Okay, so it’s been awhile since I dropped a knowledge bomb on you fools, and I figure I need to start writing quality content rather than posts on how much alcohol I was able to consume, or how many girls I was able to… well you get the point. So I am gonna kick off my 2009 with a guide for the seasoned affiliate marketer looking to branch out and add another stream of income to their reservoir.
I have a “bunch” of automated blogs that I just leave on autopilot building themselves 3-4 posts a day using some nifty software (we’ll get to that), and slowly but surely increasing in organic rankings and traffic. One such blog I have done no promotion whatsoever, just some onsite SEO and blast off. After about 2 months its already getting 150-180 unique’s daily consistently. While this may be nothing to write home about, it still banks me a dollar a day ya heard. When it comes to online marketing, you should know by now that its a number game, and without the numbers you just wont have the moolah.
Now in terms of monetization I find it best to make sure the blog doesn’t look like a spammy automated blog (duh), so I don’t put ads on the homepage, I just scatter them on the inlay pages and hope that the surfer stays on the site long enough to click. Automated blogs are great for adsense earnings because they do all the work for you once you put the initial effort in. $30/month per blog is not bad either for no promotion. Note: On all of my blogs I make sure to only post 3-4 new posts daily, others have said you can get away with 6-8, but Im not greedy and I want them to look as natural as possible.
Installer Software
WP Mass Installer – One of the best mass installers for WP, just fill out the required fields and your up and running.
BlogSlammer – Recently came across this, purchased it and am loving it. It costs $129 and you can literally setup a blog in 2 minutes FLAT using Blog Creator. Which is great, and really helps when it comes to scaling your blogs. You also get 9000 articles when you buy it which come in handy for your content needs.
Now down to the nitty gritty insides of my wp-content\plugins folder. I’ve compiled a list as well as some of the software I use that make my life pretty easy, and hopefully yours too.
Content Generation / Scraping
Caffeinated Content for WordPress – Instant content. Targeted content. Automatic content. No this one isn’t free boys and girls, but what good things ever are. $77 for this invaluable plugin that will give your blog a ton of legit content and serve it any way you want it.
WP Drip Feeder – This plugin automatically drips content onto your blog, this one isn’t free either, but more than affordable @ $45. Theorhetically you only really need 1 of these, but I’d opt for both since it makes for a more natural looking site.
WP-o-matic – Takes fresh content from RSS feeds. This one is free so you pretty much have to grab it.
WP VideoTube – If you drive traffic from youtube, or are in a niche that uses video heavily, then you cant go wrong with WP VideoTube. This one goes for $30 – $60 depending on how many keywords you want to target, I got the lite version for $30 and its fine for me, but you may want more functionality.
Content Spinning
Now you have a few options when it comes to spinning your content.
JetSpinner – I recently found out about JetSpinner which is a totally free article spinner that has worked pretty nice for me so far in testing, and for $37 a month you can use their JetSubmitter service to submit all those articles to 641 directories as well as some bonus features for JetSpinner. Not a bad deal at all.
Must Have WP Plugins
Google Analytics – This is a freebie and a must have to track activity/statistics.
Google XML Sitemap Generator – . This creates a Google friendly sitemap for your blog, in seconds. It can also make a robots file, which is mega useful for WordPress MU blogs.
Global Translator – Just because they speak another language doesn’t mean they can’t click our ads.
Platinum SEO Pack – There are few SEO packs that are available, I have used All-in-One for a long time, recently switching over to Platinum’s and I haven’t looked back since, a really sweet plugin that you must have.
StatPress – Way better than Awstats, WP Stats, Google Stats, hell I think Statpress is even better than Mint, which says a lot. This ones free as well, so you cant go wrong. Statpress is a must have to make your sites better, and to know where your traffic is coming from, as well as which pages are doing better than others.
Privacy Policy – This free plugin keeps you from getting bitch slapped by Google. 99% of blogs/autoblogs, fail to add this simple yet vital plugin to their blogs, thereby disobeying Adsense’s Terms of Service.
WordPress Automatic Upgrade – A must have free plugin for busy marketers. Just a few clicks and your wordpress install is upgraded to the latest version, kinda makes you feel warm and fuzzy inside.
PingCrawler – A really nifty plugin by Eli over @ Bluehatseo, basically it automatically pings other blogs when you make a post, which is really useful for driving traffic to your blogs. Get Linkcurl for WP2.7 blogs.
WP-Affiliate – Automatically setup affiliate links for insertion into your posts on the fly.
Auto Social Poster – This is the first one on this list that isnt free, but thats for a good reason. This plugin will allow your posts to be submitted to 18 social bookmarking accounts/sites. You pay for posts. 5000 is $49 their most basic package, and for the guru there is a million for $299. It really depends on how much you are pushing, but this one is a must have for building traffic & backlinks.
Adsense Deluxe – Obviously you might need some sort of Adsense ads management, and this does the job, better than Adsense Manager.
WP Database backup – A must incase you lose your database.
Redirection – A neat plugin that simply redirects your 404 pages to the page of your choice. *cough* affiliate link *cough*
WordPress MU – WordPress administration of all your blogs from one admin panel. Pretty freakin sweet.
There are a few others like akismet, and related posts, but those are so common place you should already have them by now.
Make sure that when your setting up your blogs, you make unique ad units for every blog, otherwise it will look odd that you have the same ads on every site. Go for 4-5 posts per day per blog, there is no need to rush your content creation as the crawlers usually index rather slowly anyway. You risk being de-indexed if you rush, so you will have invested all your time for nothing.Also make sure to use unique class-c ip’s so your blogs are on different ips. Something I didnt touch base on is cloaking, so I’ll save that for another day, but it shouldn’t be too hard for you to lookup on the web now that you have all of this information.
If there is anything I missed or you guys know of other/better (or worse) plugins/software feel free to post them in the comments below.
Great list of resources, I’ve been doing autoblogs for years and many of these are even new to me. Thanks a lot for the resource, added to my reader.
Just for clarification: PingCrawl works with WP2.7.
LinkCurl is a fork of PingCrawl that works with standard shared hosts and adds more functionality and customization.
Thanks for the clarification Klintron 🙂
this post is good shit.
passing this post along. good one.
Great resources and post. I’m curious as to your preference for the 2 installers. It appears that BlogSlammer has more functionality plus it’s a one-off buy. I have a slight aversion to monthly membership fees.
Yeah I don’t blame you, I don’t like membership fee’s either. BlogSlammer is great, I’ve been using it since it came out, and is definitely my personal preference, both tools utilize the same thing though.
Another useful tool for managing and installing is http://www.wpmanagerdx.com/
Be sure to check that out.
This is a great article. Specially for someone like me who only ever thinks of writing as blogging. Shows how much more your blog can be. Thanks for sharing such useful information.
Hello,
Let me add another plugin: Unique Article Wizard
Give it a try, its far better than wp-o-matic.
Regards
Thanks for the suggestion Thibaut, turns out Unique Article Wizard is one of the best content spinners/generators/makers out there.
The only problem is that ive grown accustomed to writing for JetSpinner articles.
Monetizing creative online content is a great way to create an income stream with almost no upfront investment, but the tradeoff (once again) is time. It takes a tremendous amount of time to create the amount of content that will eventually produce a decent stream of passive income.
Hmm, very cognitive post.
Is this theme good unough for the Digg?
Lorne to manage multiple blogs what do you recommend. wpmanagerdx, blog slammer, wp mu or wp mass installer. do you know which one is the best
It was certainly interesting for me to read this post. Thanx for it. I like such topics and everything that is connected to this matter. I would like to read a bit more soon. BTW, pretty nice design this blog has, but what do you think about changing it every few months?
Brandy Meetington
Changing it every few months would get expensive 😀
Great website and great information. You are very knowledgeable about this topic and i can’t wait until we come back and visit your website again!
There are couple of ways to earn and one of which is with adsense, there’s also the amazon, CPA, Clickbank and many others.
Sometimes it’s really that simple, isn’t it? I feel a little stupid for not thinking of this by myself.
This is a really great website. The layout and design is very easy to navigate and the info is superb. Keep up the good work!!!!
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yes , many people using auto blogs , but I’m afraid about google adsense , they will banned auto blog site accounts, but your options are very nice , thanks for sharing the great plugin details.
I don’t think you can earn money through automated blogs. But As I’ve learned today, I think I should also do this.
Yes You can make quiet good money using aoutomated blogs though…
Good evening
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