Hacker News Reader

Did you build the sites yourself (aside from the blog) or is it built on a cms? Also, where you do you get your traffic from? I can't imagine a site like this indexes well in search engines.

Built in Django. Fully automated. I haven't touched it in 6months or more and it just keeps running.

And you are correct, not a huge search footprint due to the lack of unique / authoritative content, but it's got good rankings where it matters - "mma news aggregator" => #1. :)

zero appreciable search demand for that phrase (global, english)

That's not what my analytics say.

Just sent you an email. Curious to know what kind of CMS you're using as I'm working on a similar project.

Why no ads?

Pure laziness on my part. I built it for myself and using it has been payment enough, but now I'm getting too busy to run it and do any kind of promotion. Feel free to email me (in profile) if you want more info.