Posts Tagged ‘autoblog blueprint’

Blog Blueprint – Is it worth it ?

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Blog Blueprint – Is it worth it ?

Since I comment on autoblogging on this site quite a bit I get comments asking me about the latest autoblogging products coming out (also I usually get comment spam from automated comment software that seeks sites with autoblog in the content, so i see the latest autoblog products being pushed).

The latest is Blog Blueprint is put out by John Katzenback who has a handful of other products geared towards internet marketing niche. The product is being released in a week and I don’t know much about them but I figured I would sign up for the free pdf. I haven’t seen the actual product/course yet but here is my initial impression.

The free 10 page pdf they send out as teaser for the course during pre-launch and it looks similar to stuff covered in Autoblog Blueprint. The plugins they mention in the pdf are good and also listed in Autoblog Blueprint. Kind of strange to see same ones listed as ABB since they are not all that common……

Then the pdf goes on to reveal the “Top 13 Autoblog Blunders”, such as:

  • Don’t be shady and do garbage autoblogs…….always season a site with unique content initially to get in good graces with Google and search engines. 
  • Focus on a niche, don’t try to cover something broad with high competition keywords.
  • Don’t over ping your site. Too much pinging will hurt not help your site.
  • Get backlinks to your internal site pages, not just your home page.
  • Interlink your pages. (ie- on this site you can see how I wrote a review on Autoblog Blueprint and then in some other posts I reference back to that Autoblog Blueprint post with the keyword anchor text(autoblog blueprint review) to give further strength to that original Autoblog Blueprint post. This is a key step in site development (ps- go google “Autoblog Blueprint Review” and see what the 1st listing is :) ) . Don’t over do it with 5 of the same links in 1 post all going to the same post or it won’t look natural to google or readers….You can use wordpress plugins that will autolink specific keywords you identify to turn them into links that go either to posts within your site or to external affiliate offers.
  • Track what pages/keywords are getting the most traffic and make those your money pages and drive your internal links to those pages(I wrote about this process briefly recently). Continue to add more related content/write articles to those top traffic keywords and optimize those.
  • Cloak your affiliate links…..You can use advanced plugins or simple plugins like Pretty Link to clean up your affiliate links to make them look nice. Also SEO friendly looking URL’s help your site so software that cleans up those product API URL’s is great like phpzon/phpbay,etc….Would you rather click on something that looks like: http://www.sdfsdgohohdvohoireg/12d578 or http://www.amazon.com/products/blue-soccer-cleats
  • Plugins to use..so many to choose from and some aren’t updated with latest wordpress installs and some conflict(create errors) on your site. This is one of the biggest time sucks of running wordpress or autoblogs is making sure all the plugins work and don’t overload your hosting since WordPress does suck up memory and can easily slow down a site or crash your hosting. In the Blog Blueprint they mentioned of the 11,500+ plugins out they identify a half dozen of the the 14 must have’s recommend. The ones they mentioned are all listed in Autoblog Blueprint.
  • Make sure your site gives the reader a call to action like “buy here” , “click to buy” “Buy now” ,etc…….
  • Don’t just leave an autoblog alone and never follow up on it(I am guilty of this when I was building WP Mage sites). It was dumb and I have lots of useless domains to show for it. If you spend the time to correctly set up a quality autoblog and write oringinal articles initially,etc…then once you drip in autocontent make sure you check in on it to check that the automation software is pulling relevant content for the site.
  • Don’t do auto backlinking with no plan(like a comment spam software)….Creating lots of garbage backlinks doesnt work anymore especially with the Google Mayday algorithm change earlier this year. You have to have relevant backlinks related to your site content and Autoblog Blueprint has the most sophisticated method/link tree method/backlink techniques for this.  To be honest ABB method is pretty daunting trying to do it exactly but Autoblog Blueprint has some awesome upcoming software/services and vendors that are going to help automate this. I would be curious what Blog Blueprint  will show for this step as backlinks is very crucial to any site now as google gets more sophisticated in its search. I am pretty excited for what Autoblog Blueprint 3.0 has in store soon.
  • Don’t ignore on page optimization for your site. (My tip – If you use Firefox browser go download the free SEO Doctor add-on and it will give you instant SEO score for any page you look up and you can see the criteria that is used to ranking on page SEO)

So those are the top tips in the free PDF I got. I don’t disagree with the content in it but it personally looked like a repackage of content in Autoblog Blueprint 1.0. It will be interesting to see what other components of the Blog Blueprint will be offered as I know there are additional upsells to the initial product. I will be interested to hear/read from those that end of buying Blog Blueprint but nothing I saw in the pdf was new to me since the release of Autoblog Blueprint earlier this year.

I still think Autoblog Blueprint 2.0 is the best product/resource for anyone looking to monetize wordpress sites and/or autoblogs, but I guess we will see with is revealed in the Blug Blueprint course. You can read my past post on it.

Posted in Products, Reviews Tags: , , , , No Comments »

Autoblogging Ethical

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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: , , , 6 Comments »

WordPress Plugins I like

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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: , , , No Comments »

Affiliate Marketing – Newbie Product Overload

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Affiliate Marketing – Newbie Product Overload

I think anyone who get into internet marketing ends up signing up to “guru” mailing lists, reading product reviews, constantly seeing new information products claiming how to make a living on the internet with some “secret” method that the guru is willing to share with you,etc…….

It really is overwhelming how many products are constantly added to the market geared towards affiliate/internet marketing, but I think the longer you do this the more you realize most are just rehashing past products or rearranging the same information. I definitely still read good affiliate marketing blogs and see what is new to the industry but the more I learn the more I realize that the best way to start in internet marketing is to just start doing. Pick a method whether it be Autoblogging, PPC, PPV, Media Buying, Niche Site building,etc…and just focus on it. When you hit a roadblock then start looking around for the answer but you have to figure out what works and doesn’t work.

Some products I admit though are worth buying as they do an excellent job providing excellent information that would take lots of time and even money figuring out on your own and I try to mention on this site the ones I think do just that, like Autoblog Blueprint for autoblogging and Rogue Marketing for media buying. There are some excellent internet marketing blogs (visit www.affbuzz.com for list of lots of them) that you can find valuable information on, but dont spend endless hours reading forums,etc…..Pick a method and just start. Trust me my 1st autoblogs look like crap now that I see them vs. the ones I build now.

If you are looking for quick internet riches with little work then you are bound to be dissapointed. I like to read occasional interviews with successful affiliates(many are which are still in early 20′s) and the common theme among all of them is that they work very hard. If you get frustrated, then don’t just keep hopping from one method to another everytime you read a sales page for some new product that promises to teach you all the secrets,etc…..expect to suffer setbacks and expect to be frustrated trying to figure out why your banner or text ad isnt getting clicks or your wordpress plugins aren’t working together correctly, or you are having hosting problems,etc….

Understand that all the gurus started as newbies and most worked hard until something just clicked and they had their 1st profitable PPC campaign or the right keywords for a niche site,etc……just keep working and realize that I get frustrated everyday(lately it’s trying to get my media buys to convert better) but if there are 20 year olds out there making a killing then I can too……(I’m a ripe 34 y/o, which seems to be old for affiliate marketers….lol)

Posted in Affiliate Tips Tags: , , , , 1 Comment »

WP Mage – An Honest Review

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WP Mage – An Honest, Unbiased Review



Editor Note: My opinion on WP Mage has change since first writing this post back in early 2010. Make sure to view/read comments at bottom as that is where updates/views are being added since this post was originally written(7/4/2011 Mage Monster[see my post] is update to WP Mage but everything below is still relevant as WP Mage plugins/method is still the core of Mage Monster)  :

I noticed recently that WP Mage is for sale again as it has been closed to new users for a few months and I figured I would write this post since there are some people looking for an honest review of the WP Mage software that isn’t being pushed with an affiliate link. WP Mage is an autoblogging set of plugins for creating autoblogs that also offers some additional tools like keyword generator for products and expired domain search,etc….

I am not sure what the latest price is for Mage but last I heard it was $1,000. I know it is being pushed by super affiliates as push button solution for creating autoblogs with little to no work and that the creator generates $10,000 a month doing it.

First off, what is WP Mage: it is a set up plugins and resources that allow you to quickly create a wordpress website with content and affiliate products. WP Mage consists of the following: (editor note – read my long 11/12/10 comment at bottom of this post regarding my views on these specific Mage tools/plugins)

Plugins/Software:

  • CP Mage – an autoinstaller that allows you to add/delete sites quickly and control all of them from one place.
  • Content Mage – brings in articles, yahoo answers, youtube and flickr photos.
  • Affiliate Mage – posts affiliate products from Commission Junction, Ebay, Amazon, and Chitaka, and Linkshare.
  • Posting Mage – Allows you to create the layout for posts including ability to use custom templates for post and add/change to existing posts.
  • Sitemap Mage – Creates sitemap with list of all pages
  • Link Mage – Will automatically generate a database of links to internal pages, and insert cross links into every post.

Other features included:

  • Index Mage – list of free sites that allows you to submit your site to quickly for improving chances of getting indexed quickly.
  • Domain Mage – pulls data from GoDaddy regarding expired domains and their backlinks/age/pagerank
  • Keyword Tools: Keyword Mage scrapes ebay auction keywords for a category to create posts & Word Mage will generate keywords from scraping Amazon/Google products

So onto my review………I have been using WP Mage since November 2009. I have built over 100 sites with Mage and know the product very well. I will agree that the software does a good job of creating automated content, wordpress site setup, and affiliate product integration. Relative to most autoblog content plugins/tools, WP Mage is one of the better ones.

The negative on the WP Mage is that like most affiliate products…..the actual results from the product don’t necessarily live up to the hype. It is a great tool for really helping someone that is new to autoblogging to figure everything out but don’t expect to be making $10,000 a month anytime soon. The forums for WP Mage is quite active so many user share their results from using the product and some of the 1st mage users(so they have been using it for over 6months) that are considered “successful” generate maybe $5,000 a month from over 400 sites. I would say that $5,000 a month from Mage sites is the RARITY and definitely NOT the norm. (7/12/10 Note – I recently saw a post from one of the first mage users who I thought was doing well and she is only making $2,000 for 450 sites using WP Mage, although she is following the spray and pray method of blasting out tons of sites. )

I know that the sales videos for WP Mage show that “bad sites” just generate $30 a month in adsense or something but I can say that feedback from myself and many users on the forums that most of your sites will generate no where near $30 a month per site…..

I think the main flaw in WP Mage system is that is focused around blasting out sites with little to no work on SEO/Backlinking/site setup……Essentially the Mage method is more Spray and Pray type of blasting out hundreds of sites and hoping they work. Personally I have not experienced any success with the Spray and Pray method except to have a lot of sites with no traffic and thousands of indexed pages in google just sucking up hard drive space on my hosting accounts. Just because your sites have thousands of indexed pages doesn’t mean you will get loads of traffic.

So WP Mage is great for creating a nice looking autoblog that allows you to mix around the content with affiliate products due to their templating system but you still need to think out your site with proper SEO,backlinking,etc…..to get the traffic to it.

I think that anyone interested in being successful in Autoblogging really needs to have a more organized approach to creating a viable website with proper setup and optimization. That is why I have recommended everyone who is interested in Autobloging or even just WordPress site creation should get Autoblog Blue Print. Here is my review on Autoblog Blueprint . Mike the creator(and very successful autoblogger who does over $40,000/month) of Autoblog Blueprint uses WP Mage as one of his tools and likes WP Mage, but also points out the flaws in Spray & Pray method of creating sites.

The other topic worth mentioning about WP Mage is that the majority of the income from Mage users sites that are making much(including the creator of Mage) is from Ebay Partner Network(EPN). I think that is a big shock to most new WP Mage users because they get the Mage  product and then realize that Mage is really most successful for people who are creating EPN based sites. Unfortunately EPN is notoriously difficult to get into and very random at arbitrarily closing down EPN affiliates on a whim. I personally make more from Amazon and other affiliate networks than I do with EPN.

Autoblogging takes work and lots of learning. I think most people would be better off getting Autoblog Blueprint to learn a more complete roadmap for being successful at autoblogging and to see if autoblogging is the right method for them. There are so many great autobloging tools and software that is constantly coming on to the market and WP Mage is just one of them.

Also don’t expect to see much if any results from your Mage built sites within the first months so not sure how helpful the 30day guarantee is for WP Mage.

Anyways, if you are confused and constantly comparing/reading about all the different autoblogging tools then just get Auto Blog Blueprint first. WP Mage is a good software but it not the end all be all to autoblogging.

I bet this is the only review of WP Mage on the web that isn’t done with lots of WP Mage affiliate links……lol…….because WP Mage commission is BIG !!!

7/12/10 Update – I saw WP Mage is being pushed again by Epic Traffic guys and I honestly will say that you should NOT buy WP Mage if you are just starting out. Knowing what I know now about WP Mage and autoblogging,etc….I would first buy and absorb everything in Autoblog Blueprint (see my post on ABB 2.0) and then go from there.

For example something I have learned in Autoblog Blueprint after using WP Mage for a while is that while WP Mage provides you with an auto installer called CP Mage that works as a dashboard to control your sites and makes it easy to install new sites……the problem is is installs the sites as add-on & subdomains and links your sites and can make it difficult to move sites around when they are attached to that CPMage install.  I could go on an on about these things but essentially you should just get Autoblog Blueprint first and learn the right way for building out autoblogs. If you want a decent plugin that delivers much of the same content as WP Mage then get WP Robot for a lot less and use the savings to get other useful autoblog tools for building traffic to your site, plugins for creating review sites, etc…..

11/2/10 – I thought I would follow up on this post as autoblog continues to evolve and there are an enormous amount of new autoblog products constantly coming to market like Blog Blueprint (not to be confused with Autoblog Blueprint) but I still stand by my comments above that autoblogs have to be well thought out sites that need to look “real” to visitors and have some initial unique content and some decent backlinks which is NOT the Mage method. Auto Blog Blueprint is still tops in my opinion for best autoblogging and overall wordpress site building out there. The Autoblog Blueprint forums are my main source for staying up on changes in software, new techniques, product discounts, and everything involving autoblog methods. There is a new version that will come out soon as Mike(the creator) continues to refine his strategy and shows what works for building powerful sites for the long term (not garbage spam looking sites that eventually get deindexed by google). Regarding WP Mage lately, I don’t find the questions or content to be very informative and really just use the Mage plugins and that is it.

11/11/10 update: The amount of software that keeps coming out for autoblogging and automation is great and I think WP Robot will meet your needs instead of WP Mage especially for the price difference. Mage main plugins are Affiliate Mage, Content Mage and Posting Mage(there are some other plugins like link mage and index mage that aren’t as great as other free alternative plugins so I don’t use those Mage plugins). These plugins work well but I really only use content mage and posting mage. Affiliate mage isn’t great for amazon or ebay product feeds so I use phpzon/reviewazon for amazon products and phpbay for ebay. Also, I am kind of disgruntled in the way that Greg(Mage creator) just constantly recommends all the latest products on Mage users. Some of the products are downright crap(I’ve mentioned some on here before) and I think he has lost his credibility as trustworthy vs. someone like Mike at Autoblog Blueprint who will tell you if something is crap and continually turns down promoting products(with big payouts) if they are inferior or not in the best interest of his members.

3/14/2011 : With the recent and contined changes in Google’s Search algorithem I think you would be wasting your time following the WP Mage method of blasting out sites. That method is becoming obsolete. Honestly you need to learn an effective method for how to build an autoblog first before buying all the software or your will end up with worthless non-ranking sites. WP Mage plugins are decent but WP Robot over the last year

SUMMARY:

  1. Look at Autoblog Blueprint to show you what to do and provide a complete understanding of what to do. ABB also provides the best quality forum to answer all your questions and free upgrades.
  2. Then you can get your content/monetization plugins like WP Robot.
  3. Then use the additional savings(from not buying WP Mage) you can cover your hosting costs,buy  traffic tools/services, outsource article writing, or buy some expired domains.
Posted in Misc, Products, Reviews Tags: , , , , , , 30 Comments »
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