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)
(use control+f cmd+f to find
the content)
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.
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!
Hosting/Servers
We love it here and we’re all focused on hosting.
It’s what we do. It’s what we’re good at.
And we’re not faceless robots. Maybe you’ll even
want to
sign up for hosting once you’ve had a chance to
check us out!
We’re looking forward to welcoming you to our
family!
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.
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. 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.
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)
<link rel="icon"
type="image/x-icon" href="favicon.ico">
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
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 336×280 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
)
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: http://blogsearch.google.com/
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):
- 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
I’d prefer to make
everything automatic and
thus the onlywire plugin
comes into play yet again.
Most blogs are just set and
forget and then you should
start building backlinks.
Digg and Stumble are a great
way to get started with.
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.
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.
