Ok, so here are my earnings so far from semi/auto blog, and what I mean by that is, I use certain features of WPRobot to pull in certain information. This is actually from 2 sites, mainly from one. I do spend some time on them, for looks mainly (what a user sees when they arrive.) When I first started I used to have it in my head that visitors would see the front page first, but that's never how they arrive, they normally arrive from some long tail KW off of a search. I think thats an important factor for us noobs to keep in mind.
I recently ran into a problem on both sites using WProbot. It seems if you have too many processes running youll start to get 500 errors. I got this mainly when I was editing in the back end and and looking at my site in another window at the same time, while all the other processes were going. (hostgator) I actually had to shut down the auto portion, so Ill tone down how many feeds WPRobot is pulling from. I think it has something to do with the crons.
So far my process has been, not to be lazy, good aesthetics on the sites, and how visitors "see" my content whether it be auto or unique. Ill be bringing some aged domains online, Im just trying to figure out what area "niche" or "microniche" Ill aiming for. That will determine where I get my feeds from, keywords etc, and how I will have it displayed...and its normally where I get stuck in my mental process. Funny too, I actually had some direct contacts ask to advertise directly on one of my sites. (This was kind of my goal when orginally setting up the second site, and will be my goal in the next few sites) Oh yah, I leave comments open on each post for about 3 days, then I go through them to approve, I will actually alter the spammy ones and change their backlinks to my other site lol, then approve. I do allow trackbacks and pings for a short time, just so they keep creating backlinks to my articles, then I take them down. ( I really don't know the effect of this.)
So again, my intent is not to go for 100s of autoblogs, but more focus on a good handful and spend time on each and create an easy DMO (daily method of operation). Plus I think that's more fun anyway.
(Well I cant seem to get a picture attached, but Im at $83 bucks roughly since hooking up on adsense and 2 CPA sales for $133 commish. Maybe it did attach? My browser is buggy.)