan online for the most searched topics which are worthy of being made into listicles and create them. Many online content creators use Google Trends for example.

So, just like most online business and even ordinary businesses, it’s a hit or miss thing. According to the latest report from Dunn and Bradstreet, ListVerse made 2.28 million in sales while only having 6 employees.

The maths are not that complicated to calculate here. If we divide 2 million by 6, each Listverse employee hypothetically earns about $330,000 each. We have assumed that $280,000 is the cost of running an online site annually.

Even if we didn’t have the exact financial calculation, we can see that a listicle site can be very profitable. This already takes into account the many competitors of ListVerse who are all eager to take a share of these profits.

Since ListVerse is one of the most popular listicle website around and also one of the oldest, it is worth taking a look at how they operate. One of the glaring thing I have already described about ListVerse is their very limited number of employees.

If you look at ListVerse’s website, you would see that they actually encourage the submission of listicles in their website. In fact, there are many online articles that point to ListVerse as a good way to make money online via writing.

In case you get inspired to write for ListVerse, take note that there are many online complaints regarding ListVerse’s listicle submission process. The comments can vary from unprofessionalism to downright exploitative.

All of you have to do is Google the search keyword “complaints against listverse” and you will get an inkling of the complaints against listverse. I could not verify these complaints as I have not personally tried submitting listicles to ListVerse. It is for you to decide yourself.

The short answer is: “It’s Subject”. The second question is: ”What makes a subject interesting? The answer is: “Who Knows?” And what is the answer to who knows? It can probably be answered by such keyword search tools as Google Trends.

Since no one could actually predict a popular listicle the next best thing that you could do is use these kinds of tools. For example, Taylor Swift, the singer is a pretty popular search term in Google, you can create listicles for similar singers and not just Taylor Swift.

I did a quick online search for listicles regarding Taylor Swift and sure enough I found some and they are on top of Google’s search results. These articles may not be specifically listicles but they do have lists about Taylor Swift.

This is why when you are in the process of doing a listicle, it is advisable not to blindly just create a listicle. You should rather check first whether the listicle subject you are about to write about is even being searched.

This saves you a lot of time in wasting writing listicles or even articles that would never be read about by many people. Time is an important commodity and should never be wasted. Make sure to write listicles that have a high chance of being read by many people.

The answer has to do with the lifestyle of modern humans. As more people’s time is spend trying to earn a living, they would have less and less time for education and entertainment, especially in education.

You might think that saying people would have more time of their diminishing free time spent on entertainment than on education is pretty harsh, but just look around you. How many people spend a good deal of their time educating themselves?

Compare the low number of people educating themselves in their free time to the people binge watching any form of television entertainment as soon as they are free. We could also look at the millions of people who spend entire days playing video games.

As such, there is a low priority for many humans to educate themselves. Maybe the reason why many people would rather entertain themselves rather than educated themselves is because of the drudgery of both work and education.

This is one problem that listicles attack. They, through their simplistic form eliminate the drudgery of educating yourself. Listicles both educate and entertain its readers and watchers.

If you follow the trend toward online digital content and even printed materials, chances are you would notice the watering down of texts to make them more palatable to the reader or watcher.

And this trend is likely to continue. Online articles are being designed to retain the attention of readers and watchers who already have very short memory spans. This is not a critique of our modern society. This is just a description of the realities of our society.

They Are Popular With Digital Readers And Watchers

Perhaps the greatest reason why listicles continue to be produced and will be produced in the future is because they are popular and liked by both readers and watchers of digital content. Content creators are just creating what their customers demand of them.

The big proof of this is as mentioned before, the rules of online digital content. Many digital content experts all say that your digital content must be broken down to easily readable content otherwise readers and watchers may not become interested in your digital content.

Perhaps humans have been systematically being trained to read and watch this way. To consume digital and printed content in small portions only. Just look at what are the most popularly seen and read digital content: social media content.

Social media content are not exhaustive bookish length articles, they are rather very concise and to the point information about a specific subject. If social media content is an indication of what people like to read and watch, then listicles are a good bet for being popular.

Listicles Are Easier to Write

For online content creators like me, listicles are also easier to write. I only need to give the information readers or watchers needed and this is it. I remember when I was writing very long books and compare these to the shorter books I now produce.

When I write very long articles, books or whatever text, I tend to ramble away when I write or tend to use fillers. With shorter articles or lists, I tend to be more concise and to the point in my writing.

I remember a comment I once read online about a very disgruntled reader who just wanted to get the recipe of a dish she wanted to cook but ended up having to read the life story of the cook when she was a child learning to cook the dish.

I can sympathize with her. There used to be a time when search algorithms dictate that longer content digital content would turn up higher in ranking than shorter digital content. These days, search algorithms have changed.

They are now giving priority to digital content which are more concise and to the point without the unnecessary fillers which padded old digital content. Even Google have begun showing listicles in the top rankings of their search results.

This is good news for content creators who create quality content and do not try to use shady techniques just to get on top of search rankings. This is welcome news to readers and watchers too of digital content, as they get more quality for a lesser time.

Listicles are not getting less popular. As time passes, listicles would become more and more popular. This is because people’s time for education is getting lesser and lesser and they need quality content for lesser time.

As a content creator, there are great reasons to consider why you should write a listicle. The obvious one would be popularity. As long as you can reliably create listicles that are popular and easy to write, you can create a continuous stream of listicles that could earn you digital income.