Rotten Tomatoes

Movie Review-aggregation site.

Started in 1999, bought by IGN in 2004, bought by Flix Ster in 2010, combined co bought by WarnerBros in 2011.

http://stephenwang.com/b/rotten-tomatoes-2000-2005/29/ -

• *through a partnership with the the Movie ReviewQueryEngine, we were able to comprehensively include millions of film reviews and ratings covering over a thousand sources automatically. Additionally, we developed our own system where film critics could register and login to our web site and assign their own quotations ratings and establish their own critics’ profile.
• With our ability to comprehensively and efficiently collect entertainment data, we began a data licensing program. We licensed our film data to numerous clients including Netflix and Microsoft... Data licensing became an important revenue stream as well as a means for expanding Rotten Tomatoes across other media sources.
• Another major revenue component was from partner Affiliate Program sales. Movie fans coming upon our site were able to buy online movie tickets (via MovieTickets.com), posters (via AllPosters.com) and merchandise (via Sideshow Toy and others) from the films easily from the film pages. Additionally, we included comparison prices powered by Price Grabber.com so users could find the most affordable DVD prices. Finally, we partnered with The New York Times and presented their film reviews in a highlighted position on our film review pages (although their ratings remained of equal value with all other reviews on the page as usual). These companies paid us every time a user clicked on a link or purchased and item and, with these partnerships, our affiliate sales grew to comprise a large fraction of our revenue, further stabilizing the declining revenue from online ads due to the dot-com bust.*

http://www.startup-review.com/blog/rotten-tomatoes-case-study-seo-drives-traffic-growth.php

• Almost 70% of incoming traffic was/is from search traffic (SEO), emphasizing the point that a loyal community may not be enough to achieve mass scale for an information service.