AutoBlog
After you have decided that building an autoblog is the thing to do, and now you have a good idea of several ways you can monetize your autoblog . . . the next step is how to generate your content without lifting your finger . . . or lifting it very little.
Again, I am going to assume that you are using Wordpress as your base. Truly I don’t know why anyone would want to use anything else, but that will be another post for another time.
Now since you’re using the words most popular blog option you have a mini arsenal at your finger tips to drive tons of automated content to your autoblog. As you will see below there is no shortage of software, plugins, and websites that have various solutions that can help you achieve your goal of automated content with Wordpress.
My Personal Favorites:
**Update Nov. 24th, 2009**
http://www.metafever.com/free-wordpress-autoblog-plugin.html <<< Read About My New Favorite
http://www.wpArticleFetch.com <<< Go to my new favorite
www.UltimateContentFetcher.com
Ultimate Content Fetcher is a great plugin that I use personally on each autoblog that I build. The primary reason I use this plugin is because it pulls full articles (not short snippets) based on keywords and then route the articles to various categories. It does cost $45, but it’s a bargain in my opinion.
In addition users of ultimate content fetcher can include a Yahoo API key to fetch yahoo answers which will be added as comments and also a flickr.com API key to grab photographs.
If there are concerns over duplicate content, keep in mind that every single article directory contains vast amounts of duplicate content. On top of that the software also has a great translation tool which can help take care of any fears of duplicate content . . .
The only downside to this plugin is that it’s not 100% automated . . . you will have to specify a date far into the future (typically I go out to 1 year).
Lunatic Studios produces some VERY nice software. From time to time I will include one of their plugins to enhance my autoblogs, or instance if I want to add EPN or Amazon products as a part of my monetization strategy.
What makes Lunatic Studios special is that they offer several different types of automated content plugins. Their software can be used to target Amazon, EPN, articles, and Yahoo Answers.
Each of their plugins come with a free version that will limit you to the number of keywords you can include and a bit of the more advanced functionality, but if you are looking for a VERY good and low cost alternative to some of the more expensive plugins you will defiantly want to check out their software.
Others Automated Content Systems:
Now my honest opinion is that www.wpAnswers.net is not all it’s cracked up to be and there is a lot of lower cost alternatives. However it is a great product and wpAnswers.net will do exactly what Neil claims it to do.
THE REAL GEM that Neil produces is www.wpVideoTube.com, this handy little plugin can drip Youtube.com videos to your blog based on relevant keywords. This is one item that can add a ton of value to your blog and increase traffic almost overnight.
I prefer to use wpVideoTube.com in conjunction with a few other plugins to create a look and feel of quality.
I have used Syndicate Kahuna in the past and it works well. You can add all of the sites in your blog farm and since works more like a blog farm co-op you are not only the recipient but you are giving something back to fellow marketers.
The main reason I choose to not use Syndicate Kahuna is the content that is dripped into your blog will contain a ton of back links to other sites. Now you are welcome to manually remove these links, but I prefer to build my blog farms for my own benefit and keep all the link juice.
www.ArticleMarketingAutomation.com
Article Marketing Automation is essentially the same as Syndicate Kahuna; I have used this service and also rejected it as my primary method for obtaining automated content.
One main reason you might choose to use Syndicate Kahuna and Article Marketing Automation is that they are free. So it’s very easy to get up and running.
Both Synidcate and AMA are 100% automated. . . (one big plus to each).
FREE Plugins (in the Wordpress.org Directory)
Wp-O-Matic
This is a great automatic RSS scraper. It’s easy to use, just search the internet and look for RSS feeds from other sites that relate to your Niche. One nifty thing that wp-o-matic can do is turn your keywords into clickable affiliate links. The truth is (at least on my opinion) is that wp-o-matic takes too long to set up for a truly optimized autoblog. The idea is to set up sites quick and nimble and this just takes a bit too much time. One big problem of wp-o-matic is that unless you have full RSS feeds to scrape you will be relegated to the partial RSS feeds that most sites will provide by default. Check the end of this guide and I am going to discuss some tips / tricks / hacks and I will show you how to turn a partial RSS into a full RSS.
Yaab
Also available in the wordpress.org plugin directory it is yet one more solution out there. Unfortunately for Yabb and me, I only installed it and checked it out after I was well into my autoblog and blog farm network production.
To me it looked like just one more plugin that was out there and thus its name also implies (yet another auto blog).
So I honestly don’t know enough about this particular plugin to really comment on it, but I did want to include it in this list.
Plugins That Are Out There, That I Have Not Tried:
www.autoblogged.com – Premium plugin, I emailed their support once and it took them 4 – 5 days to respond to a simple question about a turning a short RSS into a full RSS (it didn’t include this feature) so I decided not to buy based on their support time and lack of this one feature.
http://autocontent.wordpresszone.com – its $57, and I just had to much going to test / install another autoblog / auto content plugin.
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/feedwordpress – this one is free and in the Wordpress.org directory, I have every intention of testing it, but as I write this guide, I have not tested it yet so I can’t really comment on how good or bad it is.
http://kansieo.com/ – Caffeinated Content for Wordpress – this is a premium plugin I never did buy it, but a lot of people swear by it. Perhaps one day, I will make time and give it a whirl.
Caffeinated Content is by far the best. It’s actually unbelievable…
Trouble with Caffinated Content is it is now been left to die. They have given up on it.
(UCF) is one of the best now. I bought it an use it on several blogs.
I believe the owner will be updating in the future as well
Fantastic set of articles on AutoBlogs. Bookmarked it as this will be my bible hereonin. Thanks!
One other thing. Under the wp-o-matic section, you mentioned;
“Check the end of this guide and I am going to discuss some tips / tricks / hacks and I will show you how to turn a partial RSS into a full RSS.”
I checked Part 4 of the guide and can’t find the tips to turn a partial RSS into a full RSS.
I am still working on the last post (Part 5 will be the final article in the autoblog / blog farm series) . . .
Great! Looking forward to it.