With our insatiable thirst for information, news agencies are booming, mostly online. While some are really good and indeed reliable source of information, the other online news portals are just sub-par, but somehow those are much more popular. Even you can open up one such "popular" news portal from the comfort of your own room. This is how. 

Choose a name: Choosing a name for your business is very important, but it's more so when it comes to online news portals. The website's name has to send out a message that you are a sincere news agency, dedicated to bring the best and most happening news to your readers 24x7. It's preferable that the name includes words like Bangladesh, news, today, etc. and digits such as 24, 24x7, 365, etc. because that's the in-thing. 

Get investors: Unless you are willing to run your online news portal with your money, you need to get investors who are willing to pay for the website's domain registration. If you aren't able to convince anybody of your agency's authenticity, you may simply build your business on any of the blogging sites, though it will fall short on the professionalism quotient. 

Hiring: First make a Facebook page, invite everyone you know to like it and even post the page's link in popular news sites' Facebook posts as comments. Next, post an ad in groups like DSD saying "We're hiring young, hard-working reporters," and that interested people should contact you in order to "join the winning team." It is a publicity stunt for your website, though it's evident that you yourself will be running the entire website with no additional support. The stunt will also gain your website some advertisement money from the equally increasing classifieds websites. 

Ctrl+C and Ctrl+V: Bookmark the online news sections of top local newspapers and also that of some leading foreign newspapers. Scavenge for the most "exciting" news there on an hourly basis, rephrase or translate those, and publish the news on your website. Ignore political news as much as possible, because bleh, that's too mainstream, except if it is news regarding strikes and blockades. You are looking for gossipy stuff that even Gossip Girls don't bother gossip about, because that's what all the other online news portals are up to.  

Become a virtual notification box: Cyber stalk a moderately renowned celebrity and report their every move. They changed their Facebook profile picture, news. They had a falling out with their significant other, news. They are getting married for the umpteenth time, news. Everything about the celebrity is news for your portal. If necessary, you can use one celeb to make an entire week's worth of content. And here's the thing: so long as you can properly present it to a set target audience, your readership won't falter, and you'll be making money. 

Publish questionable content with equally questionable headlines: That means articles with some "facts" that are either not applicable in a local context or don't have ample backing to be called facts. Specially publish intimate features about men and women's health and about romance with attention seeking titles. These appear to be the big sellers, as indicated by the other news portals on a regular basis.

Make intentional blunders: Just because that brings you readership, because no publicity is bad publicity. For example, for universities that are named after directions, you can swap one  direction, say East, with another, say North, and within minutes you'll have readers from both the universities swooning over the website. And if you are lucky, a leading national daily might even copy that article without checking authenticity, thus gaining you and your online news portal overnight success. 

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is how just about anybody can start their own online news portal, and thus join the flock of innumerable other ones, which sometimes are just downright disgraceful. Happy news hunting!