Check out my automated niche blog business model (it really works)

Yes. When I initially set up the blog, my GoCodes all redirect to my own affiliate URLs. If one of my GoCode URLs is getting a lot of traffic, but say the affiliate URL I'm redirecting to isn't converting, then I have a few choices. I can swap it for another affiliate link... or, what I was suggesting in what you quoted is that you can approach a merchant in your niche and "rent" them your GoCode. So you would place their site as the re-direct instead of your own affiliate link. I just bill them with PayPal recurring. As long as they pay, I keep sending them the traffic. Make more sense now?

There's this thing called a search engine? LOL! They aren't hard to find. Google News for example. Anywhere you can specify a search with your keywords, and then get a feed of those results. Use your imagination - any news site, any social bookmarking site, any blog search site, etc.

The metthod I use to find such feeds is by simply going to google and doing a search
"your keyword" RSS
or use google blog search with your keywords

This is kind of obnoxious. I don't really think the post isn't of value without those.

I have a spreadsheet full of these sites that I spent a lot of time collecting. I just wanted to share my outline in case someone found it useful. I don't have to share everything, do I? Do you want to know my niches and sites too? LOL! (Hint: I'm not telling you those, either.) The method is still sound, and like I said above to a previous poster, just actually DO something yourself and search for em. They aren't hard to find. In fact, you can probably find lists of them other people have already made. In the time it took you to post that, you could have found a ton with a Google search.

Use a little brains and spend a little effort.

Or, you can let the fact that I didn't do all the work for you and hold your hand be an excuse for your not succeeding. It doesn't matter to me!

Absolutely. PM me and we can work something out!

I only tried a couple of others before I found WP-O-Matic. Actually when I came across it, it didn't work for me, but I happened to find it just before one of the version upgrades that switched it to use WordPress's built-in Cron rather than a server-based Cron. It just worked for what I wanted it to do, so I actually quit messing with other ones. I'm not trying to make great websites with meaty original content, rather just little niche news/aggregator sites. I like WP-O-Matic because it's free, easy to use, and just works with minimal effort on my part.

I've experimented with doing other stuff, like using RSS Magician to consolidate feeds and remix them for uniqueness before feeding it into WP-O-Matic, but I found that to be unnecessary for getting the method to work.

The keyword based feeds are as you say, any feed where I can specify keywords and get feeds based on that. So any news site, any social bookmarking site, any blog aggregator site. In fact, a lot of the sites you find that you can submit your own RSS feed will also offer keyword based feeds, too.

For my model, it's not about providing lengthy content. It's about being the single stop for all things going on in a particular niche. I'm trying to make little authority sites, but the key is just getting it "good enough" and then focus on getting money from it. The site will grow on its own, traffic and backlinks will grow on their own.

I took it really slow at first when making these, but by the time I got to my 5th or 6th one, the first one had hit that "snowball rolling down a mountain" point, where it just started growing and making more and more without me really doing anything at all.

Yep, you got it! See? That's what I'm talking about. Kudos to you, my friend. I knew there were some smarties here. Turns out it's so easy you didn't even need my help. All it took to find that out was to actually TRY IT! I feel like a lot of people get crippled by the "Fallacy of Information" (look it up if you don't know what that is). Instead, just roll up your sleeves and get to it. It's easy as pie!

Yep. Kick Ass. I actually use Auto Social Poster myself, but it's not free, so I didn't mention it here. Keep an eye out for new WP plugins all the time. There's constantly stuff coming out that will help do more. For example, there are several plugins that will automatically create tags for your posts. Then there are plugins that will automatically SEO your pages based on your tags, for a 1-2 automated combo. If you're into the SEO thing, you can even get plugins to really finely control your nofollows so you can control that PR and maximize it. The higher the PR, the more you can charge for text link ads. You can also get plugins that will auto-link tags and category names as they appear in your copy, for deep linking into your site.

All kinds of stuff can be done with this - big high five to Georg for showing that all there is to it is to DO IT.

I don't really focus on anything in particular. I try to monetize everything I can. Mainly I set up the affiliate products AND I throw AdSense up there at the beginning. Once I set it up, I don't really do much else unless nothing's working at all, or if it's working particularly well. If it's A, I change out my affiliate products and try something else. If it's B, I look to expand monetization and do more ad sales, include more linking opportunities, etc.

But even if it doesn't work as far as moving product or getting ad clicks, it will still automatically get page rank. The worst performing blog I ever did got to be a PR4 after my spending an hour setting it up, and then not touching it for 3 months. I can sell PR4 backlinks all day long for at least $50 a month. Each. I try to limit paid backlinks (I just stick them in the built in link-list in Wordpress) to less than 10 per blog. I figure you can do the math there.

Now, there's also a plugin I'm working with that is a donation mechanism. I forget what it's called, but it allows a visitor to make a PayPal Payment and fill out a sponsor form, which then puts their details on the site automatically. What I want to see is if I can get it to work with a PayPal subscription, so I can just send prospective buyers directly to the blog for self-serve. Right now, I have to do that part of the business manually.

Try it standard with adsense (or your favorite ad publishing network) and a handful of affiliate products. It doens't hurt all all to do both. As to what works better, it depends on the niche and the products, and a whole lot of chance. Remember, I really don't know where all this stuff is ending up. I just submit it to a ton of places and see what happens.

You'll end up creating trackbacks on other blogs, your content will get syndicated on other aggregators, once you start getting attention, people will link to you on your own, etc. etc.

Hope that helps!

That is a fantastic point and it was one I was just going to bring up. I'm glad I ended up reading your posts.

That is something you really need to watch out for. You can get your blog banned from those pinging sites. Trust it when I say it happens.

Regards,

Shannon Herod

Great points Tommy. Especially about the ping list. You do want to make sure you're not double pinging any services. Try to get as many as possible, but don't overdo it. Very important to note. That doesn't apply to the submission of your RSS feed - I recommend doing that in as many places as possible.

Now as far as posting with the automated tools, it really depends on the look and feel of the blog. I try to use a news-y theme, and I develop a pretty robust category structure, and then match that with my WP-O-Matic schema. So what I get it what looks less like a blog and more like an authority news site, rather than what most consider a "blog" (a series of posts from a single author).

For me, the more content, and the more variated, the better. Here's a super-power tip I didn't include in the original writeup (I forgot) but you can get a plugin called "WP More Feeds" that allows you to make a separate feed URL for each CATEGORY you create for your posts. Even a feed for each tag! That means you can submit that many MORE feeds to all these RSS sites and get even more coverage.

EDIT: I was incorrect - More Feeds just makes your category and tag archive pages into feeds. Wordpress itself makes per-category feeds as explained in their docs. Thought it didn't sound right, so I double checked on a blog that uses it. The point is still valid though - your blog has multiple feeds, and you should use em all!

Then, go to feedburner, get set up there with all your feeds, and then submit all THOSE to all the RSS sites.

You can really go nuts with this and make your content just cast a gigantic net. Or, you can just do a reasonable amount per blog, then instead of overdoing it on one, spend your energy on another blog in another niche. Or, another super tip - if you're in a niche that's doing well, make more than one blog in the same niche to cover different sub-niches. I've only done this in one of my markets, but it's working well. If I wasn't so lazy, I'd really expand on it some more.

I'm syndicating them. That's part of the whole reason RSS exists. "Really Simple Syndication". If they don't want it re-published, they shouldn't put it in a feed, is my thinking. But depending on their specific TOCs, I might be stepping on some toes, but not so far as I know.

I also link back to the sources too, so they're all getting benefit. It's no different than if I was a news site, quoting stories and linking back to the source. I just do it automatically. Isn't that really what something like Google News is, after all? I'm not stealing the content or re-labeling it as my own, I'm republishing it intact. I just also add in my own links, and then further re-publish.

My goal as stated is to make a niche authority site. What better way to do that than to set my blog up as a crossroads for all niche related discussion and new content, no matter where it might appear?

In fact, I never bothered to follow up, but I bet original posters who get re-syndicated by me also get a huge SEO benefit from my process as well. Their backlinks get syndicated as well as mine. Never had anyone complain or contact me to be removed. If they did, I could, but what are they getting out of it - free links and traffic?

So when you are looking at the results page when you've done a google news search, there is a menu of links along the left hand column. The one that says "RSS" is near the bottom and is the one you're looking for.

Yes, you can syndicate blogs directly if they provide an RSS feed. The idea is that you're not just copying one blog. If you take blog feeds directly, try to get a bunch of blogs in the same niche, and syndicate them all, so you're aggregating a bunch of content, which is a value in itself.

Now, if you're getting incorrectly targeted content, and are getting way too many posts, you need to refine your search terms. It's easy, you do it the same way you would if you were searching yourself. Just refine your terms until all (or at least a majority) of the results ARE appropriate for your niche.

As far as limiting the number of posts, you do that when you set up the campaign. You can limit it to a number of items to pull while ignoring the rest. That's what you're looking to do, I believe.

Let me know if that answers your questions. Kudos on getting started and implementing this so quickly!

Yes! I also recommend this plugin as well. It's not VITAL, but it will help your blog appear more natural if you plan to go full automatic.

Even if you don't go full automatic, you could easily use this method to save all your RSS stuff as drafts, then go in and manually edit, tweak, commentate, etc. It's still an IMMENSE time saver. That's if you're trying to go with the slick, for real, dedicated niche site.

My goal is more to make a lot of average performing mediocre sites and keep profiting from volume. That's why I focus on selling advertising, because SEO savvy marketers don't really care if the blog is crappy or not as long as the link gives PR juice. I'm not inclined to care much either.

Good enough is good enough for me. But I don't want anyone to exclude themselves from this method because they don't want to make an automated re-poster. The technique is still kickass if you need a way to constantly come up with stuff to blog about. DOn't go looking for topics - use my system to let topics come to you!

Anyways, enough rambling. Hope that helps.

Keith, I would caution folks to read those terms and conditions prior to adding a feed. Some people disagree with you on your idea that it shouldn't be in an RSS feed unless they want it re-published.

I provide a feed for the benefit of my visitors, not for other people to use my material, commercially or otherwise. There is a notification to that effect on the front page, above the fold.

That said, for feeds that allow it, and that's probably the vast majority of them, this is an excellent idea, well presented. Nice stuff, sir.


Paul

Keith,

What is the stable version of W-P-O-Matic plugin
that you use and where can I download it?

I was on the author's page and it seems that this
plugin has many bugs and problems, that's why I
ask. He states that it still can have bugs (v. 1.0-RC4)

Is it compatible with 2.6.x version of wordpress?


Could you please point me into right direction?


Almin

Anyone else having trouble getting gocodes working?

It says redirect created successfully, but I just get a 404 if I test them.

I added the htaccess line of code but that didn't make a diff.

Thanks for sharing with us...
This is very useful for me.

Keith,

Is there any way you could point us to a site where you have this implemented? I'm having trouble wrapping my arms around the concept.... I guess maybe I just need to see iut.

Thank you for sharing with all of us Keith

Thanks a lot for sharing your technique. I have a question:
How much can you expect from such blogs and what is the time frame?

Keith,

Hope you don't mind if I incorporate some of the great blog ideas
and niche blog business models discussed here within my
Expert Blogging video tutorials... I can always add an additional
video tutorial.

Expert Blogging Secrets @ Profits.CC

Actually, I am wondering whether you'd like to receive a
complimentary Review Copy of such Video Course, so
that you may provide a Critique.

And because today is Black Friday, I am also offering a Review Copy
to anyone reading this thread. You see, the video course is
brand new, and I am looking for genuine, authentic testimonials.

Thanks.

Hi I'am a newbie. These Great Tips are really great and usefull for me. How can I find the fast way to get traffic that can conversion to be sales. I really need all guys. Thank for kind helps before

Thanks for sharing this Keith. Great stuff.
A.

Ok so I installed the wp omatic plugin and put the code in my cron and now get the following error when I try to create a new campaign in wordpress:



The following errors have been encountered:

* Feeds
o Feed api.moreover.com/RPC2 could not be parsed (SimplePie said: A feed could not be found at http://api.moreover.com/RPC2)
o Feed api.my.yahoo.co.jp/RPC2 could not be parsed (SimplePie said: A feed could not be found at http://api.my.yahoo.co.jp/RPC2)
o Feed api.my.yahoo.com/RPC2 could not be parsed (SimplePie said: A feed could not be found at http://api.my.yahoo.com/RPC2)
o Feed audiorpc.weblogs.com/RPC2 could not be parsed (SimplePie said: A feed could not be found at http://audiorpc.weblogs.com/RPC2)
o Feed blog.goo.ne.jp/XMLRPC could not be parsed (SimplePie said: A feed could not be found at http://blog.goo.ne.jp/XMLRPC)
o Feed blogpeople.net/ping could not be parsed (SimplePie said: A feed could not be found at http://blogpeople.net/ping)
o Feed blogsearch.google.ae/ping/RPC2 could not be parsed (SimplePie said: A feed could not be found at http://blogsearch.google.ae/ping/RPC2)
o Feed blogsearch.google.at/ping/RPC2 could not be parsed (SimplePie said: A feed could not be found at http://blogsearch.google.at/ping/RPC2)
o Feed blogsearch.google.be/ping/RPC2 could not be parsed (SimplePie said: A feed could not be found at http://blogsearch.google.be/ping/RPC2)
o Feed blogsearch.google.bg/ping/RPC2 could not be parsed (SimplePie said: A feed could not be found at http://blogsearch.google.bg/ping/RPC2)
o Feed feedsky.com/api/RPC2 could not be parsed (SimplePie said: A feed could not be found at http://feedsky.com/api/RPC2)
o Feed hamo-search.com/ping.php could not be parsed (SimplePie said: A feed could not be found at http://hamo-search.com/ping.php)
o Feed holycowdude.com/rpc/ping/ could not be parsed (SimplePie said: A feed could not be found at http://holycowdude.com/rpc/ping/)
o Feed rpc.technorati.jp/rpc/ping could not be parsed (SimplePie said: XML error: no element found at line 1, column 0)
o Feed rpc.weblogs.com/RPC2 could not be parsed (SimplePie said: A feed could not be found at http://rpc.weblogs.com/RPC2)
o Feed www.blogpeople.net/servlet/weblogUpdates could not be parsed (SimplePie said: A feed could not be found at http://www.blogpeople.net/servlet/weblogUpdates)
o Feed xping.pubsub.com/ping/ could not be parsed (SimplePie said: A feed could not be found at http://xping.pubsub.com/ping/)

Any idea what could be wrong guys?

Also are we creating a cloaked affiliate link per keyword here? I dont understand exactly what gocodes is all about. Is is strictly for cloaking your affiliate urls or to cloak the affiliate urls with keywords? Thanks

keith,

thanks for this one, too. Great stuff!! and all for FREE!!

bob

Now you're talking! Way to take the initiative and run with the idea.

I don't worry so much about finding full text feeds. They're out there, I find blogs that do it now and again and syndicate them. However, most of the stuff I use are just short, a few hundred words at most. I've been looking around here and I see some folks like to post longer articles on their sites, or maybe even sales or squeezes. I'd recommend putting that kind of thing into a page, rather than a post. Then, you can actually use THOSE urls in your backlink building and start getting those pages to rank.

If you want to post some lengthier original content but still keep it automated, you can check out a plugin called "Wordpress Article Importer" that I've got. I haven't used it in a long time, but basically you can take a bunch of PLR, zip it, upload it, and this plugin will drip out posts using the article content.

That's a pretty cool option by itself. You could even get another plugin called "Scheduled Post Shift" that will re-post your archive of posts in a rolling manner. Then you could try something like WordPress ReWriter to make it unique each time.

Meh, I'm rambling. I guess that's not quite the answer to your question, but hopefully it's useful. There really are a lot of possibilites of what you can do with this method.

Dude, I used to have the EXACT SAME PROBLEM! That's what I love about this system is that every blog has a degree of uniqueness - I can mess with some new templates and plugins, I end up learning a new niche by doing the keyword and product research, etc. I try different money making methods too. I originally started by focusing entirely on AdSense, but that's really chump change. There's much better money to be made doing other things with this kind of blog.

But my point is, the work's different enough to be interesting each time. Even though I *could* churn these out in about an hour's time, I usually end up spending at least a day on them when I make them. I love messing with WordPress.

But even so, it's just a day. I set it up and forget about it. I check back in after a few months and then make adjustments as needed. In other words, it works without me. But that little bit of work ends up growing into an asset that I can do something with.

I never have to think "oh, what's my next project going to be" because I always have something to do. One blog is getting a lot of traffic, so I'll add a squeeze page and build a list. One blog isn't getting good content, so I refine the WP-O-Matic campaign. One blog isn't making any affiliate sales, so I swap out the products, etc. etc. I find it easier to work on something that's already in progress. Maybe that'll help you out too.

And when I *do* get bored messing with a given blog, that's how I can tell it's time to set it aside and start a new one.

I've seen them sometimes, but only rarely. I wouldn't say "often" - maybe once in like 50 posts or so. When I see em, I'll just go ahead and delete the duplicates. However, my sites usually have a lot of different categorized feeds being posted, so it's not really a problem. If you're worried about a duplicate content penalty on your own site, there are several plugins like "uniquifier" which will make all your site content appear unique to search spiders (though it doesn't actually alter the data in the post or the feed).
However, the duplicate posts won't have any negative impact on the syndication portion of the business model, so it doesn't matter.

If you're getting a lot of dupes, try using different feeds. Some seem to do it more often than others, but it's not a huge problem I've found. It's a known bug and hopefully they'll get it worked out in a later release. If not, maybe I'll pay a coder to fix it for me one day.

It could look weird if the point of this was to make a great unique classy blog. But it's not. I just want a mediocre but AUTOMATED system, so I take what I can get, and this is really, REALLY good for the investment of time (an hour) and money (none).

Okay, technically, not none. The domains cost like $6.

The traffic comes from all over. I've given that some thought too, and I know some guys that flat out don't believe in the duplicate content penalty at all. But here's some speculation on my non-technical part as to why if it IS a factor, why it's not keeping me from getting traffic.

For one, I think because it's constantly building backlinks in. If I ever STOPPED building the backlinks, my pages would fall out of the serps. However, that never happens, it just keeps building new links.

Another factor that's possibly mitigating the still-debated duplicate content filter is that the OTHER stuff I have on my pages (links to related posts, randomizing blog roll, random quotes plugin, etc.) may be enough to overcome it. That's just a guess.

Also, those links point to my gocodes, which re-direct to the affiliate offers. Those pages are NOT duplicate content, and my goCode links actually rank in the serps themselves (even though they are just redirects), and that's entirely because of the backlink building.

In some cases, instead of linking to affiliate sites with GoCodes, I'll make the backlinks point to a static page on the blog that has a squeeze or presell on it. Those pages end up ranking pretty well, though I've never deliberately tried to competatively rank for a specific phrase.

That's not to say I have killer Serps postions. I don't really (lots of them in the first 10 pages of results, but rarely any page 1s), but my logs say I get organic traffic, so I'm getting it somehow. Also, I've recently started using the "Uniquifier" plugin, which *seems* to be helping, but I'm not being scientific about testing it, and I did pretty good without it. I've barely used that one though, so maybe not.

Now, don't forget those links get published on other sites that are re-publishing RSS content it's not just me that does this. I get some traffic directly form those sites visitors clicking over.

Some of the blogs that get caught in my RSS net automatically credit me with a trackback when I link to them. That sends over traffic as well, as it kind of piggy-backs off whatever they're doing. When this happens is what I think really spikes up that PR.

See, though it gets some, this model isn't really just all about getting traffic. It's about the fact that these sites will grow their own PR automatically, and that means you can sell advertising, specifically text links. At that point, it's not about traffic anymore. That PR juice means you can give SERP boosts to OTHERS. That means a monthly income from the site no matter if it does well with traffic, or ads, or affiliate products. It can absolutely suck, and it can make money if it has PR.

Now, I didn't focus on that so much for this writeup, as most people here are still in the adsense/affiliate game. Personally, my stuff is shifting more towards selling ads directly and I want to do more flipping.

But even without that, it WILL make Adsense revenue, and it WILL make affiliate sales. I haven't set up a single one of these yet that doesn't turn a profit, especially considering that it's extremely fast and easy to set up, and once you do, you can just leave it alone and go do something else. I've gone a year now just doing adsense and affiliate stuff myself. How well that mix performs depends on the niche, but when you have 50 or 60 of these things, you're going to be doing pretty well with like, zero ongoing effort.

Set one up, then leave it alone for awhile, see what happens. I'm sure there's all kinds of things "wrong" with it from an SEO or whatever standpoint. However, it's not keeping it from being profitable, so I don't let that worry me.

Hm. Guess I never noticed because I already use FireFox. Good thing it's free!

Thank YOU. Here are your answers.

1. I don't really know. Google gives out PR and they don't really say how. I've heard the same thing said as well, but it happens, so... I mean, I really don't know what to say other than try it, and you'll see that it works. When you get a blog that gets some PR, link to other of your blogs from that one, etc. I guess there's things you "know" because that's what everyone says, or there's things that you "know" because you did it and it worked.

2. I use GoDaddy. I never got the unix cron working through their system, but if you turn that off and just let it auto update when someone visits, that works fine for me. Also, you wouldn't have to hit that button if you use the pseudo cron URL. Just bookmark it and click that instead of having to log in to manually fill it. At least that will save you a little trouble.

Anyway, hope that answers your questions. Let me know if I can clarify anything.

Right now, about 55 blogs are making around $1500 a month in affiliate sales and adsense/YPN. That's completely passive, just set it up and leave it alone. However, truth be told, that's only the top 10 or so making the most of that. That's why I hesitate to give out an average. Some of these make like, less than $10 a month (no good affiliate products), one of them makes almost $300 a month consistently (killer affiliate product w/backend). The key is not to think I need XX income, so therefore I need XX blogs. If you're going to go this route, you can't expect any particular outcome. They are ALL profitable, but the measure of profitability varies widely. It's easy to be profitable when all you need is $6 for a domain and an hour to set it up.

Now, $1500 a month isn't much by some measures. Whatever, it pays my house note, you know? Plus, I have a pretty well paying day job that takes long hours, and I really only mess with IM stuff as a hobby (though my day job is related). That's why it took me a year to make only 60 of these things, and I spent WAY more time messing with parts of it that have ZERO to do with making the method work (messing with themes and various vanity widgets and whatnot).

As I was telling someone in PM, I have two things going against me. One, I'm incredibly lazy. Two, I'm just one guy and I really don't feel like outsourcing. Because of that, I'm really limiting my growth/income. I can make one of these things literally, top to bottom in about an hour. If I were building these to flip, and I was crazy aggressive with selling them and selling advertising on my other VRE, I could be making 5 figures a month (or at least way more than I make now) but that would be a good deal more work. I also don't do a good job of going back and putting in more work on these after the initial setup. I tend to get a little bored and move onto the next one. If I bothered to measure and look at data to tweak things, I could be doing more as well.

But overall, it's a really flexible model. You can do a lot with it, and even if you don't do much beyond what I've outlined in the original post, you'll do very well, considering the cost of trying it. The more of these you make, the better you'll do. For someone with resources and time, this could be a huge business - particularly if you use it as a model for VRE/flipping (which I'm admittedly only getting started with).

P.S. I'm making another $1500 or so a month selling text link ads, but a guy I know brokers that for me, and he sells pretty much only to HIS customer list. I didn't include that in the total above, since I can't really say "Next step, find a buddy who can sell text link ads to his targeted list and split it with him." It's not really repeatable directly, but like I said, that gives you an idea of what you can do if you want to SELL on top of this platform and not just go for the lowest effort passive thing.

EDIT: I forgot to answer how many times a day I update - I go for once or twice daily, depending on how much content there is available. I don't worry so much about natural growth on my side. I tend to build up a lot of content very quickly, but what I trickle out is where I submit my RSS feeds. My list is up to the hundreds, and I'll do like 10 here, 10 there. But in addition to being lazy, I also suffer from poor project organization. I don't think I've ever finished putting a single site through EVERY submission yet. But as far as them growing organically, if you keep the number of post updates, it does grow pretty organically, but consistently. It's not like these content farms where you have a million pages overnight.

Oh man, I just had a total "DUH!" moment. For all you folks concerned about unique content, WP-O-Matic does synonym replacement. I happen to use it to replace words with linked versions of the same word, but you could stock it up with a bunch of standard synonyms and never worry about unique content problems.

Seriously, DUH! I can't believe I didn't think of that. Sorry guys!

If you have FTP access to your site and the .htaccess file isn't in the root directory, you may need to ask your host to help you. I know it's there, because it's how WordPress handles its permalink structure, all through .htaccess. Sorry I can't be of more help on that.

I never did the math, but it's pretty awesome when you think of it that way. Yes, a dollar per day per site is not an out-of-reach expectation if you choose niches where there is money being made. That's literally the only way you can fail is if you pick a niche that no one is publishing stuff about (you'd get no posts) and no one is selling anything (you wouldn't be able to find affiliate products, and no adsense ads would show).

In the plugin options when you set up a campaign, there's a tab where you set up the word replacement. You specify the target word, the word you want to replace it with, and the URL you want it to link to (optional).

I'll PM you since you obviously don't want to post here. I'd love to hear your ideas!

For anyone looking for a great theme for this purpose try "Flexibilty Theme".
Registration is required but the theme is free otherwise.
I was extremely pleased and with the theme and made a donation, always a good idea if you want the creators to keep on working.

Flexibility Theme for WordPress

Ken

That's great! Glad they were so accommodating. To submit your RSS feed, most of the sites you submit to will simply have a form to fill out - one of the fields will be fore your RSS link. Most templates will include a link to your blog's feeds in the navigation somewhere. It's usually located at yourblogURL.com/feed or something similar.

Yep. I think a lot of people are interested in some methods to work unique content into the feed based stuff, so I'm revisiting a couple of techniques I've used in the past so I can make sure they're still working. I'll include those in the inevitable report I'll be releasing.

I know, I know. It sounds cliche and I'm sure a bunch of folks will think this has been my plan all along. It hasn't. It barely took me ten minutes to write the first post. I never thought this method would be just what som many people need right now. Seriously, I went from 0 Private messages to 43, just because of this thread, and it's mostly people telling me to please make something because they will pay for more information, so who am I not to oblige? Gotta love this forum! People introduce themselves and then ask to give you money. Amazing!

But back to your question, I'm not sure what you're asking. Nofollow doesn't really enter into the standard setup and isn't required for it to work. The only time I've messed with using nofollow plugins (of which there are many, depending on what you're trying to do) is when you want to keep your page rank very tightly controlled by not spreading it to your categories or spreading it out to your external links. And even then, I'm not a master at that. It's kind of advanced SEO, and overall, I think that goes into the 80 part of the 80/20 Pareto Principle. I'm better off focusing on something else that will have more of an effect on profit than those minor tweaks. Your mileage may vary, but I wouldn't worry about it until you have enough backlinks coming in for it to make a difference.

And yes, the point of the GoCodes plugin in this method is partially to mask affiliate links, but it also serves to make sure all your link building points to a resource you control, and that has the double benefit of using your blog's main domain. That way, you can always change what those backlinks are redirecting to (if you want to change affiliate offers, for example) and not lose any of the backlinking benefit your blog has produced up to that point.

Make sense?

It depends on if you want pingbacks or not. Pingbacks are going to notify when you link to other blogs and sites that are equipped with pingback. If you want that to happen, then equip it. If you don't, then don't. I like having it on. Some people don't like to have it on when they repurpose content. Up to you.

I'll see what I can do as far as a WSO. As for if you have questions about the GoCodes, feel free to ask here, or PM me if you like. I'm happy to help!

Hell yes! I've been trying to find something like that. Thanks for the tip!

Yeah, you just get the feed URL and plug it into the WP-O-Matic. It'll repost the video embed automatically. I don't do this frequently, as I'm doing this for SEO automation and the videos don't do any. But I've seen it work, YMMV as I don't use it usually.

Hey man, you're welcome! Glad you'll be able to get some use out of it.

For #1, no, you can use any plugin that does this behavior. GoCodes is just the one I like. It's not really about the cloaking for me, it's that I'm not sending out hard-coded backlinks for an affiliate product that may tank. Using some plugin like this allows me to change the target and not lose the benefit of all the links I've already built. I'm not 100% on that plugin because I haven't used it (though I'll check it out), but in theory, it should work fine.

For #2, no. That's your WordPress cron file, not where you should put that. The code you have there needs to go in your unix cron configuration. If you don't know what that is, just deactivate the unix cron. It's pretty hardcore, and even though GoDaddy (my host) allows unix cron interaction, I haven't gotten WP-O-Matic to work with it. I'm not techie enough to troubleshoot it if it doesn't work on the first try.

Instead, I disable the unix cron and let WP-O-Matic do it itself. If you do this, it fires whenever someone visits the site. If you don't like relying on that method (if you have huge traffic, it can bog - I've never personally had an issue), you can bookmark the pseudo-cron url provided and just visit that as often as you'd like to update. That's just a single click, and no need to log in.

I'm currently investigating alternatives with some cron control plugins with WordPress so it can possibly be automated from the one site. However, it's very preliminary research.

Again, thanks for your interest in my process, and congratulations on buckling down and taking action. Good luck with your niche selection and I hope you achieve the success you deserve!

P.S. Remember, even if it doesn't make it big, the automated nature of the thing makes it an easy sell to flip.

When you submit your RSS feed URL to every place you can find to do so, your content will be spidered and syndicated, and re-published, much the same way we're gathering our own content with this method. Depending on how and where this happens, we'll begin to get trackbacks, backlinks, etc.

Sometimes, they'll even republish your entire piece of content, links intact. Which of course, is ideal.

How many you get, and how it happens will depend on the niche: how much content is generated, how many places republish that content, etc. etc.

If you're lazy (like me), you can stop there. It works okay.

Depends on what you want to do. If you're looking to flip these or sell text links, you can get ahold of lists of nofollow and high-PR places you can comment and try to get backlinks/trackbacks.

It's a little more hands-on, but not really rocket science. Just get a decent guide on link-building for SEO and do it.

Plus, when you see your stats and there are places giving you link love, you can go hands on and try a content trade, link swap with those sites.

That's if you're NOT lazy like I am. Does my method work? Yep. Does it work as good as if you'd actually done some link building too? No. But think of all the time you can spend building links when you don't have to worry about actually posting on the blog at all.

Brian, thanks for the comment. I'll check out Smart as well, but the reason I like WP-O-Matic is because of the built in replacement features. For example, the bbcode you're seeing could be repaired with WPOM's character replace. However, I'm looking for other methods to maybe mitigate that. I should at least have some options soon.

Good to hear about Utopia - it's in my list of stuff to test this weekend. I'll put it on the fast track and see if I feel comfortable recommending it myself. (Not that I don't believe you, but I just like to verify before I repeat something I only read on a forum. )

1. It depends. Different niches/keywords have different levels of content available. I like to build newsy sites, so I have lots of mini/micro posts from all over. If it's a keyword-based feed, I only use one per category typically. If I'm pulling from only a few niche serving blogs, I'll have a few per category depending on output.

2. It depends, and it depends. I know you want something more solid, but it's variable. Let's assume you do only what I recommend in the first post. Backlinks can happen for a couple of reasons. A. You repost something from a blog that has automatic trackbacks. B. Another site re-publishes your feed content. Now, whether A. happens depends on the configuration of the blogs/sites that create keyword ranked content. Whether B happens depends on how many sites will pick up/re publish your content. Neither of those things are within your control. That's why you build many sites around many topics and keywords to increase the likelihood of A, and why you submit your feeds to as many sites as possible to increase the likelihood of B.

PR is a measure of how relevant the rest of the web finds your content. Generally speaking, this is measured through the number of backlinks coming in, as well as the anchor text of those links. So you see, the rate and amount of PR you get is directly tied to how well you do at getting backlinks. Also be aware that Google does not update their public PR numbers more than once every 3 months or so. Depending on where you are in the cycle, you may see no change, and then suddenly you're PR4! Now even though the REPORTING of that score is delayed by months, your performance within Google's index is constantly updated. ACTUAL PR is different than the simple 0-9 scale Google decides to show us.

3. My sites range from PR0 to PR6. The PR0 ones are just not in productive niches. The irony is, this is probably where the greatest opportunity lies. It's a high demand, low supply niche. But because of that, there's a lack of content to feed my site. If I wanted to bother creating or commissioning content, I could own the whole market. But see above re: lazy.

Also, the one that's PR6 was built on top of a very old domain that I used to keep a *real* blog on. It had PR from before.

I'm actively trying to learn more about PR and nofollow for funneling, because it seems like with all the PR 3 and 4s I have, I should be able to really juice up the weaker blogs just by linking to them. I don't know enough to speak with authority on that, though.

Hope that answers your questions. Please let me know if you have more!

Thanks Keith. This is a great method to get a lot of blogs going and keeping them full of fresh posts. I was able to get gocode working. Tried another htaccess code and it works good.

Hi,

Thanks for the info! Most of the articles that I pull in from feed are half articles. I will try using rssmountain.

Thanks!

Thanks for the tip on RSSMountain! I bet people here will find that useful. Also try Content4Reprint if you want longer stuff. I just found them this week while researching more options for my method, and I bet you might be able to get something from them. Just make sure that if you're using long posts, do some synonym replacing with WP-O-Matic as well as link replacing. You want to get some originality in there for SERPS benefit, but personally, I also retain backlinks to the source, because it's only fair if I'm going to piggyback on their work. To each their own. Just keep an eye on those TOCs and Paul Meyers pointed out a page or so back.

Speaking of content remixing, I'm currently working with a couple of RSS aggregators that are external to WordPress. They would basically mash various feed entries into single, longer posts. At the same time, the programs I'm working with also mix up sentences and words and the like, so with some careful configuration, I see a lot of potential. I'll let you guys know if I get it working in a worthwhile way.

Awesome! Glad you got it figured out.

For GoCodes, be sure you follow the instructions. In addition to uploading the plugin files, activating, and configuring - you ALSO need to add a line of code to your .htaccess file. That's what the previous poster was talking about.

And a word of warning - you CAN create a buttload of posts in an instant with WP-O-Matic but my recommendation is to not go nuts. Just set up the site to grow steadily over time. That'll give you a better chance of long term indexing in the search engines. The other way, you run the risk of being ID'd as a junky site and dumped from the index if you grow too fast.

The idea here is to simulate a real organic blog - but rather than posting every day, you set up a set of automated rules to do it for you. You shouldn't go from 0 to 100 on the first day. Go from 0 to 1 first. Then start another blog. While you're getting that one from 0 to 1, the first one is taking itself from 1 to 2.

Make sense? Let me know if you need more specific help with the goCodes. Thanks for the reply!

Try this Allegro

Place the following code in your .htaccess file, above the line that says "# BEGIN WordPress":
RewriteEngine On
RewriteRule ^go/([A-Za-z0-9]+)/?$ /index.php?gocode=$1 [L,R]

This example assumes your blog is located at the root of your domain. If your blog is located at yourdomain.com/blog/, then you should change "/index.php" to "/blog/index.php".

This got my links working.

Yeah, that's actually when I got started doing auto-blogs. I guess it WAS a craze! Funnily enough, it DIDN'T work for me back then, but I was going for the "create as many pages as you can and plaster them with adsense" - needless to say, that method IS burned. I failed at it, and never did get it to work in any kind of niche (unless $20 for 6 months of work is a success).

The techniques I developed since then are less about blog spamming and RSS bombardment, and more about making a site that's admittedly mediocre, but simulates a real blog run by a human. I mean, I AM a human, but rather than posting day bay day, I consider it like I'm setting "rules" that allow the blog to do what I would do anyway. I just check in occasionally to make sure the instructions were specific enough so the site stays on track.

I focused less on AdSense and placing adblocks for maximum exposure. Instead, I build the sites to have unobtrusive ads, but plenty of congruent affiliate offers and products. I try to place my sites in niches where there is little competition from others like myself, and position myself as a nexus of information for that niche. Sort of like a one stop shop for all the "buzz" on that topic.

As for sharing my sites, I'm not currently in any niche where I'd readily invite competition. Obviously, looking at my technique, you can see how if I showed you my blogs, you'd know all the secrets I had to spend a lot of research and tweaking to discover - my keywords, my backlink sources, my markets, etc. You automatically discover these things on your own while using the method and trying different stuff - I'm not holding back anything of the method, I'm just keeping a few known successful values for the variables to myself.

Hope no one minds.

That being said, were I to sell this method as a product, I'd most likely create a sample site from scratch in order to demonstrate more specifically what it is I mean. I'm toying with the idea of following it all the way through and selling it on SitePoint, too, just to show the full range of possibility. Anyway, we'll see. I don't want anyone to think I'm promoting anything that doesn't even exist yet.

Until then though, I'll have to get by with using descriptions, as I don't have anything I'm willing to share at this point. Sorry about that.

That being said, if they're dead domains you aren't doing anything with, it's not like you have a high expectation of profit to meet. Give it a try. It'll take an hour or so to set up if you know your way around wordpress and have a general idea of your niche. What would it hurt? You're not doing anything on those sites anyway, so it could only help.

All my experience says it'll perform better than *nothing*.