Malachute
Junior Member
- Oct 21, 2009
- 124
- 421
WARNING: HUGE WALL OF TEXT INCOMING
Ok first off; a thank you to all the autoblog pioneers here on BHW for sharing the required information in order for us to start autoblogging. Cheers!
I'm starting this thread to guide beginners and let others know that autoblogging can be a success (how small it may be), it might even be your next first income if you do it on a large scale. This thread is for BHW only and I haven't pulled it off any website, it's just my own two to three weeks experience.
Secondly I really advice DeathRequest's stickied thread for all the resources you need for autoblogging:
http://www.blackhatworld.com/blackh...timate-collection-autoblogging-resources.html
Seriously you don't need to buy any eBook whatsoever; all the information is already given on the internet and here on BHW. (no pun intended to those selling eBooks, just pointing that out for beginners before they waste their money and give up before even starting). The only thing you should know before starting is how to use FTP and a bit of html/css.
A tip: make friends online and learn from them as they can learn from you.
Table of contents:
Introduction
I'd rather stay half-anonymous or I might get flooded with spam so I'll just use my first name, Mark (if you need to know anything specific - then PM me and we can talk/chat over skype). As I'm a student on a college in Rotterdam in the Netherlands I have loads of free time to spend on my blogs. I currently have 8 autoblogs up and running. From which 2 of them have AdSense on them and 6 are in the process of "I-don't-want-to-let-Google-know-that-those-sites-are-just-for-making-money". NEVER EVER add AdSense on the first day of your autoblog. Add AdSense once your blog reaches at least 100 visitors per day. Your blog gets devalued to the ground if you have 0 visitors and if you're unlucky you will disappear from the search result pages (serp's). Google isn't very fond of websites putting AdSense on the very first day with zero traffic. The funny thing was that I didn't even knew what an autoblog was before I arrived at this forum via a google search.
Known tip: to see if your site is indexed use this command in the google search bar:
I'm never worried about not getting indexed and i'll tell you why. All my autoblogs got indexed within a few hours and to be honest I always make about 3 to 4 'dummy' posts (200 words including a YouTube video) which are original and not duplicated. This will not only get you indexed faster (depending on your backlink building) but will also not alert Google immediately that your blog is an autoblog. If you think - that takes too long - then try it without making some original posts. From what I've read here on BHW is that some people are having trouble getting indexed in Google with just dupe content. Know this: get indexed before you activate and start your autoblog plugins to pull content. That saves a lot of trouble in the long run plus you can already enjoy seeing some stats appear in Google Analytics 
I have about 30 blogs, from which a couple are Wordpress and the rest are Blogger blogs. Across 2 hosting companies. All of the 22 blogs are whitehat and 8 of them as mentioned above are autoblogs. The plan is to turn 90% of my blogs to autoblogs which will reduce my own work to about 1 hour per day. Yay for automation!
My earnings/traffic the first two weeks
So after a week of reading and doing some research on BHW I finally started my first autoblog. I got inspired by some of the big threads here and decided my first blog should be in the tech niche (yes I know how general - but at least it's a simple niche). After I made some dummy posts and got indexed in Google I activated Autoblogged plugin to pull content from other websites.
I mentioned earlier I had loads of free time so my website looks prof designed and for some odd reason I'm getting emails from people I don't even know that they like my website. Talking about irony... I'm trying to monetize my traffic, yet instead they love the website lol.
Below is a screenshot of my analytics stats for about 10 days. Traffic spiked one day to 400 because I'm actually outranking the original article from the real website More about that later. I'm not sure if it's smart but I should give an example, so search for "hp tilt shift" and you'll know that I'm talking about.
Click to enlarge (reply if image is down)
Steadily making money from about 200 visits a day within the first 2 weeks with just 1 blog. Below are the results once I added Google AdSense to my blog. It's not a lot but the blog is young and it already covered my hosting costs for the month so that isn't too shabby.
Click to enlarge
At this point I'm wondering how it will look like in 2 years... will I give up on autoblogging or do the stats like this skyrocket in the future? All the things to worry about, yet I strongly believe that making an real income from autoblogs could be real.
Hosting/Servers
Ok here I might have an advantage above others, a friend of mine has a huge game forum getting 30k visitors every single day and luckily he allows me to have unlimited autoblogs on his $100 per month rackspace cloud server
As you might know you shouldn't have more than 5-10 autoblogs on 1 server so that is why I'm paying my own server too. My knowledge about servers and IP's doesn't go far but I know you need several different IP's or Google kicks your ass and I know how much that hurts
My own server is hosted on HostGator with a baby package. Only 10 bucks per month which is practially nothing. You can earn that back within a single day. So my advice for all starters is to have at least $30 ready in your bank account to get the required hosting etc. You actually don't have to spend money on plugins, they can be found on this forum.
I don't want to link to Hostgator else you might think it's an affiliate link, so just Google it or type it in directly. (I'm not selling anything - just teaching).
Discovering Niches
When you have your hosting setup and rolling it's time to think about which niches you are going to target. (niche is another word for subject). Let's look at some examples:
World of Warcraft is one (game) example. Now you need to know some niches in it.(I've played the game so that gives me a small advantage - oh and if you ever played warcraft 3 then you should know now that Dota, Defense of the Ancients, is one heck of a popular custom map)
-Jewelcrafting/Herbalism
-Character classes etc.
-Talent/Level Guides
Hoodia (a plant used with diets)
-High blood pressure
-Results
-Where to buy them
-Gels
etc.
So find a subject in any topic (health, gaming, technology, news) and choose a sub-topic. SEO is not a niche, it might be but it's way too competitive - you should rather focus on the keywords "SEO for beginners" or something. Keywords are important as that will let Google know what your website is all about.
Lastly I'd say use either Google AdWord's Keyword Tools or Market Samurai, which can be found here for free if you do a search.
Domain Names
Getting ranked in Google is one thing, another thing is being able to rank WELL in google. Google determines your position for your pages in the serp's by at least 100 to 200 factors. Be it backlinks, website coding, keywords, meta description, title, heading tags, css validation, your website exposure, website loading time, verified in Google webmasters?, is website in DMOZ or Yahoo's Directory? Several on-page factors but most are off-page factors. In the early years of the internet you could stuff your website full with meta tags with just about anything and rank with an health site for gaming keywords (haha). Google's new algorithem destroyed that and after a while became clear that backlinks are the new kings and on-page SEO is slowly dying.
Now I said keywords earlier. Google also takes in conjunction your domain name as a factor to rank your blog. So it is important to have your main keywords for your niche in your domain name. Take the hoodia example, you will rank better in Google with hoodia in your domain name than if you don't have one in it. (www,hoodiaguides,com - or something) This means you will rank well if your Title of the blog is Hoodia Guides.
Now here comes a question noone can really answer:
Should I take .info domains or .com for my autoblogs?
.info domains are cheap as they come as low as $0.90 to $2, whereas .com domains are always above $10 without coupons.
A logical answer to this question would be: "Take a .com domain because it's more expensive than a .info domain which marks your website as spam". If that was true then all the spammers would immediately get a .com domain and continue the spamming with better results because they won't get marked as spam.
To be honest, I don't know the definite answer to that question. What I do know is that my main .info autoblog, two weeks old, is doing as good as my .com domains.
Where should I buy my domain names?
I got all mine from godaddy.com. But there are more like Yahoo, Registar, Namecheap, 1and1, Enom etc.
Step by step installation of autoblogs
(sorry I thought I could make it into a step-by-step but it turned more into a wall of text)
You need a...
1) host
2) domain name
3) ftp client (firezilla is what I'm using)
to work with your autoblog.
--------- I do hope you know how to set up a domain name's nameservers to your hosting provider. If you don't then below you can find a link to hostgator's DNS changing webpage. Just choose your domain registar and change the name servers to your host's provided name servers.
You have to wait quite a few hours because the routers on the internet need to reset their cache in order for you to see any effects.---------
At this point I'm about to install another blog myself, so you can read along and see what I am doing. First thing of course is...
Installing Wordpress
This is probably the easiest part, however you have to think about if you add sub domains to your autoblog project or not. I personally do it because you can make it more 'niche' related. In this example I'll be making a blog about Mac. It's one of the more easier autoblogs to create because of the amount of feeds available on the net.
I made a few sub domains using the control panel on Hostgator (man that goes so smoothly) and named them:
news.mac.com -> latest news for mac
computers.mac.com -> latest updates on the computer apple produces and sells
software.mac.com -> talking about latest software for mac
guides.mac.com -> how to guides for software and stuff
It's a bit general but should give you an idea on how to name your sub domains. Now a little note on the Wordpress versions...
Be aware that some versions of Autoblogged and WP o Matic / WProbot and all the other plugins might not work on Wordpress 2.8.6+ for everybody. I'm always installing 2.8.4. Why? Simply because I know every single thing will work. I don't give a shit about hackers. If one guy hacks my blog (god knows how), sure, I'll just grab a backup and start another autoblog.
Once you uploaded Wordpress to your server you can begin the installation procedure of the WP-config.php file. Takes less then 1 minute if you know where to look and if you just made the database. Personally when I started using Wordpress I had difficulties figuring out the database password and such as I had zero experience in server management. A friend made the database for me and just gave me the info, which is why I had trouble finding it.
Lucky you if your host has Fantastico, that little script installs Wordpress automatically with the correct settings. The latest version though...
Note: if you are going to use sub domains, make sure to install Wordpress on all the subdomains, not just the main domain. Kinda straight forward lol. You could instead use Wordpress MU, which allows easy control over sub domains.
Uploading Theme(s) + settings
Ah.. everybody's favorite part. Don't forget that the theme you are going to be using, plays a big roll in how your advertisements are going to convert into sales. Position of the ads and the amount of text + colors comes second.
For this mac blog I am using the free theme 'shadowbox' because of it's rich features and it's unique theme options layout. I'm also a big coders now that I have a lot of experience with blogs so I can make it look like an Apple blog.
If you are not sure what to use, then see this thread:
Mimbo seems to be a popular one. Download the theme (or install it directly inside Wordpress using the feature 'add new theme' under 'appearance' - note that premium Wordpress themes are to be paid for and you won't find them in the Wordpress.org database) and upload it to 'wp-content/themes'. Once it's uploaded activate it in 'appearance -> themes'
After that go to the options of the theme and customize as you need.
A few settings I recommend you to do:
1) General Settings:
-Type in your Blog Title and Tagline (like 5 words only, because we are going to use a SEO plugin)
-Change timezone to UTC (+0)
2) Writing Settings:
-Change default category (you need to make a new category first which can be done under 'posts')
3) Reading:
-Maybe change the amount of posts on a page, but can be overridden with a plugin
4) Discussion:
-Tick: An administrator must always approve the comment
-Tick: Enable threaded (nested) comments levels deep (yes I know, but to some surprise my tech blog got a lot of happy readers)
5) Media:
-Nothing for now (if you use the autoblogged plugin - these settings are used)
6) Permalinks:
-Change the structure to /%postname% I wouldn't recommend using the category name as well because then you could be using too many keywords.
After that, add Google Analytics to the footer (before the closing body tag) Go and add Yahoo site explorer (google it) + Google webmasters site verification code to your header.php file. (that should be inserted before the closing head tag)
From here on it's really up to you how you design your blog with which fonts and colors.
Robots.txt + .htaccess + favicon files
It's important to have those 2 files in your root folder, simply because you don't want Google to find out that you are using autoblog plugins. Make a text file and insert the following text into it:
Sitemap: /sitemap.xml
User-agent: *
Disallow: /wp-content/cache/
Disallow: /wp-content/themes/
Disallow: /wp-content/plugins/
Disallow: /wp-admin/
Disallow: /wp-includes/
Disallow: /wp-login.php
Rename it to: Robot.txt and place it in the root WP folder together with all the wp-content, wp-admin and wp-includes folders.
Next up is .htaccess, which should be there. If you can't see it with your FTP client then check for an option which allows you to see invisible files. Should be located in the root folder too.
Add this to it:
# BEGIN WordPress
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . /index.php [L]
</IfModule>
# END WordPress
If you still can't find it, then simply upload a regular text file and name it exactly .htaccess with no extentions like .txt or .php!
To make your blog look more natural you need to have an favicon, period.
This can be done by either uploading a 16 by 16 pixel .ico file to your WP root folder, or add an snippet of html to your header.php file. This is what you should add: (most browsers of today already look for an ico file, but it's better to add it anyway)
Widgets
This really depends on what plugins you are using. Some plugins allow you to insert extra widgets into your sidebars. Widgets like next gen gallery, recent posts, recent comments, pages, categories really make an autoblog look like a normal blog, which is what we want.
Alternatively you could add some clickbank products on the sidebar in a text widget together with a feedburner count to make it look natural.
Plugins I use and Recommend
One of the biggest issues with autoblogs are the plugins. Can't count the number of thread about plugins and which one the best one is... To sum it all up from other threads (and it's been told a lot), every plugin has it's advantages and disadvantages.
Plugins for a text website (text oriented with images, any autoblog plugin will do)
Plugins for a video website (uses videos mostly pulled from YouTube but requires much more work than text oriented blogs - see below - if you want image only, then get Autoblogged plugin and don't let it pull any excerpt, just images/thumbnails - I have yet to try it but seems like a funny idea - you can also make use of the "custom field" and "custom values" to insert the images automatically as a thumbnail for the homepage etc. - that is why I love autoblogged - feature rich)
I'll brake this down to a few lists which include basic plugins, content generating plugins and monetization plugins. There is one special plugin which I want to discuss afterwards. Because a lot of people are trying to build backlinks for their website but fail because it's too much work, there is a plugin that automatically does that and submits your content to 20+ social websites.
Basic Plugins:
-Akismet
-All in One SEO Pack
-Duplicate Posts Eraser
-Easy Privacy Policy (needed if you are planning to use AdSense)
-Exclude Pages from Navigation
-Google XML Sitemaps
-No Self Pings
-Popular Posts
-Post-Plugin Library
-Recent Posts
-WP Super Cache (mainly used to reduce your server's CPU usage)
-Onlywire multisubmitter
Download here: (you don't need more to make a nice autoblog to be honest)
You might ask me why I am not using either platinum SEO or HeadSpace2, simply because I don't feel it's necessary. I want to have a less plugins as possible. The more you have, the more you need to edit and set up during a Wordpress installation. I'm not a pro on these plugins so can anybody tell me what the big difference is between platinum SEO and all in one? They both produce the same html code snippets and the options are look-a-like.
Plus I have the feeling it doesn't really matter at all which plugin you have as long as you have a meta description/keywords and your Title in every category and post.
You might also notice I'm not using any social plugin apart from the multisubmitter. This is because it's an autoblog! You don't want visitors to stay, you want them to click the ads. It's already difficult to achieve that, above all - if one visitor decides to stay and read content, he is as useless as a pig in the desert. Probably only eating bandwidth and you won't ever see a backlink in return. My experience is that even with a WHITEHAT blog, people don't submit your content to social websites. That is why you need to do it on your own, don't depend on others.
Now that is where the onlywire multisubmitter comes into play. Just create an account on their website (onlwire.com) and start adding your own social bookmarking account data. (digg stumble twitter diigo propeller etc.) Fill in your onlywire acc name and password into the multisubmitter plugin and it will automatically post your content to the social bookmarking website you filled your data in everytime you post content on your autoblog - which all goes automatic with the plugins. Couldn't be more lazier than that right? The only problem with this is that you need to create a few onlywire accounts because you can only use the API from onlywire 5 times a day.
Content Generating Plugins:
-AutoBlogged (my prefered rss feed fetcher)
-WP o Matic
-WP VideoTube (probably the best video fetch plugin out there)
-Wordpress WriteAgain! -> * see note
-Unique Article Wizard Plugin
-Don't use CC - caffeinated content - it's outdated
Most of these can be downloaded from the download section here on BHW, use the search function on top to get the latest version. I do have a strong believe in purchasing these plugins as it will help the creator for his/her/their work. Currently using Autoblogged for all my autoblogs, I just love it (got a multi site license for 50 autoblogs) if you customize the output for the feed in just the right way, the posts it creates are awesome.
* Writeagain costs a bit of money and can be purchased from a local BHW member. Can't remember his name but to be honest, I've never ever rewritten content for my blog - not even manually - just a linkback to the original article is enough. On top of that I still outrank the original website with many posts. (oh and I don't use UAW too - too lazy ^_^)
Currently I'm using this template for the majority of my blogs: (can be edited in each single feed on the bottom - autoblogged only!)
%if:video%<p>%video%</p>%endif:video%
%if:thumbnail%<p>%thumbnail%</p>%endif:thumbnail%
<p>%excerpt%</p>
The full story can be read/found on <a href="%link%" title="%title%" target="_blank">WEBSITE NAME HERE</a>
Replace the 'website name here' and do this because you don't want to give the website credit using the post title text, but rather the website name itself which looks more natural in terms of link building. You can also use the full content which is what many bloggers prefer. Everyone should have their own method right? I understand because it allows them to be indexed for more keywords and thus get more visitors. Problem is with some feeds it also copies some faggy text like comment links | submit this post | bookmark this post | etc.
I don't know exactly how Yahoo pipes work but it should be the solution for that problem. A couple of hours learning on that should fix that I might be making a guide on how to use Yahoo pipes in the future.
Monetization plugins:
Also mentioned in the ultimate thread for autoblog resources.
-AdSense Deluxe in conjuction with Kontera Ads or something.
I don't really use plugins to manage my ads on my blogs. I'd rather insert them myself into the code because for example - I've noticed that when using two large rectangles 336x280 in a table tag get quite a lot of clicks. Result can be seen in the picture below. (yea some dutch ads in there too)
Click to enlarge
It isn't really blending yet but that can be solved with a few CSS color changes. So that was it for the plugins. I'm basically not using more than 1 content generator and I use the whole basic plugin package included from the rapidshare link above.
To make something like that use this code:
<table>
<tr>
<td>
GOOGLE ADSENSE ON THE LEFT
</td>
<td>
GOOGLE ADSENSE ON THE RIGHT
</td>
</tr>
</table>
I also make sure to use an AdSense Channel with every single ad unit I put on a website. Why? First off, it allows me to track the performance. Secondly I can increase the cost per click I get. How? Adwords users can target your channel and compete with the keyword targeted ads which normally appear by default. They have to pay more to get on top of your ad units which use that specific channel. Thus give you a higher CPC.
A good example is from my friend yet again, his game forum brings him a total of 5 to 10 cents a click. He earned about 10 bucks a day without optimizing his ad units. After he made them targetable and emailed some advertisers to use AdWords to target his ad units, his CPC rose to 20 to 30 cents a click.
Getting Feeds/RSS
This is probably the most difficult part. Once you think your whole website is set up, you need to find some great content websites. Preferably blogs but forums work great too. A little trick: Check the source code of a website when a blog links his RSS to feedburner. Often you can find the Wordpress feed in the source code and you may find the full feed there.
The source code of a website can be brought up using the control + u on PC or command + u on mac.
I'd recommend using Google blog search:
Type in your keywords and hopefully, if the niche has big competition, you will find loads of websites to draw content from. It's difficult to find RSS feeds for smaller niches, so I would suggest using Yahoo answers auto poster plugin to solve that problem as well as UAW or YouTube videos.
Once you got your feeds, insert them into the autoblogger plugin of your choice and see your content grow over time. I'd suggest you to post as less as possible the first few days and slowly increase over time. My schedule for most of my blogs are already running on 100 minutes per interval which is a lot. Keep it at about 5-10 posts per day max. Make sure your site layout looks acceptable but in such a way it won't decrease the chance of them clicking your ads. Difficult yes, but keep experimenting with fonts and sizes to match Google Adsense's. Don't overdo it too or you might get banned
My first autoblogger plugin was WP o Matic - but I got stuck with the cron job via my server. It did complete the cron job and send the ping to WP o Matic but it didn't really react to it. So Autoblogged is my second choice, but now I see it's power - it will be, apart from Youtube videos, my only choice.
Building backlinks
Don't want to sound blunt, but if you want quality backlinks then you really have to make them yourself, which is time consuming (BOOO!!). There are different types of backlink strategies such as (I'm talking about permanent backlinks - not those you bought for 1 month or something like that):
All about Google and autoblogs
Does Google like autoblogs? Will duplicate content get indexed? How much can I make from my autoblog?
One thing: Google does like autoblogs, but not in such a way you are claiming the content as your own. Mashget.com is such an good example, that guy is earning tons of money by simply holding his d*ck in 1 hand and the other hand on the mouse refreshing the page of his AdSense account.
Yes duplicate content does get indexed, I'm experiencing it myself, I've never rewritten content and got over 30 pages indexed in Google. (PM me for link)
See this email I got from a friend of mine:
-----------------
Hey Mark,
nice, I didn't think that this could work that nicely.
Are you just fetching RSS feeds and posting them? Why would Google
rank you for duplicated content? Is it because of your social media
like YouTube and Twitter?
Best regards,
friend
-----------------
A whitehatter, BOOOO. Results will be coming soon.
Help!? My blog got deindexed by Google
Don't worry, your victim of the so called Google-dance. I've suffered from it with my whitehat blog too but got indexed once again within a week. So don't start help threads before you have waited a week. The point is to check if the Google bot still comes by, if so then keep on posting content and keep building backlinks naturally. Then the chance of getting indexed is pretty high.
How much can I make from autoblogging?
This is a too general question which can't be answered. Generally you should be happy to make at least 10 bucks a day, but that is on a rare occasion. Most blogs are only earning 1 or 2 bucks a day. But that clearly already covers the cost. The point is that you should never stop building autoblogs. If autoblog is your thing, keep at it - I don't think it will die soon. Unless Google decides all the information can be found on Wikipedia lol.
Conclusion
I have a friend which is really interested in blogging but doesn't have time to start, at least that is what he says. (I know he is spending all his time on profile websites getting girls and dumping them 1 week later).
My advice to all the beginners: start autoblogging - get a host - and follow this thread, read for a few days on the basics and figure out which niches you want to focus on. All the info are in these threads on this section of the forum. Abuse or lose!
Let me know what I missed and I can add it to the post.
Results coming for november and onwards (pending)
Ok first off; a thank you to all the autoblog pioneers here on BHW for sharing the required information in order for us to start autoblogging. Cheers!
I'm starting this thread to guide beginners and let others know that autoblogging can be a success (how small it may be), it might even be your next first income if you do it on a large scale. This thread is for BHW only and I haven't pulled it off any website, it's just my own two to three weeks experience.
Secondly I really advice DeathRequest's stickied thread for all the resources you need for autoblogging:
http://www.blackhatworld.com/blackh...timate-collection-autoblogging-resources.html
Seriously you don't need to buy any eBook whatsoever; all the information is already given on the internet and here on BHW. (no pun intended to those selling eBooks, just pointing that out for beginners before they waste their money and give up before even starting). The only thing you should know before starting is how to use FTP and a bit of html/css.
A tip: make friends online and learn from them as they can learn from you.
Table of contents:
- Introduction
- My earnings/traffic the first two weeks
- Hosting/Servers
- Discovering Niches
- Domain Names
- Step by step installation of autoblogs
- Installing Wordpress
- Uploading Theme(s) + settings
- Plugins I use and Recommend
- Getting Feeds/RSS
- Building backlinks
- All about Google and autoblogs
- Conclusion
- Coming results for november and onwards (pending)
Introduction
I'd rather stay half-anonymous or I might get flooded with spam so I'll just use my first name, Mark (if you need to know anything specific - then PM me and we can talk/chat over skype). As I'm a student on a college in Rotterdam in the Netherlands I have loads of free time to spend on my blogs. I currently have 8 autoblogs up and running. From which 2 of them have AdSense on them and 6 are in the process of "I-don't-want-to-let-Google-know-that-those-sites-are-just-for-making-money". NEVER EVER add AdSense on the first day of your autoblog. Add AdSense once your blog reaches at least 100 visitors per day. Your blog gets devalued to the ground if you have 0 visitors and if you're unlucky you will disappear from the search result pages (serp's). Google isn't very fond of websites putting AdSense on the very first day with zero traffic. The funny thing was that I didn't even knew what an autoblog was before I arrived at this forum via a google search.
Known tip: to see if your site is indexed use this command in the google search bar:
Code:
site:http://yourwebsite.comI have about 30 blogs, from which a couple are Wordpress and the rest are Blogger blogs. Across 2 hosting companies. All of the 22 blogs are whitehat and 8 of them as mentioned above are autoblogs. The plan is to turn 90% of my blogs to autoblogs which will reduce my own work to about 1 hour per day. Yay for automation!
My earnings/traffic the first two weeks
So after a week of reading and doing some research on BHW I finally started my first autoblog. I got inspired by some of the big threads here and decided my first blog should be in the tech niche (yes I know how general - but at least it's a simple niche). After I made some dummy posts and got indexed in Google I activated Autoblogged plugin to pull content from other websites.
I mentioned earlier I had loads of free time so my website looks prof designed and for some odd reason I'm getting emails from people I don't even know that they like my website. Talking about irony... I'm trying to monetize my traffic, yet instead they love the website lol.
Below is a screenshot of my analytics stats for about 10 days. Traffic spiked one day to 400 because I'm actually outranking the original article from the real website
More about that later. I'm not sure if it's smart but I should give an example, so search for "hp tilt shift" and you'll know that I'm talking about.Click to enlarge (reply if image is down)
Steadily making money from about 200 visits a day within the first 2 weeks with just 1 blog. Below are the results once I added Google AdSense to my blog. It's not a lot but the blog is young and it already covered my hosting costs for the month so that isn't too shabby.
Click to enlarge
At this point I'm wondering how it will look like in 2 years... will I give up on autoblogging or do the stats like this skyrocket in the future? All the things to worry about, yet I strongly believe that making an real income from autoblogs could be real.
Hosting/Servers
Ok here I might have an advantage above others, a friend of mine has a huge game forum getting 30k visitors every single day and luckily he allows me to have unlimited autoblogs on his $100 per month rackspace cloud server
As you might know you shouldn't have more than 5-10 autoblogs on 1 server so that is why I'm paying my own server too. My knowledge about servers and IP's doesn't go far but I know you need several different IP's or Google kicks your ass and I know how much that hurts
My own server is hosted on HostGator with a baby package. Only 10 bucks per month which is practially nothing. You can earn that back within a single day. So my advice for all starters is to have at least $30 ready in your bank account to get the required hosting etc. You actually don't have to spend money on plugins, they can be found on this forum.
I don't want to link to Hostgator else you might think it's an affiliate link, so just Google it or type it in directly. (I'm not selling anything - just teaching).
Discovering Niches
When you have your hosting setup and rolling it's time to think about which niches you are going to target. (niche is another word for subject). Let's look at some examples:
World of Warcraft is one (game) example. Now you need to know some niches in it.(I've played the game so that gives me a small advantage - oh and if you ever played warcraft 3 then you should know now that Dota, Defense of the Ancients, is one heck of a popular custom map)
-Jewelcrafting/Herbalism
-Character classes etc.
-Talent/Level Guides
Hoodia (a plant used with diets)
-High blood pressure
-Results
-Where to buy them
-Gels
etc.
So find a subject in any topic (health, gaming, technology, news) and choose a sub-topic. SEO is not a niche, it might be but it's way too competitive - you should rather focus on the keywords "SEO for beginners" or something. Keywords are important as that will let Google know what your website is all about.
Lastly I'd say use either Google AdWord's Keyword Tools or Market Samurai, which can be found here for free if you do a search.
Domain Names
Getting ranked in Google is one thing, another thing is being able to rank WELL in google. Google determines your position for your pages in the serp's by at least 100 to 200 factors. Be it backlinks, website coding, keywords, meta description, title, heading tags, css validation, your website exposure, website loading time, verified in Google webmasters?, is website in DMOZ or Yahoo's Directory? Several on-page factors but most are off-page factors. In the early years of the internet you could stuff your website full with meta tags with just about anything and rank with an health site for gaming keywords (haha). Google's new algorithem destroyed that and after a while became clear that backlinks are the new kings and on-page SEO is slowly dying.
Now I said keywords earlier. Google also takes in conjunction your domain name as a factor to rank your blog. So it is important to have your main keywords for your niche in your domain name. Take the hoodia example, you will rank better in Google with hoodia in your domain name than if you don't have one in it. (www,hoodiaguides,com - or something) This means you will rank well if your Title of the blog is Hoodia Guides.
Now here comes a question noone can really answer:
Should I take .info domains or .com for my autoblogs?
.info domains are cheap as they come as low as $0.90 to $2, whereas .com domains are always above $10 without coupons.
A logical answer to this question would be: "Take a .com domain because it's more expensive than a .info domain which marks your website as spam". If that was true then all the spammers would immediately get a .com domain and continue the spamming with better results because they won't get marked as spam.
To be honest, I don't know the definite answer to that question. What I do know is that my main .info autoblog, two weeks old, is doing as good as my .com domains.
Where should I buy my domain names?
I got all mine from godaddy.com. But there are more like Yahoo, Registar, Namecheap, 1and1, Enom etc.
Step by step installation of autoblogs
(sorry I thought I could make it into a step-by-step but it turned more into a wall of text
)You need a...
1) host
2) domain name
3) ftp client (firezilla is what I'm using)
to work with your autoblog.
--------- I do hope you know how to set up a domain name's nameservers to your hosting provider. If you don't then below you can find a link to hostgator's DNS changing webpage. Just choose your domain registar and change the name servers to your host's provided name servers.
Code:
http://www.hostgator.com/dns.shtmlAt this point I'm about to install another blog myself, so you can read along and see what I am doing. First thing of course is...
Installing Wordpress
This is probably the easiest part, however you have to think about if you add sub domains to your autoblog project or not. I personally do it because you can make it more 'niche' related. In this example I'll be making a blog about Mac. It's one of the more easier autoblogs to create because of the amount of feeds available on the net.
I made a few sub domains using the control panel on Hostgator (man that goes so smoothly) and named them:
news.mac.com -> latest news for mac
computers.mac.com -> latest updates on the computer apple produces and sells
software.mac.com -> talking about latest software for mac
guides.mac.com -> how to guides for software and stuff
It's a bit general but should give you an idea on how to name your sub domains. Now a little note on the Wordpress versions...
Be aware that some versions of Autoblogged and WP o Matic / WProbot and all the other plugins might not work on Wordpress 2.8.6+ for everybody. I'm always installing 2.8.4. Why? Simply because I know every single thing will work. I don't give a shit about hackers. If one guy hacks my blog (god knows how), sure, I'll just grab a backup and start another autoblog.
Once you uploaded Wordpress to your server you can begin the installation procedure of the WP-config.php file. Takes less then 1 minute if you know where to look and if you just made the database. Personally when I started using Wordpress I had difficulties figuring out the database password and such as I had zero experience in server management. A friend made the database for me and just gave me the info, which is why I had trouble finding it
.Lucky you if your host has Fantastico, that little script installs Wordpress automatically with the correct settings. The latest version though...
Note: if you are going to use sub domains, make sure to install Wordpress on all the subdomains, not just the main domain. Kinda straight forward lol. You could instead use Wordpress MU, which allows easy control over sub domains.
Code:
http://mu.wordpress.org/Uploading Theme(s) + settings
Ah.. everybody's favorite part. Don't forget that the theme you are going to be using, plays a big roll in how your advertisements are going to convert into sales. Position of the ads and the amount of text + colors comes second.
For this mac blog I am using the free theme 'shadowbox' because of it's rich features and it's unique theme options layout. I'm also a big coders now that I have a lot of experience with blogs so I can make it look like an Apple blog.
If you are not sure what to use, then see this thread:
Code:
http://www.blackhatworld.com/blackhat-seo/blogging/113617-whats-your-favorite-wp-theme.htmlAfter that go to the options of the theme and customize as you need.
A few settings I recommend you to do:
1) General Settings:
-Type in your Blog Title and Tagline (like 5 words only, because we are going to use a SEO plugin)
-Change timezone to UTC (+0)
2) Writing Settings:
-Change default category (you need to make a new category first which can be done under 'posts')
3) Reading:
-Maybe change the amount of posts on a page, but can be overridden with a plugin
4) Discussion:
-Tick: An administrator must always approve the comment
-Tick: Enable threaded (nested) comments levels deep (yes I know, but to some surprise my tech blog got a lot of happy readers)
5) Media:
-Nothing for now (if you use the autoblogged plugin - these settings are used)
6) Permalinks:
-Change the structure to /%postname% I wouldn't recommend using the category name as well because then you could be using too many keywords.
After that, add Google Analytics to the footer (before the closing body tag) Go and add Yahoo site explorer (google it) + Google webmasters site verification code to your header.php file. (that should be inserted before the closing head tag)
From here on it's really up to you how you design your blog with which fonts and colors.
Robots.txt + .htaccess + favicon files
It's important to have those 2 files in your root folder, simply because you don't want Google to find out that you are using autoblog plugins. Make a text file and insert the following text into it:
Sitemap: /sitemap.xml
User-agent: *
Disallow: /wp-content/cache/
Disallow: /wp-content/themes/
Disallow: /wp-content/plugins/
Disallow: /wp-admin/
Disallow: /wp-includes/
Disallow: /wp-login.php
Rename it to: Robot.txt and place it in the root WP folder together with all the wp-content, wp-admin and wp-includes folders.
Next up is .htaccess, which should be there. If you can't see it with your FTP client then check for an option which allows you to see invisible files. Should be located in the root folder too.
Add this to it:
# BEGIN WordPress
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . /index.php [L]
</IfModule>
# END WordPress
If you still can't find it, then simply upload a regular text file and name it exactly .htaccess with no extentions like .txt or .php!
To make your blog look more natural you need to have an favicon, period.
This can be done by either uploading a 16 by 16 pixel .ico file to your WP root folder, or add an snippet of html to your header.php file. This is what you should add: (most browsers of today already look for an ico file, but it's better to add it anyway)
Code:
<link rel="icon" type="image/x-icon" href="[URL="http://www.blackhatworld.com/blackhat-seo/view-source:http://createbacklinks.info/game/favicon.ico"]favicon.ico[/URL]">This really depends on what plugins you are using. Some plugins allow you to insert extra widgets into your sidebars. Widgets like next gen gallery, recent posts, recent comments, pages, categories really make an autoblog look like a normal blog, which is what we want.
Alternatively you could add some clickbank products on the sidebar in a text widget together with a feedburner count to make it look natural.
Plugins I use and Recommend
One of the biggest issues with autoblogs are the plugins. Can't count the number of thread about plugins and which one the best one is... To sum it all up from other threads (and it's been told a lot), every plugin has it's advantages and disadvantages.
Plugins for a text website (text oriented with images, any autoblog plugin will do)
Plugins for a video website (uses videos mostly pulled from YouTube but requires much more work than text oriented blogs - see below - if you want image only, then get Autoblogged plugin and don't let it pull any excerpt, just images/thumbnails - I have yet to try it but seems like a funny idea - you can also make use of the "custom field" and "custom values" to insert the images automatically as a thumbnail for the homepage etc. - that is why I love autoblogged - feature rich
)I'll brake this down to a few lists which include basic plugins, content generating plugins and monetization plugins. There is one special plugin which I want to discuss afterwards. Because a lot of people are trying to build backlinks for their website but fail because it's too much work, there is a plugin that automatically does that and submits your content to 20+ social websites.
Basic Plugins:
-Akismet
-All in One SEO Pack
-Duplicate Posts Eraser
-Easy Privacy Policy (needed if you are planning to use AdSense)
-Exclude Pages from Navigation
-Google XML Sitemaps
-No Self Pings
-Popular Posts
-Post-Plugin Library
-Recent Posts
-WP Super Cache (mainly used to reduce your server's CPU usage)
-Onlywire multisubmitter
Download here: (you don't need more to make a nice autoblog to be honest)
Code:
http://rapidshare.com/files/308873962/basic-plugins.zipPlus I have the feeling it doesn't really matter at all which plugin you have as long as you have a meta description/keywords and your Title in every category and post.
You might also notice I'm not using any social plugin apart from the multisubmitter. This is because it's an autoblog! You don't want visitors to stay, you want them to click the ads. It's already difficult to achieve that, above all - if one visitor decides to stay and read content, he is as useless as a pig in the desert. Probably only eating bandwidth and you won't ever see a backlink in return. My experience is that even with a WHITEHAT blog, people don't submit your content to social websites. That is why you need to do it on your own, don't depend on others.
Now that is where the onlywire multisubmitter comes into play. Just create an account on their website (onlwire.com) and start adding your own social bookmarking account data. (digg stumble twitter diigo propeller etc.) Fill in your onlywire acc name and password into the multisubmitter plugin and it will automatically post your content to the social bookmarking website you filled your data in everytime you post content on your autoblog - which all goes automatic with the plugins. Couldn't be more lazier than that right?
The only problem with this is that you need to create a few onlywire accounts because you can only use the API from onlywire 5 times a day.Content Generating Plugins:
-AutoBlogged (my prefered rss feed fetcher)
-WP o Matic
-WP VideoTube (probably the best video fetch plugin out there)
-Wordpress WriteAgain! -> * see note
-Unique Article Wizard Plugin
-Don't use CC - caffeinated content - it's outdated
Most of these can be downloaded from the download section here on BHW, use the search function on top to get the latest version. I do have a strong believe in purchasing these plugins as it will help the creator for his/her/their work. Currently using Autoblogged for all my autoblogs, I just love it (got a multi site license for 50 autoblogs) if you customize the output for the feed in just the right way, the posts it creates are awesome.
* Writeagain costs a bit of money and can be purchased from a local BHW member. Can't remember his name but to be honest, I've never ever rewritten content for my blog - not even manually - just a linkback to the original article is enough. On top of that I still outrank the original website with many posts. (oh and I don't use UAW too - too lazy ^_^)
Currently I'm using this template for the majority of my blogs: (can be edited in each single feed on the bottom - autoblogged only!)
%if:video%<p>%video%</p>%endif:video%
%if:thumbnail%<p>%thumbnail%</p>%endif:thumbnail%
<p>%excerpt%</p>
The full story can be read/found on <a href="%link%" title="%title%" target="_blank">WEBSITE NAME HERE</a>
Replace the 'website name here' and do this because you don't want to give the website credit using the post title text, but rather the website name itself which looks more natural in terms of link building. You can also use the full content which is what many bloggers prefer. Everyone should have their own method right?
I understand because it allows them to be indexed for more keywords and thus get more visitors. Problem is with some feeds it also copies some faggy text like comment links | submit this post | bookmark this post | etc.I don't know exactly how Yahoo pipes work but it should be the solution for that problem. A couple of hours learning on that should fix that
I might be making a guide on how to use Yahoo pipes in the future.Monetization plugins:
Also mentioned in the ultimate thread for autoblog resources.
-AdSense Deluxe in conjuction with Kontera Ads or something.
I don't really use plugins to manage my ads on my blogs. I'd rather insert them myself into the code because for example - I've noticed that when using two large rectangles 336x280 in a table tag get quite a lot of clicks. Result can be seen in the picture below. (yea some dutch ads in there too
)Click to enlarge
It isn't really blending yet but that can be solved with a few CSS color changes. So that was it for the plugins. I'm basically not using more than 1 content generator and I use the whole basic plugin package included from the rapidshare link above.
To make something like that use this code:
<table>
<tr>
<td>
GOOGLE ADSENSE ON THE LEFT
</td>
<td>
GOOGLE ADSENSE ON THE RIGHT
</td>
</tr>
</table>
I also make sure to use an AdSense Channel with every single ad unit I put on a website. Why? First off, it allows me to track the performance. Secondly I can increase the cost per click I get. How? Adwords users can target your channel and compete with the keyword targeted ads which normally appear by default. They have to pay more to get on top of your ad units which use that specific channel. Thus give you a higher CPC.
A good example is from my friend yet again, his game forum brings him a total of 5 to 10 cents a click. He earned about 10 bucks a day without optimizing his ad units. After he made them targetable and emailed some advertisers to use AdWords to target his ad units, his CPC rose to 20 to 30 cents a click.
Getting Feeds/RSS
This is probably the most difficult part. Once you think your whole website is set up, you need to find some great content websites. Preferably blogs but forums work great too. A little trick: Check the source code of a website when a blog links his RSS to feedburner. Often you can find the Wordpress feed in the source code and you may find the full feed there.
The source code of a website can be brought up using the control + u on PC or command + u on mac.
I'd recommend using Google blog search:
Code:
http://blogsearch.google.com/Once you got your feeds, insert them into the autoblogger plugin of your choice and see your content grow over time. I'd suggest you to post as less as possible the first few days and slowly increase over time. My schedule for most of my blogs are already running on 100 minutes per interval which is a lot. Keep it at about 5-10 posts per day max. Make sure your site layout looks acceptable but in such a way it won't decrease the chance of them clicking your ads. Difficult yes, but keep experimenting with fonts and sizes to match Google Adsense's. Don't overdo it too or you might get banned
My first autoblogger plugin was WP o Matic - but I got stuck with the cron job via my server. It did complete the cron job and send the ping to WP o Matic but it didn't really react to it. So Autoblogged is my second choice, but now I see it's power - it will be, apart from Youtube videos, my only choice.
Building backlinks
Don't want to sound blunt, but if you want quality backlinks then you really have to make them yourself, which is time consuming (BOOO!!). There are different types of backlink strategies such as (I'm talking about permanent backlinks - not those you bought for 1 month or something like that):
- Linkwheels (making tons of websites on free hosts and interlink them - in short)
- Angela's Method (make profiles and then link back within the profile to your website)
- Spamming (xrumer or SEnuke)
- article marketing (ezinearticles.com, goarticles.com etc.)
- Social networks
All about Google and autoblogs
Does Google like autoblogs? Will duplicate content get indexed? How much can I make from my autoblog?
One thing: Google does like autoblogs, but not in such a way you are claiming the content as your own. Mashget.com is such an good example, that guy is earning tons of money by simply holding his d*ck in 1 hand and the other hand on the mouse refreshing the page of his AdSense account.
Yes duplicate content does get indexed, I'm experiencing it myself, I've never rewritten content and got over 30 pages indexed in Google. (PM me for link)
See this email I got from a friend of mine:
-----------------
Hey Mark,
nice, I didn't think that this could work that nicely
.Are you just fetching RSS feeds and posting them? Why would Google
rank you for duplicated content? Is it because of your social media
like YouTube and Twitter?
Best regards,
friend
-----------------
A whitehatter, BOOOO. Results will be coming soon.
Help!? My blog got deindexed by Google
Don't worry, your victim of the so called Google-dance. I've suffered from it with my whitehat blog too
but got indexed once again within a week. So don't start help threads before you have waited a week. The point is to check if the Google bot still comes by, if so then keep on posting content and keep building backlinks naturally. Then the chance of getting indexed is pretty high.How much can I make from autoblogging?
This is a too general question which can't be answered. Generally you should be happy to make at least 10 bucks a day, but that is on a rare occasion. Most blogs are only earning 1 or 2 bucks a day. But that clearly already covers the cost. The point is that you should never stop building autoblogs. If autoblog is your thing, keep at it - I don't think it will die soon. Unless Google decides all the information can be found on Wikipedia lol.
Conclusion
I have a friend which is really interested in blogging but doesn't have time to start, at least that is what he says. (I know he is spending all his time on profile websites getting girls and dumping them 1 week later).
My advice to all the beginners: start autoblogging - get a host - and follow this thread, read for a few days on the basics and figure out which niches you want to focus on. All the info are in these threads on this section of the forum. Abuse or lose!
Let me know what I missed and I can add it to the post.
Results coming for november and onwards (pending)
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