Hi there, I have had an autoblog (wordpress) set up in the IM niche for a about 11 months and the site has been getting between 1500 and 1800 monthly uniques with between 7000 - 14000 page views per month. I must admit though that I don't particularly like autoblogs. I have been thinking about changing this autoblog to a real blog. Now, I have never done this before but I know that when I delete all the old posts from the site, people are going to get sent to an error page when they come to my blog. (Is it a 404 error page or something?) What I wanted to ask was if there were any black hat methods for sticking an autoresponder opt-in onto these error pages so if people do find the site from the old promotions, then they might end up joining my list? Also, do you know if this type of tactic would get my site marked down by google? If anyone has changed an autoblog to a real blog I would love some opinions or advice. Thanks to anyone who reads this. Cheers
why would you want to delete all the old posts? You could easily add a link to your newest post, by editing your theme or by using a plugin (there are several that can do this, search wordpress or the big g). Keep the older posts for traffic. Killing the old posts, will probably kill your traffic. I've got a very old domain that I keep around for testing purposes. Whenever I put something up on it goog indexes it within minutes. However, just as soon as I kill it, the goog de-indexes it just as quickly.
Agreed. Deleting all of your old posts would not accomplish anything positive. Whatever you are using to scrape content, just turn it off and delete the plugin, then start writing your own content. Place an opt in form using a widget on your sidebar. All of those old posts will have the optin form as well.
Get creative using the categories and tags to get your old auto content under control.. Make your new unique posts sticky , or use any number of plugins to help you manage what is displayed on your main page... The others said it, don't get rid of the content
I wouldnt delete all the old content either. Follow the advice here, keep the old posts, just turn off your content generator and start adding new content.
I have come to the realisation that I do better when I focus on quality and building relationships than when I set things up to run themselves. I have made 2 sales in total from clickbank from this blog. No adsense on it. Which in hindsite I probably should have done. (I actually forgot all about the site) Also, I have managed to build 2 twitter accounts with almost 10000 people between them in the niche that the blog is on. If I change the blog to my own content and build the relationships with the visitors I now have a way to drive a load of traffic to the site. I have been having a lot of success with 2 other blogs I built with my own content and have been building decent aweber lists and I want to do the same in this niche. Rather than starting from scratch I wanted to capitalise on the traffic and links this one already has. I know a lot of you swear by autoblogs but I have had more success on "real" blogs. I suppose I'm just trying to do more of what has worked for me
From my experience with my autoblog I find that traffic stays at site less time, looks at less pages and the return visitors are practically non existent. On my other sites the visitors stay longer, read more, come back more often. Plus when you are managing a blogs content as opposed to letting it be done automatically I feel I get a better idea of what people want because I am spending more time on the site. I think autoblogs are useful if your plan is to build tons of sites that make a small amount each which add up to a lot. I dont want to go down that road, I have been buying and selling sites and have come to realise that a site is worth more when reselling if it is not an autoblog. It's just as easy to make a few strong sites as it is to make a load of autoblogs, for me anyway.
