@wdarpk: There is a WSO for a WP plugin called HOTFEED. It reads the Google Hot Trends feed, and then retrieves related news from Google News feed, Yahoo News feed, and YouTube videos. It then auto posts to your blog. Check it out.
I ran a test in combination with Twitter (sending blog posts as tweets to Twitter.) It took a couple of days to receive good traffic from Twitter, but sales stayed pretty low compared to the traffic numbers (upto 7000 a day; thank you Erin Andrews) about 3 - 5 sales/day. Amazon affiliate links only. Some days nothing.
People attracted to hot feed are usually disaster tourists and sensation seekers. High bump rate. Difficult to monetise.
And I regularly had to watch Google's hot feed and update the affiliate links, when possible. Too much work. Google de-indexed the site for 8 days, then put a fraction of the posts back in their index. But I had already cleared the database in those 8 days because I thought the domain was banned. And I received a C&D from Twitter.
They want me to handover the domain name.
But it was a good test to find out how easy it is to make money from Twitter.
I didn't do any social bookmarking etc, like you did. Only Twitter traffic.
The plugins I used :
HOTFEED WP plugin :
Code:
http://warriorspecialoffer.info/?s=hotfeed
Automatic affiliate links by keyword (Amazon only. I think he never released the others.) :
Code:
http://headzoo.com/alinks
Twitter Post :
Code:
http://fullthrottledevelopment.com/twitter-post
This one is better than aLink but costs pennies, and wasn't an option for just a test.
Code:
http://www.maxblogpress.com/blog/221/maxblogpress-ninja-affiliate-random-linking
And WP2.7 and WP2.8 (upgraded in test period).
Of the more than 17,000 posts
(EDIT: WHOOPS! make that 1700 posts), Google only restored about 100 :
Type this into Google's search box: site:twittertrail.com
And also you'll find that lots of other sites index twitter posts, and pick up your posts. Extra traffic.
Robert
EDIT :
@wdarpk:
Man I want to apologise to you.
I just reread my post and it looks like a complete thread hijack. I ensure you that that was not my intention.
My intention was to give you another almost automatic source of traffic : Twitter.
And to not make the same mistakes that I did.
I'm terribly sorry.
Robert