Inks Deal with Tyra Banks for Fashion Site — Demand Media

Demand’s deal with Tyra, and what it states regarding creating profitable content: you need hub sites.

Demand Media has entered into a partnership with Tyra Banks to create a fresh digital brand for the beauty and fashion industry.

I expect this to be similar to the firm’s deal with Lance Armstrong for LiveStrong.com. Basically, the firm created a fresh branded web site with star power, plugged it into Demand’s content pipeline and social media machine, and started printing money.

Indeed, the press release regarding the notice reads:

Demand Media will work with Banks to create a fresh digital brand that will be inherently social, highly interactive and grounded in delivering content and experiences that respond to real consumer demand. Demand Media will leverage its leading content creation platform, social media tools and application development expertise to aggressively build a unique online destination that will launch later this year. Banks will work exclusively with Demand Media to build and promote her online presence on the fresh property with entertaining features, educational videos, inspiring stories and helpful applications.

Demand Media has no doubt figured out the content game, and I think it’s necessary to build these centralized, branded web site hubs in order to drive the necessary search and repeat traffic to make it profitable. In other words, taking Demand’s content and putting it on any old domain won’t work, since it won’t get the SEO traffic and repeat visitors. This could be a challenge for people looking to build out sizable portfolios of domain names.