How to Start a News Website in Nepal

In 2019 I launched Scriling News, a small digital content platform. I started it as an experiment with no big expectations. Then COVID changed how everyone consumed content, the site grew with that wave, and in early 2021 it was doing 50,000 NPR a month. At its peak it reached 13,000 USD a month, all from advertising.

People ask me how I did it. The honest answer is less exciting than the number: I picked a lane, kept the tech simple, and published every day for years. There was no secret tool and no growth hack. This is the playbook I would hand to anyone in Nepal who wants to start a news website today, built from what actually worked and what failed.

Step one: pick one lane, not “news”

“News” is not a niche. Nepal already has general news portals, and so does everyone else. If you launch another general news site, you compete with all of them at once, including, these days, my own Niguro.

Pick a lane small enough that you can own it within a year. Startup news in Nepal. Sports in one province. Education and exam updates. Agriculture prices for farmers. One lane means every article makes you more of an authority in that space, and readers start to remember your name when they want that topic.

Scriling was general news and it worked because of a once-in-a-decade wave. I would not bet my rent money on that kind of luck twice. The lane you pick should be narrow enough to dominate and wide enough that you never run out of things to say. Write the lane down in one sentence. If you cannot, it is not a lane yet.

I wrote about how I choose what to build in How I Decide What to Build Next, and the five questions there apply here word for word.

Step two: keep the tech boring

You need WordPress on affordable shared hosting, a light theme, and a caching plugin. That is the whole stack. Not a custom app, not a mobile app, not a headless experiment. Boring technology that you fully understand beats impressive technology that breaks at 2 AM.

Readers do not care about your stack. They care that the page opens fast on a cheap phone with a weak signal. A light theme and caching get you 90 percent of the way there. Your monthly cost should be small enough that you can pay it for a full year without flinching, because revenue will not arrive for months and you need the site alive long enough to earn it.

I learned the opposite lesson the expensive way at YukeshMedia in 2018, my first media venture. I wrote about that whole arc, from YukeshMedia to Scriling to Niguro, in Three Companies, One Lesson. A pretty homepage counts for nothing if nobody comes back tomorrow.

Step three: publish on a rhythm you can keep

Three posts a day for a year beats thirty posts a day for a month. Scriling did not grow because of any single article. It grew because readers, and search engines, learned that new content would be there every day.

Pick a publishing schedule you can keep when you are sick, tired, or bored. That is the real test. A schedule you abandon in week three teaches you nothing. Write a small backlog before you launch so launch week does not empty you out.

Volume is not the goal, consistency is. One genuinely useful article a day in your lane is enough to start.

Step four: learn where traffic actually comes from

Traffic comes from two places: search and social. Everything else is a rounding error for a new site.

For search, write about what people actually type into the search box. Put the answer in the first paragraph, then answer the follow-up questions a reader would naturally ask next. This is the core of my SEO writing habit, which I broke down in detail in How I Write Articles Google Actually Ranks.

For social, Facebook still moves serious traffic in Nepal. Treat it as a channel, never as a home. The single most important thing Scriling taught me is that you rent your traffic from search engines and social networks, and rent always comes with the risk of eviction. One algorithm change can cut your visitors in half overnight. I lived that. Build on rented land only if you have a plan for the day the rent goes up.

Step five: set up the money pipeline before you need it

Most Nepali founders discover the payments problem the day the first dollar arrives. AdSense pays by international wire transfer in USD. My first transfer got held at the bank while I scrambled for paperwork. There is no PayPal in Nepal. You will need a dollar account, a PAN number, and a way to receive money like Payoneer or Wise.

Do this paperwork in month one, when the amounts are zero and there is no pressure. I wrote the full survival guide for this in Why Getting Paid Is the Hardest Part of Building in Nepal, including the checklist I wish someone had given me.

Also decide your revenue model early. Display ads need volume, thousands of daily readers before the money is meaningful. Sponsored content needs relationships with brands, which takes time in a small market. Subscriptions need a loyal core audience that cannot get your content elsewhere. Most Nepali news sites live on display ads, and that is fine, but know what the model demands before you depend on it.

Step six: track three numbers and ignore the rest

Until you are big, watch three numbers and ignore everything else.

First, daily visitors, because distribution is the foundation of everything. Second, revenue per thousand views, because it tells you whether your traffic is the kind advertisers pay for. Third, email or push subscribers, because that is the only audience you actually own.

Page views per session, bounce rate, time on page: all of these can wait. When the site is small, only three questions matter. Are people coming? Is each visit worth anything? Are any of them sticking around?

What I would do differently

If I were starting a news website in Nepal today, I would change three things from my Scriling days.

First, I would pick a niche from day one instead of going general. General news meant competing with everyone. A niche would have made every article compound into authority.

Second, I would start collecting email subscribers from the very first post. I treated the audience as rented traffic for too long. An email list is the cheapest insurance a content business can buy.

Third, I would treat the ad network relationship as fragile from the start. Ad networks change their rules without warning. Having a second revenue source, even a small one, would have let me sleep better.

None of these are regrets. Scriling paid the bills and taught me how to operate at scale. But you get to skip my mistakes, which is the whole point of writing this.

Your first week checklist

1. Register a domain and buy the cheapest reliable hosting you can find.
2. Install WordPress, a light theme, and a caching plugin. Nothing else.
3. Write your lane down in one sentence and tape it to your wall.
4. Write five posts in your lane before you tell anyone the site exists.
5. Start the AdSense, Payoneer, and PAN paperwork in parallel, while revenue is still zero.
6. Set a publishing schedule you can keep for a year, then keep it.
7. Add an email signup form on day one. Do not wait until you feel ready.

A news website in Nepal is one of the most honest businesses you can start. The costs are tiny, the feedback is immediate, and every article either teaches you something or earns you something. Start small, start publicly, and let the work compound. That is the whole playbook.