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Successful Autoblogging

February 1st, 2011

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Successful Autoblogging

One thing about internet marketing is that is evolves quickly. There are tons of techniques, products, new software focused on the latest traffic source, hot technique, latest trick,etc…

If the area of internet marketing that you decide to focus on is creating websites for organic traffic while using some type of automation then you are lumped into the category of “Autoblogging”. Autoblogging can vary depending on what you decide to automate whether using automation software for complete site creation and content generation or just using some software to automate time consuming tasks like distributing your written content to other social and article sites.

There are all degress of automation that can be used but as time goes on and as google and internet shoppers become more savy you will have to adapt or be lost in the graveyard of crappy autoblog sites out there. Yes, you can still get ranked on page 1 sometimes for longtail search phrase with an autoblog….but the ability to last on page 1 is becoming tougher and tougher.

Google is on the mission to improve its search results to get rid of low quality, affiliate sites so they have been constantly evolving their search algorithem to give a higher weighting to sites with unique content and quality backlinks. Just last year they implemented their “Mayday” change that caused a lot of autoblog sites that had thousands of pages all targeting very longtail search phrases being dropped from their page 1 rankings. Most of those sites had poor content and little to no backlinks.

As significance of having backlinks became more relevant last year, autobloggers(and products for autoblogging) started rolling out blog farms, and article networks generate backlinks for their sites. A popular method was creating thousands of sites at WPMU(WordPress Multi User) that would create links back to your money sites. All these blog farms,etc…..are the latest target of Google and you can be assured that autobloggers that are sloppy will get caught.

It’s not that you cant make money having thousands of automated niche websites but its getting harder to do and some autobloggers are seeing more of their sites all the sudden removed from page 1 or 2 rankings. That is why I have continued to recommend Autoblog Blueprint as the best course and information source for people that are serious about creating lasting autoblogs. There are lots of autoblog courses that claim push button ease but those sites aren’t generally long lasting.

Autoblog Blueprint 3.0 is coming out in a week after a lots of testing on what works now and will provide members with the latest methods and best practices for creating last sites. If its anything like Autoblog Blueprint 1.0 and 2.0 then expect it to overdeliver.

The other development in autoblogging to be wary of is using copyrighted material. There are lots of plugins that are pulling RSS feeds but pulling the full feeds instead of the intended partial feed/post that was provided creates issues. Some content providers like online newspapers are suing site owners and internet marketers for using that content. The use of RSS feeds is something that people should read up on if using that content. The popular autoblog information sources like PLR, article directories, yahoo answers, flickr, youtube,etc…..are all OK to use as long as you follow their terms.

Realize though that slapping out sites with those same content sources that ever other autoblogger is using is pretty tough to get quality ranks so its important to differentiate your sites by having a good understanding and foundation for proper site creation, how to mix content sources for unique layouts, and how to stay ranked in google. There is still a lot of push button, all hype products out there so I hope that reading this post will help save you the time, money, and frustration from going down that path. If you want to read more about Google’s focus on weeding out garbage sites, read their Blog post from Google’s head search guru Matt Cutts

If you want to learn how to create quality sites with automation then go with Autoblog Blueprint 3.0. (I’ve written about Autoblog Blueprint 1.0(see post) & 2.0(see post) in the past.

I have also heard some good recommendation on the methods used in Easy Paycheck Formula which I will probably purchase to learn the process she follows (although I am wary of using the simple 1 post mini sites shown in the promotional videos as google will get you eventually with those minisites. The product was recommended by some internet marketers I have respect for and seems like a great resource for beginner internet marketers and even experienced).

Posted in Affiliate Tips

Tags: autoblog blueprint 3.0, autoblog blueprint 3.0 review, autoblogging lessons, easy paycheck formula, successful autoblogging

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No Website Page 1 rank

December 14th, 2010

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Page 1 Ranking with No Website

Here is a quick technique for getting ranked on page 1 of google with no website and no hosting. I will just give you the basics and let you run with it. I personally have tried this and I did get page 1 ranks for my keyword phrases I tried but haven’t really spent time optimizing it.

Essentially what you do is:

Find a search phrase that get decent searches/day but not too competitive(like 1000+searches/month). Then enter that keyword phrase into google and add the local area name to your phrase. For example, find an auto insurance lead gen offer from a CPA network. Then find a lower competition keyword phrase like moped insurance(then add San Francisco Moped Insurance to see the # of sites/pages listed….the lower the # obviously the better and look at the page 1 results to see how competitive/high page rank those results are). If not too bad then that go with that search.
Go buy a domain for as low as $0.99 and I would try for a related domain name to the offer so people are more likely to click on it. Then if you have no hosting you can just add subdomains to that main domain for each offer you are doing like if domain is www.insurance-comparisons.com then add a subdomain within your domain manager to be something like www.mopeds.insurance-comparisons.com. When you add that subdomain you have the option of where to direct that subdomain(enter the affiliate offer url). You can then keep adding new subdomains for each offer if you like. If you have hosting then just have the DNS for that domain direct to your hosting account and set up php redirect files within your public_html folder within your cpanel/file manager program for that domain for each offer you are doing. So for mopeds you would just open a text tile(saved as keyword name like “moped.php” ) Within, the text file(called moped.php) you would enter and save your redirect url to your offer like

<?php

header(“Location: http://www.affiliatelink.com/?sub=”.stripslashes($_GET['sub']));

?>

Now when people type in www.insurance-comparisons.com/moped.php they will get redirected into your affiliate offer url you entered above.

Next, go create an ad at craigslist or backpage.com or similar site for that specific area within services section(example San Francisco) with the headline matching your keyword phrase “San Francisco Moped insurance – Compare & Save !” Then have some text with your ad. You can use an ad creative from the ad network or create your own with an image program. Make sure to have the keyword phrase again in top of you ad. You goal with uses these sites is not to get traffic from people searching something in craigslist but because google gives high relevancy to these ads from these sites in their local searches(just like when you see ebay ads at the top of a search result for a product search).

It is free traffic and for the right offer and keywords you can get decent traffic with a page 1 rank. That is the quick and dirty version of how to do it but you can expand on this for local businesses, paypercall, building a email list, generating traffic to local directories that you get paid on for local businesses ot list on,etc……

To be honest I have been distracted with other stuff and havent had time to work this more but would like to hear any feedback. I works better for lead generation type offers vs. info products like clickbank ,etc…Also make sure the offers you run would allow this type of quasi direct linking as even though it’s web traffic/organic search coming to your offer, you don’t really have website that the ads are being placed on which some offers require(more of the big name brands).

Posted in Affiliate Tips

Tags: internet marketing tip, local search ads, organic search no website, page 1 rank

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Favorite Firefox Add-ons

November 4th, 2010

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Favorite Firefox Add-Ons

If you aren’t using Mozilla Firefox as your internet browser then all I can say is….WHY ? Personally nothing even compares to firefox when it comes to security, stability and functionality. There are thousands of add-on, plugins and extensions that you can download for free for using with firefox. Below are the ones I am using right now. I am sure there are more that I missed or haven’t had time to try so please add any you like to the comments on this post.

To download any of these free add-ons just to go Firefox Add-on site and do a quick search.

SEO Doctor – will show a page SEO score for whatever url you have open at the time. Key add-on if you have websites to quickly show you a 1-100 score of how your site is optimized for that page.
Colorzilla - Allows you to right-click with mouse and find the color of the webpage you are visiting wherever you click. Great for people like me that are not good at design and if you find a site color scheme you like you can quickly get the color code. Awesome tool.
SEO Quake toolbar - Very popular toolbar for show all the key details about a website you looking at regarding Meta tags/keywords/backlinks/pagerank/alexa,etc….the list goes on……I mostly use it when I do a google search it will show the ranks for every site listed in the google search results page to give me an idea of how competitive the search keyword is used are to rank for…..if i see a list of all high pagerank sites with thousands of backlinks it quickly shows I should move on.
NoDoFollow – With a quick right click of mouse will show you what every link on a page is do follow or no follow. Useful to see if you can get backlink from a site of so make sure you own site settings are correct. Red for nofollow, and light blue for dofollow.
Fireform – will save your form settings if you are signing up at lots of sites like social networking sites if building a new profile for ping.fm,etc…..a quick click will autofill all your registration details for each site you go to sign up. pretty big time saver tool.
Lastpass - for saving all your passwords/logins and for generating unique password for you. A major time saver
Screengrab - quickly capture an image of you screen for the area you select. Faster than having to open up a different screen capture program.
SEO Blogger - will give you a list of alternative keywords and synonyms along with # of searches from wordtracker keyword tool. Useful when you are trying to come up with new words,etc…
SEO Toolbar – a popular toolbar for providing lots of information about any url you visit. Much of the same data that SEO quake provides. I use it sporadically.

Those are the main ones. I have other ones installed that only use sometimes like Amazon S3,etc…. Hope you find some of these useful

Posted in Affiliate Tips

Tags: favorite firefox add-ons, firefox add-ons

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Autoblogging Ethical

October 6th, 2010

admin

Is Autoblogging Ethical ?

I just thought this would be a funny post to write because when I was looking through the search terms that people used to find this site today and one of them was “Autoblogging Ethical” and I just thought it was worth writing about.

I think many people get into autoblogging via a guru mailing list touting a hot, new push button software that creates dozens of sites a day with no work. That is what I thought when I got into autoblogging (via WP Mage) but soon learned that google and internet users now are becoming more sophisticated with their web searches and creating a garbage site is just going to be a waste of a domain name in the long run.

Understand that autoblogging is a general term for site automation. Yes, you can create a good site and use automation software to keep the site going. I mean look at all the news aggregator sites like msn.com or yahoo.com, most of their content is from associated press or 3rd party news organizations but it doesnt hurt their rankings,etc…having all that duplicate content,etc……

Essentially the best way to go about creating autoblog sites is to create a clean looking site that is useful to a the visitor and will anwser their questions. Your goal is to create some “money pages” comprised of unique content that you created and focused on the keywords that your domain and website is based on. Then use automation software to pull additional related content with similar keywords to “drip” in future posts so your site is getting fresh content.

As your site grows you can use automated tools to create backlinks to your site and link your site’s internal pages to focus on a specific related offer/product, ideally directing your visitors to your main “money” pages………For example if you do a site on HD Cameras then you main keywords are all about HD Camera(obviously you did keyword research to find less searched related keyword phrases that you can actually rank for and don’t try to actually rank for HD Camera).

You write some reviews on the best HD Cameras(you can paraphrase content from websites or user testimonials from amazon) and make those your money pages with your site pulling product feeds from places like Ebay or Amazon or Overstock,etc….showing the products your review is about. Then you have your website drip feed in future posts related to HD Camera like buyer articles, what to look for, understanding differences,etc…..stuff you would personally find useful.

Then you just let the site run and track what pages are most visited. You write some articles for article directories and then automate your backlinking process,etc…..After a little while you will see where the traffic is going and you can then add text links or sidebar links(ie- Most Popular Posts) directing traffic to your most popular pages.

That example is a simplified summary of the autoblog process but it works.

Anyways, back to autoblogging ethical ? Well we aren’t making up stuff with fake testimonials/claims/results. We are just consolidating information and repackaging it for the reader. As long as you cite sources and dont plagiarize information then you should be fine.

So if you decide that you actually want to have long term success with creating quality autoblogs, then Autoblog Blueprint is a must have resource as the information provided there and the active forums is invaluable for creating successful autoblogs(or websites), how to get traffic to it, keyword research, reviews/discussion on every automation tool imaginable, and honest/hype-free discussion of what works in building autoblogs.

Be prepared to work though in order to be successful at autoblogs (despite what the guru sales pages claim of push-button ease. I tried that route and it doesn’t work in the long run.)

PS – The one thing that I think is UNETHICAL is comment spam…….I f$%in hate comment span. I delete thousands of crappy comments that are obvious random spin syntax comment span programs that dont make sense to generate a backlink to their site……yes, I know that they might work but I will never do comment spam to get backlinks….all they do is suck up server resources…….end of rant !

Posted in Affiliate Tips

Tags: autoblog, autoblog blueprint, autoblog lessons, autoblogging ethical

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WordPress Plugins I like

September 25th, 2010

admin

WordPress Plugins I like

I think anyone who starts using wordpress gets overwhelmed by the amazing number of quality and “cool” plugins that are available for wordpress. It is easy to go overboard and have too many plugins running and kill your hosting. WordPress is a memory hog for servers(especially shared hosting) and too many plugins can cause the site to run incorrectly or crash, so it takes testing, and trial& error to see what works.

I honestly was pretty overwhelmed when I first started building wordpress sites and soon realized that while many plugins are “cool” you really don’t need that many. Also with the constant updates of wordpress and number free plugins that become outdated/no longer supported, it helps to have a resource to look at for what plugins work best.

Many wordpress users follow Yoast.com for wordpress info(especially for speeding up websites) but I personally like just following feedback/testing done within Autoblog Blueprint(see my post on it) since they have tested/tried most plugins out there that work well for autoblogs or large sites(like database sites).

Realize that some plugins will crash your sites for large sites like related-posts plugins such as YARP(yet another related post) plugin which is great but not for large sites. Also, some plugins might be good for sites you manually create every post but awful for autoblogs.

Anyways, below are some free WordPress plugins I like that are stable, well tested, handle large sites, and generally don’t conflict with other plugins.

GD Press Tools – for managing your site and some great security features
Cbnet Ping Optimizer – keeps you from overpinging (can get your site banned if you overping)
All-in-one SEO (or use “Platinum SEO”) – essential for making your posts/site search engine optimized
Simple Tags – essential plugin for adding tags to your posts
WP Mobile Pack - for making your site optimized for mobile/smart phone internet users
Google XML sitemap plugin – generates sitemap for google/search engine bots to crawl your site/get indexed
Robots.txt plugin – essential for telling what pages you want search engines to index
W3 Total Cache – caches your pages so that it makes your site much faster(I used to use WP Super Cache Plugin but W3 is better)
Askimet (or WP Spam Free) – to control spam (although I get a lot more spam with WP spam free ?)
Sabre – for adding CATCHA functions/limits bots and spam

Those are the base ones I could think of…….there are more I use like Pretty link(makes links “pretty”, Redirection for redirecting old/deleted posts, Server Buddy to check software/configurations, etc…

If you havent checked out Autoblog Blueprint it is very good for explaining all those plugins and many more(especially for creating auto content and explaining plugins for monetizing your site with ads/ebay/amazon/adsense,etc….) Also, Autoblog Blueprint has the wordpress base install with plugins always updated together in a new install file so you can quickly upload/create a new site without having to manually add/configure lots of plugins.

Hope this helped. It can take hours searching through the thousands of plugins so hopefully this post at least gives you some basics to have.

I will add updates below as I add/change plugins:

10/3/10 – I had to dump the twitter plugin I was using that would automatically tweet my posts….I was using WordTwit but I stopped being able to access my account so I assume the plugin hasnt been updated to work with recent Twitter API code…….Also I tried Twitter Tools but the setup looked to time consuming so I finally went with WordTwit for my twitter automation(created by same people who created WPTouch plugin which is now the mobile plugin I will use )

Posted in Affiliate Tips, Misc

Tags: autoblog blueprint, autoblog setup, best wordpress plugins, wordpress plugins

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