Saturday, 19 December 2009
autoblogging for dummies
GUIDE) Autoblogging for Dummies - my perspective for beginners
WARNING: HUGE WALL OF TEXT INCOMING
Ok first off; a thank you to all the autoblog pioneers here on BHW for sharing the required information in order for us to start autoblogging. Cheers!
I'm starting this thread to guide beginners and let others know that autoblogging can be a success (how small it may be), it might even be your next first income if you do it on a large scale. This thread is for BHW only and I haven't pulled it off any website, it's just my own two to three weeks experience.
Secondly I really advice DeathRequest's stickied thread for all the resources you need for autoblogging:
http://www.blackhatworld.com/blackha...resources.html
Seriously you don't need to buy any eBook whatsoever; all the information is already given on the internet and here on BHW. (no pun intended to those selling eBooks, just pointing that out for beginners before they waste their money and give up before even starting). The only thing you should know before starting is how to use FTP and a bit of html/css.
A tip: make friends online and learn from them as they can learn from you.
Table of contents:
* Introduction
* My earnings/traffic the first two weeks
* Hosting/Servers
* Discovering Niches
* Domain Names
* Step by step installation of autoblogs
o Installing Wordpress
o Uploading Theme(s) + settings
o Plugins I use and Recommend
o Getting Feeds/RSS
* Building backlinks
* All about Google and autoblogs
* Conclusion
* Coming results for november and onwards (pending)
(use control+f cmd+f to find the content)
Introduction
I'd rather stay half-anonymous or I might get flooded with spam so I'll just use my first name, Mark (if you need to know anything specific - then PM me and we can talk/chat over skype). As I'm a student on a college in Rotterdam in the Netherlands I have loads of free time to spend on my blogs. I currently have 8 autoblogs up and running. From which 2 of them have AdSense on them and 6 are in the process of "I-don't-want-to-let-Google-know-that-those-sites-are-just-for-making-money". NEVER EVER add AdSense on the first day of your autoblog. Add AdSense once your blog reaches at least 100 visitors per day. Your blog gets devalued to the ground if you have 0 visitors and if you're unlucky you will disappear from the search result pages (serp's). Google isn't very fond of websites putting AdSense on the very first day with zero traffic. The funny thing was that I didn't even knew what an autoblog was before I arrived at this forum via a google search.
Known tip: to see if your site is indexed use this command in the google search bar:
Code:
site:http://yourwebsite.com
I'm never worried about not getting indexed and i'll tell you why. All my autoblogs got indexed within a few hours and to be honest I always make about 3 to 4 'dummy' posts (200 words including a YouTube video) which are original and not duplicated. This will not only get you indexed faster (depending on your backlink building) but will also not alert Google immediately that your blog is an autoblog. If you think - that takes too long - then try it without making some original posts. From what I've read here on BHW is that some people are having trouble getting indexed in Google with just dupe content. Know this: get indexed before you activate and start your autoblog plugins to pull content. That saves a lot of trouble in the long run plus you can already enjoy seeing some stats appear in Google Analytics
I have about 30 blogs, from which a couple are Wordpress and the rest are Blogger blogs. Across 2 hosting companies. All of the 22 blogs are whitehat and 8 of them as mentioned above are autoblogs. The plan is to turn 90% of my blogs to autoblogs which will reduce my own work to about 1 hour per day. Yay for automation!
My earnings/traffic the first two weeks
So after a week of reading and doing some research on BHW I finally started my first autoblog. I got inspired by some of the big threads here and decided my first blog should be in the tech niche (yes I know how general - but at least it's a simple niche). After I made some dummy posts and got indexed in Google I activated Autoblogged plugin to pull content from other websites.
I mentioned earlier I had loads of free time so my website looks prof designed and for some odd reason I'm getting emails from people I don't even know that they like my website. Talking about irony... I'm trying to monetize my traffic, yet instead they love the website lol.
Below is a screenshot of my analytics stats for about 10 days. Traffic spiked one day to 400 because I'm actually outranking the original article from the real website More about that later. I'm not sure if it's smart but I should give an example, so search for "hp tilt shift" and you'll know that I'm talking about.
Click to enlarge (reply if image is down)
Steadily making money from about 200 visits a day within the first 2 weeks with just 1 blog. Below are the results once I added Google AdSense to my blog. It's not a lot but the blog is young and it already covered my hosting costs for the month so that isn't too shabby.
Click to enlarge
At this point I'm wondering how it will look like in 2 years... will I give up on autoblogging or do the stats like this skyrocket in the future? All the things to worry about, yet I strongly believe that making an real income from autoblogs could be real.
Hosting/Servers
Ok here I might have an advantage above others, a friend of mine has a huge game forum getting 30k visitors every single day and luckily he allows me to have unlimited autoblogs on his $100 per month rackspace cloud server
As you might know you shouldn't have more than 5-10 autoblogs on 1 server so that is why I'm paying my own server too. My knowledge about servers and IP's doesn't go far but I know you need several different IP's or Google kicks your ass and I know how much that hurts :P
My own server is hosted on HostGator with a baby package. Only 10 bucks per month which is practially nothing. You can earn that back within a single day. So my advice for all starters is to have at least $30 ready in your bank account to get the required hosting etc. You actually don't have to spend money on plugins, they can be found on this forum.
I don't want to link to Hostgator else you might think it's an affiliate link, so just Google it or type it in directly. (I'm not selling anything - just teaching).
Discovering Niches
When you have your hosting setup and rolling it's time to think about which niches you are going to target. (niche is another word for subject). Let's look at some examples:
World of Warcraft is one (game) example. Now you need to know some niches in it.(I've played the game so that gives me a small advantage - oh and if you ever played warcraft 3 then you should know now that Dota, Defense of the Ancients, is one heck of a popular custom map)
-Jewelcrafting/Herbalism
-Character classes etc.
-Talent/Level Guides
Hoodia (a plant used with diets)
-High blood pressure
-Results
-Where to buy them
-Gels
etc.
So find a subject in any topic (health, gaming, technology, news) and choose a sub-topic. SEO is not a niche, it might be but it's way too competitive - you should rather focus on the keywords "SEO for beginners" or something. Keywords are important as that will let Google know what your website is all about.
Lastly I'd say use either Google AdWord's Keyword Tools or Market Samurai, which can be found here for free if you do a search.
Domain Names
Getting ranked in Google is one thing, another thing is being able to rank WELL in google. Google determines your position for your pages in the serp's by at least 100 to 200 factors. Be it backlinks, website coding, keywords, meta description, title, heading tags, css validation, your website exposure, website loading time, verified in Google webmasters?, is website in DMOZ or Yahoo's Directory? Several on-page factors but most are off-page factors. In the early years of the internet you could stuff your website full with meta tags with just about anything and rank with an health site for gaming keywords (haha). Google's new algorithem destroyed that and after a while became clear that backlinks are the new kings and on-page SEO is slowly dying.
Now I said keywords earlier. Google also takes in conjunction your domain name as a factor to rank your blog. So it is important to have your main keywords for your niche in your domain name. Take the hoodia example, you will rank better in Google with hoodia in your domain name than if you don't have one in it. (www,hoodiaguides,com - or something) This means you will rank well if your Title of the blog is Hoodia Guides.
Now here comes a question noone can really answer:
Should I take .info domains or .com for my autoblogs?
.info domains are cheap as they come as low as $0.90 to $2, whereas .com domains are always above $10 without coupons.
A logical answer to this question would be: "Take a .com domain because it's more expensive than a .info domain which marks your website as spam". If that was true then all the spammers would immediately get a .com domain and continue the spamming with better results because they won't get marked as spam.
To be honest, I don't know the definite answer to that question. What I do know is that my main .info autoblog, two weeks old, is doing as good as my .com domains.
Where should I buy my domain names?
I got all mine from godaddy.com. But there are more like Yahoo, Registar, Namecheap, 1and1, Enom etc.
Step by step installation of autoblogs
(sorry I thought I could make it into a step-by-step but it turned more into a wall of text :P)
You need a...
1) host
2) domain name
3) ftp client (firezilla is what I'm using)
to work with your autoblog.
--------- I do hope you know how to set up a domain name's nameservers to your hosting provider. If you don't then below you can find a link to hostgator's DNS changing webpage. Just choose your domain registar and change the name servers to your host's provided name servers.
Code:
http://www.hostgator.com/dns.shtml
You have to wait quite a few hours because the routers on the internet need to reset their cache in order for you to see any effects.---------
At this point I'm about to install another blog myself, so you can read along and see what I am doing. First thing of course is...
Installing Wordpress
This is probably the easiest part, however you have to think about if you add sub domains to your autoblog project or not. I personally do it because you can make it more 'niche' related. In this example I'll be making a blog about Mac. It's one of the more easier autoblogs to create because of the amount of feeds available on the net.
I made a few sub domains using the control panel on Hostgator (man that goes so smoothly) and named them:
news.mac.com -> latest news for mac
computers.mac.com -> latest updates on the computer apple produces and sells
software.mac.com -> talking about latest software for mac
guides.mac.com -> how to guides for software and stuff
It's a bit general but should give you an idea on how to name your sub domains. Now a little note on the Wordpress versions...
Be aware that some versions of Autoblogged and WP o Matic / WProbot and all the other plugins might not work on Wordpress 2.8.6+ for everybody. I'm always installing 2.8.4. Why? Simply because I know every single thing will work. I don't give a shit about hackers. If one guy hacks my blog (god knows how), sure, I'll just grab a backup and start another autoblog.
Once you uploaded Wordpress to your server you can begin the installation procedure of the WP-config.php file. Takes less then 1 minute if you know where to look and if you just made the database. Personally when I started using Wordpress I had difficulties figuring out the database password and such as I had zero experience in server management. A friend made the database for me and just gave me the info, which is why I had trouble finding it .
Lucky you if your host has Fantastico, that little script installs Wordpress automatically with the correct settings. The latest version though...
Note: if you are going to use sub domains, make sure to install Wordpress on all the subdomains, not just the main domain. Kinda straight forward lol. You could instead use Wordpress MU, which allows easy control over sub domains.
Code:
http://mu.wordpress.org/
Uploading Theme(s) + settings
Ah.. everybody's favorite part. Don't forget that the theme you are going to be using, plays a big roll in how your advertisements are going to convert into sales. Position of the ads and the amount of text + colors comes second.
For this mac blog I am using the free theme 'shadowbox' because of it's rich features and it's unique theme options layout. I'm also a big coders now that I have a lot of experience with blogs so I can make it look like an Apple blog.
If you are not sure what to use, then see this thread:
Code:
http://www.blackhatworld.com/blackhat-seo/blogging/113617-whats-your-favorite-wp-theme.html
Mimbo seems to be a popular one. Download the theme (or install it directly inside Wordpress using the feature 'add new theme' under 'appearance' - note that premium Wordpress themes are to be paid for and you won't find them in the Wordpress.org database) and upload it to 'wp-content/themes'. Once it's uploaded activate it in 'appearance -> themes'
After that go to the options of the theme and customize as you need.
A few settings I recommend you to do:
1) General Settings:
-Type in your Blog Title and Tagline (like 5 words only, because we are going to use a SEO plugin)
-Change timezone to UTC (+0)
2) Writing Settings:
-Change default category (you need to make a new category first which can be done under 'posts')
3) Reading:
-Maybe change the amount of posts on a page, but can be overridden with a plugin
4) Discussion:
-Tick: An administrator must always approve the comment
-Tick: Enable threaded (nested) comments levels deep (yes I know, but to some surprise my tech blog got a lot of happy readers)
5) Media:
-Nothing for now (if you use the autoblogged plugin - these settings are used)
6) Permalinks:
-Change the structure to /%postname% I wouldn't recommend using the category name as well because then you could be using too many keywords.
After that, add Google Analytics to the footer (before the closing body tag) Go and add Yahoo site explorer (google it) + Google webmasters site verification code to your header.php file. (that should be inserted before the closing head tag)
From here on it's really up to you how you design your blog with which fonts and colors.
Robots.txt + .htaccess + favicon files
It's important to have those 2 files in your root folder, simply because you don't want Google to find out that you are using autoblog plugins. Make a text file and insert the following text into it:
Sitemap: /sitemap.xml
User-agent: *
Disallow: /wp-content/cache/
Disallow: /wp-content/themes/
Disallow: /wp-content/plugins/
Disallow: /wp-admin/
Disallow: /wp-includes/
Disallow: /wp-login.php
Rename it to: Robot.txt and place it in the root WP folder together with all the wp-content, wp-admin and wp-includes folders.
Next up is .htaccess, which should be there. If you can't see it with your FTP client then check for an option which allows you to see invisible files. Should be located in the root folder too.
Add this to it:
# BEGIN WordPress
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . /index.php [L]
# END WordPress
If you still can't find it, then simply upload a regular text file and name it exactly .htaccess with no extentions like .txt or .php!
To make your blog look more natural you need to have an favicon, period.
This can be done by either uploading a 16 by 16 pixel .ico file to your WP root folder, or add an snippet of html to your header.php file. This is what you should add: (most browsers of today already look for an ico file, but it's better to add it anyway)
Code:
Widgets
This really depends on what plugins you are using. Some plugins allow you to insert extra widgets into your sidebars. Widgets like next gen gallery, recent posts, recent comments, pages, categories really make an autoblog look like a normal blog, which is what we want.
Alternatively you could add some clickbank products on the sidebar in a text widget together with a feedburner count to make it look natural.
Plugins I use and Recommend
One of the biggest issues with autoblogs are the plugins. Can't count the number of thread about plugins and which one the best one is... To sum it all up from other threads (and it's been told a lot), every plugin has it's advantages and disadvantages.
Plugins for a text website (text oriented with images, any autoblog plugin will do)
Plugins for a video website (uses videos mostly pulled from YouTube but requires much more work than text oriented blogs - see below - if you want image only, then get Autoblogged plugin and don't let it pull any excerpt, just images/thumbnails - I have yet to try it but seems like a funny idea - you can also make use of the "custom field" and "custom values" to insert the images automatically as a thumbnail for the homepage etc. - that is why I love autoblogged - feature rich )
I'll brake this down to a few lists which include basic plugins, content generating plugins and monetization plugins. There is one special plugin which I want to discuss afterwards. Because a lot of people are trying to build backlinks for their website but fail because it's too much work, there is a plugin that automatically does that and submits your content to 20+ social websites.
Basic Plugins:
-Akismet
-All in One SEO Pack
-Duplicate Posts Eraser
-Easy Privacy Policy (needed if you are planning to use AdSense)
-Exclude Pages from Navigation
-Google XML Sitemaps
-No Self Pings
-Popular Posts
-Post-Plugin Library
-Recent Posts
-WP Super Cache (mainly used to reduce your server's CPU usage)
-Onlywire multisubmitter
Download here: (you don't need more to make a nice autoblog to be honest)
Code:
http://rapidshare.com/files/308873962/basic-plugins.zip
You might ask me why I am not using either platinum SEO or HeadSpace2, simply because I don't feel it's necessary. I want to have a less plugins as possible. The more you have, the more you need to edit and set up during a Wordpress installation. I'm not a pro on these plugins so can anybody tell me what the big difference is between platinum SEO and all in one? They both produce the same html code snippets and the options are look-a-like.
Plus I have the feeling it doesn't really matter at all which plugin you have as long as you have a meta description/keywords and your Title in every category and post.
You might also notice I'm not using any social plugin apart from the multisubmitter. This is because it's an autoblog! You don't want visitors to stay, you want them to click the ads. It's already difficult to achieve that, above all - if one visitor decides to stay and read content, he is as useless as a pig in the desert. Probably only eating bandwidth and you won't ever see a backlink in return. My experience is that even with a WHITEHAT blog, people don't submit your content to social websites. That is why you need to do it on your own, don't depend on others.
Now that is where the onlywire multisubmitter comes into play. Just create an account on their website (onlwire.com) and start adding your own social bookmarking account data. (digg stumble twitter diigo propeller etc.) Fill in your onlywire acc name and password into the multisubmitter plugin and it will automatically post your content to the social bookmarking website you filled your data in everytime you post content on your autoblog - which all goes automatic with the plugins. Couldn't be more lazier than that right? The only problem with this is that you need to create a few onlywire accounts because you can only use the API from onlywire 5 times a day.
Content Generating Plugins:
-AutoBlogged (my prefered rss feed fetcher)
-WP o Matic
-WP VideoTube (probably the best video fetch plugin out there)
-Wordpress WriteAgain! -> * see note
-Unique Article Wizard Plugin
-Don't use CC - caffeinated content - it's outdated
Most of these can be downloaded from the download section here on BHW, use the search function on top to get the latest version. I do have a strong believe in purchasing these plugins as it will help the creator for his/her/their work. Currently using Autoblogged for all my autoblogs, I just love it (got a multi site license for 50 autoblogs) if you customize the output for the feed in just the right way, the posts it creates are awesome.
* Writeagain costs a bit of money and can be purchased from a local BHW member. Can't remember his name but to be honest, I've never ever rewritten content for my blog - not even manually - just a linkback to the original article is enough. On top of that I still outrank the original website with many posts. (oh and I don't use UAW too - too lazy ^_^)
Currently I'm using this template for the majority of my blogs: (can be edited in each single feed on the bottom - autoblogged only!)
%if:video%
%if:thumbnail%
Replace the 'website name here' and do this because you don't want to give the website credit using the post title text, but rather the website name itself which looks more natural in terms of link building. You can also use the full content which is what many bloggers prefer. Everyone should have their own method right? I understand because it allows them to be indexed for more keywords and thus get more visitors. Problem is with some feeds it also copies some faggy text like comment links | submit this post | bookmark this post | etc.
I don't know exactly how Yahoo pipes work but it should be the solution for that problem. A couple of hours learning on that should fix that I might be making a guide on how to use Yahoo pipes in the future.
Monetization plugins:
Also mentioned in the ultimate thread for autoblog resources.
-AdSense Deluxe in conjuction with Kontera Ads or something.
I don't really use plugins to manage my ads on my blogs. I'd rather insert them myself into the code because for example - I've noticed that when using two large rectangles 336x280 in a table tag get quite a lot of clicks. Result can be seen in the picture below. (yea some dutch ads in there too )
Click to enlarge
It isn't really blending yet but that can be solved with a few CSS color changes. So that was it for the plugins. I'm basically not using more than 1 content generator and I use the whole basic plugin package included from the rapidshare link above.
To make something like that use this code:
I also make sure to use an AdSense Channel with every single ad unit I put on a website. Why? First off, it allows me to track the performance. Secondly I can increase the cost per click I get. How? Adwords users can target your channel and compete with the keyword targeted ads which normally appear by default. They have to pay more to get on top of your ad units which use that specific channel. Thus give you a higher CPC.
A good example is from my friend yet again, his game forum brings him a total of 5 to 10 cents a click. He earned about 10 bucks a day without optimizing his ad units. After he made them targetable and emailed some advertisers to use AdWords to target his ad units, his CPC rose to 20 to 30 cents a click.
Getting Feeds/RSS
This is probably the most difficult part. Once you think your whole website is set up, you need to find some great content websites. Preferably blogs but forums work great too. A little trick: Check the source code of a website when a blog links his RSS to feedburner. Often you can find the Wordpress feed in the source code and you may find the full feed there.
The source code of a website can be brought up using the control + u on PC or command + u on mac.
I'd recommend using Google blog search:
Code:
http://blogsearch.google.com/
Type in your keywords and hopefully, if the niche has big competition, you will find loads of websites to draw content from. It's difficult to find RSS feeds for smaller niches, so I would suggest using Yahoo answers auto poster plugin to solve that problem as well as UAW or YouTube videos.
Once you got your feeds, insert them into the autoblogger plugin of your choice and see your content grow over time. I'd suggest you to post as less as possible the first few days and slowly increase over time. My schedule for most of my blogs are already running on 100 minutes per interval which is a lot. Keep it at about 5-10 posts per day max. Make sure your site layout looks acceptable but in such a way it won't decrease the chance of them clicking your ads. Difficult yes, but keep experimenting with fonts and sizes to match Google Adsense's. Don't overdo it too or you might get banned :P
My first autoblogger plugin was WP o Matic - but I got stuck with the cron job via my server. It did complete the cron job and send the ping to WP o Matic but it didn't really react to it. So Autoblogged is my second choice, but now I see it's power - it will be, apart from Youtube videos, my only choice.
Building backlinks
Don't want to sound blunt, but if you want quality backlinks then you really have to make them yourself, which is time consuming (BOOO!!). There are different types of backlink strategies such as (I'm talking about permanent backlinks - not those you bought for 1 month or something like that):
* Linkwheels (making tons of websites on free hosts and interlink them - in short)
* Angela's Method (make profiles and then link back within the profile to your website)
* Spamming (xrumer or SEnuke)
* article marketing (ezinearticles.com, goarticles.com etc.)
* Social networks
I'd prefer to make everything automatic and thus the onlywire plugin comes into play yet again. Most blogs are just set and forget and then you should start building backlinks. Digg and Stumble are a great way to get started with.
All about Google and autoblogs
Does Google like autoblogs? Will duplicate content get indexed? How much can I make from my autoblog?
One thing: Google does like autoblogs, but not in such a way you are claiming the content as your own. Mashget.com is such an good example, that guy is earning tons of money by simply holding his d*ck in 1 hand and the other hand on the mouse refreshing the page of his AdSense account.
Yes duplicate content does get indexed, I'm experiencing it myself, I've never rewritten content and got over 30 pages indexed in Google. (PM me for link)
See this email I got from a friend of mine:
-----------------
Hey Mark,
nice, I didn't think that this could work that nicely .
Are you just fetching RSS feeds and posting them? Why would Google
rank you for duplicated content? Is it because of your social media
like YouTube and Twitter?
Best regards,
friend
-----------------
A whitehatter, BOOOO. Results will be coming soon.
Help!? My blog got deindexed by Google
Don't worry, your victim of the so called Google-dance. I've suffered from it with my whitehat blog too but got indexed once again within a week. So don't start help threads before you have waited a week. The point is to check if the Google bot still comes by, if so then keep on posting content and keep building backlinks naturally. Then the chance of getting indexed is pretty high.
How much can I make from autoblogging?
This is a too general question which can't be answered. Generally you should be happy to make at least 10 bucks a day, but that is on a rare occasion. Most blogs are only earning 1 or 2 bucks a day. But that clearly already covers the cost. The point is that you should never stop building autoblogs. If autoblog is your thing, keep at it - I don't think it will die soon. Unless Google decides all the information can be found on Wikipedia lol.
Conclusion
I have a friend which is really interested in blogging but doesn't have time to start, at least that is what he says. (I know he is spending all his time on profile websites getting girls and dumping them 1 week later).
My advice to all the beginners: start autoblogging - get a host - and follow this thread, read for a few days on the basics and figure out which niches you want to focus on. All the info are in these threads on this section of the forum. Abuse or lose!
Let me know what I missed and I can add it to the post.
Results coming for november and onwards (pending)
WARNING: HUGE WALL OF TEXT INCOMING
Ok first off; a thank you to all the autoblog pioneers here on BHW for sharing the required information in order for us to start autoblogging. Cheers!
I'm starting this thread to guide beginners and let others know that autoblogging can be a success (how small it may be), it might even be your next first income if you do it on a large scale. This thread is for BHW only and I haven't pulled it off any website, it's just my own two to three weeks experience.
Secondly I really advice DeathRequest's stickied thread for all the resources you need for autoblogging:
http://www.blackhatworld.com/blackha...resources.html
Seriously you don't need to buy any eBook whatsoever; all the information is already given on the internet and here on BHW. (no pun intended to those selling eBooks, just pointing that out for beginners before they waste their money and give up before even starting). The only thing you should know before starting is how to use FTP and a bit of html/css.
A tip: make friends online and learn from them as they can learn from you.
Table of contents:
* Introduction
* My earnings/traffic the first two weeks
* Hosting/Servers
* Discovering Niches
* Domain Names
* Step by step installation of autoblogs
o Installing Wordpress
o Uploading Theme(s) + settings
o Plugins I use and Recommend
o Getting Feeds/RSS
* Building backlinks
* All about Google and autoblogs
* Conclusion
* Coming results for november and onwards (pending)
(use control+f cmd+f to find the content)
Introduction
I'd rather stay half-anonymous or I might get flooded with spam so I'll just use my first name, Mark (if you need to know anything specific - then PM me and we can talk/chat over skype). As I'm a student on a college in Rotterdam in the Netherlands I have loads of free time to spend on my blogs. I currently have 8 autoblogs up and running. From which 2 of them have AdSense on them and 6 are in the process of "I-don't-want-to-let-Google-know-that-those-sites-are-just-for-making-money". NEVER EVER add AdSense on the first day of your autoblog. Add AdSense once your blog reaches at least 100 visitors per day. Your blog gets devalued to the ground if you have 0 visitors and if you're unlucky you will disappear from the search result pages (serp's). Google isn't very fond of websites putting AdSense on the very first day with zero traffic. The funny thing was that I didn't even knew what an autoblog was before I arrived at this forum via a google search.
Known tip: to see if your site is indexed use this command in the google search bar:
Code:
site:http://yourwebsite.com
I'm never worried about not getting indexed and i'll tell you why. All my autoblogs got indexed within a few hours and to be honest I always make about 3 to 4 'dummy' posts (200 words including a YouTube video) which are original and not duplicated. This will not only get you indexed faster (depending on your backlink building) but will also not alert Google immediately that your blog is an autoblog. If you think - that takes too long - then try it without making some original posts. From what I've read here on BHW is that some people are having trouble getting indexed in Google with just dupe content. Know this: get indexed before you activate and start your autoblog plugins to pull content. That saves a lot of trouble in the long run plus you can already enjoy seeing some stats appear in Google Analytics
I have about 30 blogs, from which a couple are Wordpress and the rest are Blogger blogs. Across 2 hosting companies. All of the 22 blogs are whitehat and 8 of them as mentioned above are autoblogs. The plan is to turn 90% of my blogs to autoblogs which will reduce my own work to about 1 hour per day. Yay for automation!
My earnings/traffic the first two weeks
So after a week of reading and doing some research on BHW I finally started my first autoblog. I got inspired by some of the big threads here and decided my first blog should be in the tech niche (yes I know how general - but at least it's a simple niche). After I made some dummy posts and got indexed in Google I activated Autoblogged plugin to pull content from other websites.
I mentioned earlier I had loads of free time so my website looks prof designed and for some odd reason I'm getting emails from people I don't even know that they like my website. Talking about irony... I'm trying to monetize my traffic, yet instead they love the website lol.
Below is a screenshot of my analytics stats for about 10 days. Traffic spiked one day to 400 because I'm actually outranking the original article from the real website More about that later. I'm not sure if it's smart but I should give an example, so search for "hp tilt shift" and you'll know that I'm talking about.
Click to enlarge (reply if image is down)
Steadily making money from about 200 visits a day within the first 2 weeks with just 1 blog. Below are the results once I added Google AdSense to my blog. It's not a lot but the blog is young and it already covered my hosting costs for the month so that isn't too shabby.
Click to enlarge
At this point I'm wondering how it will look like in 2 years... will I give up on autoblogging or do the stats like this skyrocket in the future? All the things to worry about, yet I strongly believe that making an real income from autoblogs could be real.
Hosting/Servers
Ok here I might have an advantage above others, a friend of mine has a huge game forum getting 30k visitors every single day and luckily he allows me to have unlimited autoblogs on his $100 per month rackspace cloud server
As you might know you shouldn't have more than 5-10 autoblogs on 1 server so that is why I'm paying my own server too. My knowledge about servers and IP's doesn't go far but I know you need several different IP's or Google kicks your ass and I know how much that hurts :P
My own server is hosted on HostGator with a baby package. Only 10 bucks per month which is practially nothing. You can earn that back within a single day. So my advice for all starters is to have at least $30 ready in your bank account to get the required hosting etc. You actually don't have to spend money on plugins, they can be found on this forum.
I don't want to link to Hostgator else you might think it's an affiliate link, so just Google it or type it in directly. (I'm not selling anything - just teaching).
Discovering Niches
When you have your hosting setup and rolling it's time to think about which niches you are going to target. (niche is another word for subject). Let's look at some examples:
World of Warcraft is one (game) example. Now you need to know some niches in it.(I've played the game so that gives me a small advantage - oh and if you ever played warcraft 3 then you should know now that Dota, Defense of the Ancients, is one heck of a popular custom map)
-Jewelcrafting/Herbalism
-Character classes etc.
-Talent/Level Guides
Hoodia (a plant used with diets)
-High blood pressure
-Results
-Where to buy them
-Gels
etc.
So find a subject in any topic (health, gaming, technology, news) and choose a sub-topic. SEO is not a niche, it might be but it's way too competitive - you should rather focus on the keywords "SEO for beginners" or something. Keywords are important as that will let Google know what your website is all about.
Lastly I'd say use either Google AdWord's Keyword Tools or Market Samurai, which can be found here for free if you do a search.
Domain Names
Getting ranked in Google is one thing, another thing is being able to rank WELL in google. Google determines your position for your pages in the serp's by at least 100 to 200 factors. Be it backlinks, website coding, keywords, meta description, title, heading tags, css validation, your website exposure, website loading time, verified in Google webmasters?, is website in DMOZ or Yahoo's Directory? Several on-page factors but most are off-page factors. In the early years of the internet you could stuff your website full with meta tags with just about anything and rank with an health site for gaming keywords (haha). Google's new algorithem destroyed that and after a while became clear that backlinks are the new kings and on-page SEO is slowly dying.
Now I said keywords earlier. Google also takes in conjunction your domain name as a factor to rank your blog. So it is important to have your main keywords for your niche in your domain name. Take the hoodia example, you will rank better in Google with hoodia in your domain name than if you don't have one in it. (www,hoodiaguides,com - or something) This means you will rank well if your Title of the blog is Hoodia Guides.
Now here comes a question noone can really answer:
Should I take .info domains or .com for my autoblogs?
.info domains are cheap as they come as low as $0.90 to $2, whereas .com domains are always above $10 without coupons.
A logical answer to this question would be: "Take a .com domain because it's more expensive than a .info domain which marks your website as spam". If that was true then all the spammers would immediately get a .com domain and continue the spamming with better results because they won't get marked as spam.
To be honest, I don't know the definite answer to that question. What I do know is that my main .info autoblog, two weeks old, is doing as good as my .com domains.
Where should I buy my domain names?
I got all mine from godaddy.com. But there are more like Yahoo, Registar, Namecheap, 1and1, Enom etc.
Step by step installation of autoblogs
(sorry I thought I could make it into a step-by-step but it turned more into a wall of text :P)
You need a...
1) host
2) domain name
3) ftp client (firezilla is what I'm using)
to work with your autoblog.
--------- I do hope you know how to set up a domain name's nameservers to your hosting provider. If you don't then below you can find a link to hostgator's DNS changing webpage. Just choose your domain registar and change the name servers to your host's provided name servers.
Code:
http://www.hostgator.com/dns.shtml
You have to wait quite a few hours because the routers on the internet need to reset their cache in order for you to see any effects.---------
At this point I'm about to install another blog myself, so you can read along and see what I am doing. First thing of course is...
Installing Wordpress
This is probably the easiest part, however you have to think about if you add sub domains to your autoblog project or not. I personally do it because you can make it more 'niche' related. In this example I'll be making a blog about Mac. It's one of the more easier autoblogs to create because of the amount of feeds available on the net.
I made a few sub domains using the control panel on Hostgator (man that goes so smoothly) and named them:
news.mac.com -> latest news for mac
computers.mac.com -> latest updates on the computer apple produces and sells
software.mac.com -> talking about latest software for mac
guides.mac.com -> how to guides for software and stuff
It's a bit general but should give you an idea on how to name your sub domains. Now a little note on the Wordpress versions...
Be aware that some versions of Autoblogged and WP o Matic / WProbot and all the other plugins might not work on Wordpress 2.8.6+ for everybody. I'm always installing 2.8.4. Why? Simply because I know every single thing will work. I don't give a shit about hackers. If one guy hacks my blog (god knows how), sure, I'll just grab a backup and start another autoblog.
Once you uploaded Wordpress to your server you can begin the installation procedure of the WP-config.php file. Takes less then 1 minute if you know where to look and if you just made the database. Personally when I started using Wordpress I had difficulties figuring out the database password and such as I had zero experience in server management. A friend made the database for me and just gave me the info, which is why I had trouble finding it .
Lucky you if your host has Fantastico, that little script installs Wordpress automatically with the correct settings. The latest version though...
Note: if you are going to use sub domains, make sure to install Wordpress on all the subdomains, not just the main domain. Kinda straight forward lol. You could instead use Wordpress MU, which allows easy control over sub domains.
Code:
http://mu.wordpress.org/
Uploading Theme(s) + settings
Ah.. everybody's favorite part. Don't forget that the theme you are going to be using, plays a big roll in how your advertisements are going to convert into sales. Position of the ads and the amount of text + colors comes second.
For this mac blog I am using the free theme 'shadowbox' because of it's rich features and it's unique theme options layout. I'm also a big coders now that I have a lot of experience with blogs so I can make it look like an Apple blog.
If you are not sure what to use, then see this thread:
Code:
http://www.blackhatworld.com/blackhat-seo/blogging/113617-whats-your-favorite-wp-theme.html
Mimbo seems to be a popular one. Download the theme (or install it directly inside Wordpress using the feature 'add new theme' under 'appearance' - note that premium Wordpress themes are to be paid for and you won't find them in the Wordpress.org database) and upload it to 'wp-content/themes'. Once it's uploaded activate it in 'appearance -> themes'
After that go to the options of the theme and customize as you need.
A few settings I recommend you to do:
1) General Settings:
-Type in your Blog Title and Tagline (like 5 words only, because we are going to use a SEO plugin)
-Change timezone to UTC (+0)
2) Writing Settings:
-Change default category (you need to make a new category first which can be done under 'posts')
3) Reading:
-Maybe change the amount of posts on a page, but can be overridden with a plugin
4) Discussion:
-Tick: An administrator must always approve the comment
-Tick: Enable threaded (nested) comments levels deep (yes I know, but to some surprise my tech blog got a lot of happy readers)
5) Media:
-Nothing for now (if you use the autoblogged plugin - these settings are used)
6) Permalinks:
-Change the structure to /%postname% I wouldn't recommend using the category name as well because then you could be using too many keywords.
After that, add Google Analytics to the footer (before the closing body tag) Go and add Yahoo site explorer (google it) + Google webmasters site verification code to your header.php file. (that should be inserted before the closing head tag)
From here on it's really up to you how you design your blog with which fonts and colors.
Robots.txt + .htaccess + favicon files
It's important to have those 2 files in your root folder, simply because you don't want Google to find out that you are using autoblog plugins. Make a text file and insert the following text into it:
Sitemap: /sitemap.xml
User-agent: *
Disallow: /wp-content/cache/
Disallow: /wp-content/themes/
Disallow: /wp-content/plugins/
Disallow: /wp-admin/
Disallow: /wp-includes/
Disallow: /wp-login.php
Rename it to: Robot.txt and place it in the root WP folder together with all the wp-content, wp-admin and wp-includes folders.
Next up is .htaccess, which should be there. If you can't see it with your FTP client then check for an option which allows you to see invisible files. Should be located in the root folder too.
Add this to it:
# BEGIN WordPress
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . /index.php [L]
# END WordPress
If you still can't find it, then simply upload a regular text file and name it exactly .htaccess with no extentions like .txt or .php!
To make your blog look more natural you need to have an favicon, period.
This can be done by either uploading a 16 by 16 pixel .ico file to your WP root folder, or add an snippet of html to your header.php file. This is what you should add: (most browsers of today already look for an ico file, but it's better to add it anyway)
Code:
Widgets
This really depends on what plugins you are using. Some plugins allow you to insert extra widgets into your sidebars. Widgets like next gen gallery, recent posts, recent comments, pages, categories really make an autoblog look like a normal blog, which is what we want.
Alternatively you could add some clickbank products on the sidebar in a text widget together with a feedburner count to make it look natural.
Plugins I use and Recommend
One of the biggest issues with autoblogs are the plugins. Can't count the number of thread about plugins and which one the best one is... To sum it all up from other threads (and it's been told a lot), every plugin has it's advantages and disadvantages.
Plugins for a text website (text oriented with images, any autoblog plugin will do)
Plugins for a video website (uses videos mostly pulled from YouTube but requires much more work than text oriented blogs - see below - if you want image only, then get Autoblogged plugin and don't let it pull any excerpt, just images/thumbnails - I have yet to try it but seems like a funny idea - you can also make use of the "custom field" and "custom values" to insert the images automatically as a thumbnail for the homepage etc. - that is why I love autoblogged - feature rich )
I'll brake this down to a few lists which include basic plugins, content generating plugins and monetization plugins. There is one special plugin which I want to discuss afterwards. Because a lot of people are trying to build backlinks for their website but fail because it's too much work, there is a plugin that automatically does that and submits your content to 20+ social websites.
Basic Plugins:
-Akismet
-All in One SEO Pack
-Duplicate Posts Eraser
-Easy Privacy Policy (needed if you are planning to use AdSense)
-Exclude Pages from Navigation
-Google XML Sitemaps
-No Self Pings
-Popular Posts
-Post-Plugin Library
-Recent Posts
-WP Super Cache (mainly used to reduce your server's CPU usage)
-Onlywire multisubmitter
Download here: (you don't need more to make a nice autoblog to be honest)
Code:
http://rapidshare.com/files/308873962/basic-plugins.zip
You might ask me why I am not using either platinum SEO or HeadSpace2, simply because I don't feel it's necessary. I want to have a less plugins as possible. The more you have, the more you need to edit and set up during a Wordpress installation. I'm not a pro on these plugins so can anybody tell me what the big difference is between platinum SEO and all in one? They both produce the same html code snippets and the options are look-a-like.
Plus I have the feeling it doesn't really matter at all which plugin you have as long as you have a meta description/keywords and your Title in every category and post.
You might also notice I'm not using any social plugin apart from the multisubmitter. This is because it's an autoblog! You don't want visitors to stay, you want them to click the ads. It's already difficult to achieve that, above all - if one visitor decides to stay and read content, he is as useless as a pig in the desert. Probably only eating bandwidth and you won't ever see a backlink in return. My experience is that even with a WHITEHAT blog, people don't submit your content to social websites. That is why you need to do it on your own, don't depend on others.
Now that is where the onlywire multisubmitter comes into play. Just create an account on their website (onlwire.com) and start adding your own social bookmarking account data. (digg stumble twitter diigo propeller etc.) Fill in your onlywire acc name and password into the multisubmitter plugin and it will automatically post your content to the social bookmarking website you filled your data in everytime you post content on your autoblog - which all goes automatic with the plugins. Couldn't be more lazier than that right? The only problem with this is that you need to create a few onlywire accounts because you can only use the API from onlywire 5 times a day.
Content Generating Plugins:
-AutoBlogged (my prefered rss feed fetcher)
-WP o Matic
-WP VideoTube (probably the best video fetch plugin out there)
-Wordpress WriteAgain! -> * see note
-Unique Article Wizard Plugin
-Don't use CC - caffeinated content - it's outdated
Most of these can be downloaded from the download section here on BHW, use the search function on top to get the latest version. I do have a strong believe in purchasing these plugins as it will help the creator for his/her/their work. Currently using Autoblogged for all my autoblogs, I just love it (got a multi site license for 50 autoblogs) if you customize the output for the feed in just the right way, the posts it creates are awesome.
* Writeagain costs a bit of money and can be purchased from a local BHW member. Can't remember his name but to be honest, I've never ever rewritten content for my blog - not even manually - just a linkback to the original article is enough. On top of that I still outrank the original website with many posts. (oh and I don't use UAW too - too lazy ^_^)
Currently I'm using this template for the majority of my blogs: (can be edited in each single feed on the bottom - autoblogged only!)
%if:video%
%video%
%endif:video%%if:thumbnail%
%thumbnail%
%endif:thumbnail%%excerpt%
The full story can be read/found on WEBSITE NAME HEREReplace the 'website name here' and do this because you don't want to give the website credit using the post title text, but rather the website name itself which looks more natural in terms of link building. You can also use the full content which is what many bloggers prefer. Everyone should have their own method right? I understand because it allows them to be indexed for more keywords and thus get more visitors. Problem is with some feeds it also copies some faggy text like comment links | submit this post | bookmark this post | etc.
I don't know exactly how Yahoo pipes work but it should be the solution for that problem. A couple of hours learning on that should fix that I might be making a guide on how to use Yahoo pipes in the future.
Monetization plugins:
Also mentioned in the ultimate thread for autoblog resources.
-AdSense Deluxe in conjuction with Kontera Ads or something.
I don't really use plugins to manage my ads on my blogs. I'd rather insert them myself into the code because for example - I've noticed that when using two large rectangles 336x280 in a table tag get quite a lot of clicks. Result can be seen in the picture below. (yea some dutch ads in there too )
Click to enlarge
It isn't really blending yet but that can be solved with a few CSS color changes. So that was it for the plugins. I'm basically not using more than 1 content generator and I use the whole basic plugin package included from the rapidshare link above.
To make something like that use this code:
GOOGLE ADSENSE ON THE LEFT |
GOOGLE ADSENSE ON THE RIGHT |
I also make sure to use an AdSense Channel with every single ad unit I put on a website. Why? First off, it allows me to track the performance. Secondly I can increase the cost per click I get. How? Adwords users can target your channel and compete with the keyword targeted ads which normally appear by default. They have to pay more to get on top of your ad units which use that specific channel. Thus give you a higher CPC.
A good example is from my friend yet again, his game forum brings him a total of 5 to 10 cents a click. He earned about 10 bucks a day without optimizing his ad units. After he made them targetable and emailed some advertisers to use AdWords to target his ad units, his CPC rose to 20 to 30 cents a click.
Getting Feeds/RSS
This is probably the most difficult part. Once you think your whole website is set up, you need to find some great content websites. Preferably blogs but forums work great too. A little trick: Check the source code of a website when a blog links his RSS to feedburner. Often you can find the Wordpress feed in the source code and you may find the full feed there.
The source code of a website can be brought up using the control + u on PC or command + u on mac.
I'd recommend using Google blog search:
Code:
http://blogsearch.google.com/
Type in your keywords and hopefully, if the niche has big competition, you will find loads of websites to draw content from. It's difficult to find RSS feeds for smaller niches, so I would suggest using Yahoo answers auto poster plugin to solve that problem as well as UAW or YouTube videos.
Once you got your feeds, insert them into the autoblogger plugin of your choice and see your content grow over time. I'd suggest you to post as less as possible the first few days and slowly increase over time. My schedule for most of my blogs are already running on 100 minutes per interval which is a lot. Keep it at about 5-10 posts per day max. Make sure your site layout looks acceptable but in such a way it won't decrease the chance of them clicking your ads. Difficult yes, but keep experimenting with fonts and sizes to match Google Adsense's. Don't overdo it too or you might get banned :P
My first autoblogger plugin was WP o Matic - but I got stuck with the cron job via my server. It did complete the cron job and send the ping to WP o Matic but it didn't really react to it. So Autoblogged is my second choice, but now I see it's power - it will be, apart from Youtube videos, my only choice.
Building backlinks
Don't want to sound blunt, but if you want quality backlinks then you really have to make them yourself, which is time consuming (BOOO!!). There are different types of backlink strategies such as (I'm talking about permanent backlinks - not those you bought for 1 month or something like that):
* Linkwheels (making tons of websites on free hosts and interlink them - in short)
* Angela's Method (make profiles and then link back within the profile to your website)
* Spamming (xrumer or SEnuke)
* article marketing (ezinearticles.com, goarticles.com etc.)
* Social networks
I'd prefer to make everything automatic and thus the onlywire plugin comes into play yet again. Most blogs are just set and forget and then you should start building backlinks. Digg and Stumble are a great way to get started with.
All about Google and autoblogs
Does Google like autoblogs? Will duplicate content get indexed? How much can I make from my autoblog?
One thing: Google does like autoblogs, but not in such a way you are claiming the content as your own. Mashget.com is such an good example, that guy is earning tons of money by simply holding his d*ck in 1 hand and the other hand on the mouse refreshing the page of his AdSense account.
Yes duplicate content does get indexed, I'm experiencing it myself, I've never rewritten content and got over 30 pages indexed in Google. (PM me for link)
See this email I got from a friend of mine:
-----------------
Hey Mark,
nice, I didn't think that this could work that nicely .
Are you just fetching RSS feeds and posting them? Why would Google
rank you for duplicated content? Is it because of your social media
like YouTube and Twitter?
Best regards,
friend
-----------------
A whitehatter, BOOOO. Results will be coming soon.
Help!? My blog got deindexed by Google
Don't worry, your victim of the so called Google-dance. I've suffered from it with my whitehat blog too but got indexed once again within a week. So don't start help threads before you have waited a week. The point is to check if the Google bot still comes by, if so then keep on posting content and keep building backlinks naturally. Then the chance of getting indexed is pretty high.
How much can I make from autoblogging?
This is a too general question which can't be answered. Generally you should be happy to make at least 10 bucks a day, but that is on a rare occasion. Most blogs are only earning 1 or 2 bucks a day. But that clearly already covers the cost. The point is that you should never stop building autoblogs. If autoblog is your thing, keep at it - I don't think it will die soon. Unless Google decides all the information can be found on Wikipedia lol.
Conclusion
I have a friend which is really interested in blogging but doesn't have time to start, at least that is what he says. (I know he is spending all his time on profile websites getting girls and dumping them 1 week later).
My advice to all the beginners: start autoblogging - get a host - and follow this thread, read for a few days on the basics and figure out which niches you want to focus on. All the info are in these threads on this section of the forum. Abuse or lose!
Let me know what I missed and I can add it to the post.
Results coming for november and onwards (pending)
free E BOOKS System
Using google search:
Type in:
site:thesitename.com "thank you"
Look for pdf in the search results and download! Use a proxy. Try it use it without the "thank you" as well.
My other tip.
If you can't find the PDF in the search results try opening the robots.txt directly and sometimes they have denied it from being indexed. In which case you can find the download page listed in the file.
http://www.thesitename.com/robots.txt
I hope you have good results with this!
Type in:
site:thesitename.com "thank you"
Look for pdf in the search results and download! Use a proxy. Try it use it without the "thank you" as well.
My other tip.
If you can't find the PDF in the search results try opening the robots.txt directly and sometimes they have denied it from being indexed. In which case you can find the download page listed in the file.
http://www.thesitename.com/robots.txt
I hope you have good results with this!
Thursday, 17 December 2009
Twitter Friends
Get twitter followers and grow your community. You can even find followers in your own country or with the same interests as you. And there's no auto-tweeting.
it's free
it's free
Wednesday, 16 December 2009
Everyone is prattling on about zango’s practices and policies etc. I would suggest they read their practices page http://www.zango.com/Destination/Corporate/BestPractices.aspx I personally am going to try this Eli, I am not using screensavers though I am using financial how to lists i.e. get startup moneys etc. Think Matthew Lesko… Thus far making landing pages with these lists has done really well, and people rave about the content. I am going to package it in a flash-pdf and export it to exe and run it through zango, I will let you know how well it works. Great idea man, and frankly Im a little pissed I didn’t think of it on my own. Keep posting, and maybe we can make a difference for a few.
http://www.download.com/Screen-Saver-Builder/3000-2409_4-10353859.html?tag=lst-0-1
its $20 but it has a fully functional 21 day trial.
http://www.pay-per-install.com/
http://www.download.com/Screen-Saver-Builder/3000-2409_4-10353859.html?tag=lst-0-1
its $20 but it has a fully functional 21 day trial.
http://www.pay-per-install.com/
screensavers
How to make a $100 per day
I just realized something! This entire blog is filled with ideas on how to help your sites make more money and receive more traffic, but I don’t have a single post that says, HEY! HERE IS HOW YOU MAKE MONEY. I want a post that tells you exactly how to reach your goals. A comment in another post (I do read them and get inspired by them) reminded me of this. So I perused through some old projects of mine and grabbed one thats very easy, very automated, reciprocal (consistantly makes money forever), and makes about a $100/day. Most of all it requires very minimal time and investment. So here ya go! Follow the instructions carefully and do as I did.
Here Is What You Do
1) Pick a generalized niche that is fairly popular. Celebrities work well, cars, animals. Anything will do.
2) Make a list of 300 items in that niche. For instance if you pick music artists make a list of the top 300 most popular music artists.
3) Download at least 20 public use(noncopyrighted) pictures of each item in your list.
4) Download or buy a screensaver maker. I don’t remember which one I use so I’ll have to update you in the comments when I get back to the office on Monday. Just make sure it is quick and easy to create the screensavers (saves you a lot of time) and comes with an exe output function that’ll easily install the screensavers on their computer without much dialog boxes or windows getting in thier way. This one looks decent. Easy Screensaver Maker and its only $25. Update: I use Screen Saver Builder. It’s $20 with fully functioning 21 day trial.
5) Create all your screensavers and put them up on a simple website. Give each screensaver its own page and download link. It also never hurts to SEO the site so it’ll do well in the search engines and make you even more money later on. Adsense also doesn’t hurt for a lil’ bit of extra cash.
6) Signup with Zangocash (Aff Link). This step is optional. See the comments for more ideas on how to monenize your new screensavers.
7) Talk to your account manager and ask him to bundle Zango software with your screensavers. Send him all the installers along with a textfile containing all the short descriptions and a sample picture. They are usually happy to do this for you. If they aren’t get a new account manager.
8) Get yourself a copy of Promosoft software submitter(nonAff link). I think it costs $95 for a copy but trust me it’s well worth it.
9) Follow the instructions on Promosoft to create the PAD files(product description files used for software sites) and submit each screensaver to hundreds of software and screensaver directories.
There you go. You will get paid $0.45 for every person who installs your screensaver. Once the screensavers are submitted you will have no problem getting tons of people downloading them everyday. If you get about 250 downloads per day(easy with 300 screensavers) you will easily make about a $100/day!
ideas for monetizing
Alrighty how about this idea. Watermark all your images with a second website url. The second website is nothing more than a PPC campaign to other screensaver terms. The second website gets advertised everytime the screensaver runs. Also, ppl will pay money to have you include their site in a bookmark on the users computers. There are tons of ways to monotize this. Infact it wouldn’t be a bad idea to do ALL of them. It doesn’t hurt to blend in immediate income with reoccuring income.
Goth Screensavers nana should know about competition
About the technique to “bundle an installer into your own software”, my feeling (and it just represents my feeling) is that if you spend hours writing a piece of software, maybe at the end, you might use this to get some cash, but just as a bonus for a software that you would have written for your pleasure.
Now, if it is only about making money, when it comes to spend time creating hundred of screensavers, it might not bring good cash compared to the time spent. BUT THAT IS ONLY MY FEELING, I WOULD LOVE TO HEAR ANY FEEDBACK from anyone who’ll try Eli’s technique.
Ok, so here an another alternative to Zango…
say you make a screensaver for that fancy singer, just create a dull webpage about the guy, with some ads on it.
e.g. your page would be called
http://www.mybluehat.com/bonjovi.html
WHat next? You create the screensaver installer with the screensaver maker software, called in this example : bonjovi-screensaver.exe
you rename this file into something like
bonjovi-screensaver.ex_
Then, you create a good old .bat file, containing the following lines:
rename bonjovi-screensaver.ex_ bonjovi-screensaver.exe
explorer “http://www.mybluehat.com/bonjovi.html”
bonjovi-screensaver.exe
And finally, you right-click on your .bat file and “create a shortcut”. Finally, you rename your shortcut “Setup.exe”
And you just need to zip the three files : your shortcut, the .bat and the screensaver.
You distribute it, just as Eli explained.
When somebody will get the screensaver, he will of course click on the “Setup.exe” link that will execute the .bat
the .bat will open a window to your internet page before launching the setup of the screensaver
Then, most people will close this internet page, but some will actually have a look at it and click on some of your ads, bringing you some money.
What will bring more cash ? the cents from Zango when the user accepts to install it, or some cents from adwords when someone clicks on your links? I couldn’t tell you, so it’s up to you to test it and discover!
And remember what Eli says “this blog focus on creativity”! What I wrote is just a base, I tried to make it as easy as I could, but you can obviously improve this and use something else than a damn .bat file!
I just realized something! This entire blog is filled with ideas on how to help your sites make more money and receive more traffic, but I don’t have a single post that says, HEY! HERE IS HOW YOU MAKE MONEY. I want a post that tells you exactly how to reach your goals. A comment in another post (I do read them and get inspired by them) reminded me of this. So I perused through some old projects of mine and grabbed one thats very easy, very automated, reciprocal (consistantly makes money forever), and makes about a $100/day. Most of all it requires very minimal time and investment. So here ya go! Follow the instructions carefully and do as I did.
Here Is What You Do
1) Pick a generalized niche that is fairly popular. Celebrities work well, cars, animals. Anything will do.
2) Make a list of 300 items in that niche. For instance if you pick music artists make a list of the top 300 most popular music artists.
3) Download at least 20 public use(noncopyrighted) pictures of each item in your list.
4) Download or buy a screensaver maker. I don’t remember which one I use so I’ll have to update you in the comments when I get back to the office on Monday. Just make sure it is quick and easy to create the screensavers (saves you a lot of time) and comes with an exe output function that’ll easily install the screensavers on their computer without much dialog boxes or windows getting in thier way. This one looks decent. Easy Screensaver Maker and its only $25. Update: I use Screen Saver Builder. It’s $20 with fully functioning 21 day trial.
5) Create all your screensavers and put them up on a simple website. Give each screensaver its own page and download link. It also never hurts to SEO the site so it’ll do well in the search engines and make you even more money later on. Adsense also doesn’t hurt for a lil’ bit of extra cash.
6) Signup with Zangocash (Aff Link). This step is optional. See the comments for more ideas on how to monenize your new screensavers.
7) Talk to your account manager and ask him to bundle Zango software with your screensavers. Send him all the installers along with a textfile containing all the short descriptions and a sample picture. They are usually happy to do this for you. If they aren’t get a new account manager.
8) Get yourself a copy of Promosoft software submitter(nonAff link). I think it costs $95 for a copy but trust me it’s well worth it.
9) Follow the instructions on Promosoft to create the PAD files(product description files used for software sites) and submit each screensaver to hundreds of software and screensaver directories.
There you go. You will get paid $0.45 for every person who installs your screensaver. Once the screensavers are submitted you will have no problem getting tons of people downloading them everyday. If you get about 250 downloads per day(easy with 300 screensavers) you will easily make about a $100/day!
ideas for monetizing
Alrighty how about this idea. Watermark all your images with a second website url. The second website is nothing more than a PPC campaign to other screensaver terms. The second website gets advertised everytime the screensaver runs. Also, ppl will pay money to have you include their site in a bookmark on the users computers. There are tons of ways to monotize this. Infact it wouldn’t be a bad idea to do ALL of them. It doesn’t hurt to blend in immediate income with reoccuring income.
Goth Screensavers nana should know about competition
About the technique to “bundle an installer into your own software”, my feeling (and it just represents my feeling) is that if you spend hours writing a piece of software, maybe at the end, you might use this to get some cash, but just as a bonus for a software that you would have written for your pleasure.
Now, if it is only about making money, when it comes to spend time creating hundred of screensavers, it might not bring good cash compared to the time spent. BUT THAT IS ONLY MY FEELING, I WOULD LOVE TO HEAR ANY FEEDBACK from anyone who’ll try Eli’s technique.
Ok, so here an another alternative to Zango…
say you make a screensaver for that fancy singer, just create a dull webpage about the guy, with some ads on it.
e.g. your page would be called
http://www.mybluehat.com/bonjovi.html
WHat next? You create the screensaver installer with the screensaver maker software, called in this example : bonjovi-screensaver.exe
you rename this file into something like
bonjovi-screensaver.ex_
Then, you create a good old .bat file, containing the following lines:
rename bonjovi-screensaver.ex_ bonjovi-screensaver.exe
explorer “http://www.mybluehat.com/bonjovi.html”
bonjovi-screensaver.exe
And finally, you right-click on your .bat file and “create a shortcut”. Finally, you rename your shortcut “Setup.exe”
And you just need to zip the three files : your shortcut, the .bat and the screensaver.
You distribute it, just as Eli explained.
When somebody will get the screensaver, he will of course click on the “Setup.exe” link that will execute the .bat
the .bat will open a window to your internet page before launching the setup of the screensaver
Then, most people will close this internet page, but some will actually have a look at it and click on some of your ads, bringing you some money.
What will bring more cash ? the cents from Zango when the user accepts to install it, or some cents from adwords when someone clicks on your links? I couldn’t tell you, so it’s up to you to test it and discover!
And remember what Eli says “this blog focus on creativity”! What I wrote is just a base, I tried to make it as easy as I could, but you can obviously improve this and use something else than a damn .bat file!
Monday, 14 December 2009
harro backlinks
by HaRRo
One of the biggest factors of ranking high in the search engines is other websites linking to yours. And one of the most often asked questions on Blackhatworld is....... Wait for it........... How or where do i get them.
Cbox Links - CBox; a Tagboard software that bloggers and website owners can add to their website. It works much like the Wordpress comments part of the wordpress script only its a simple shoutbox type script that you can throw a few links onto.
Google query to find an updated list of sites running this vulnerable software: allintext:[get a cbox]
Two Quick free links - Two simple ones that you have probably seen around a lot when your searching for sites is the aboutus.org and the wiki directory , these can just be thrown up in about 1 minute flat, and make sure in the wiki directory you add some related categories for better potential. They should get you indexed pretty fast.
Referer Spamming - Quite a simple method and a software called PRstorm thats found around this board should easily get you started, you add in the urls you want to referer spam, and the ones you want to be linked. This shows up in referer logs and you can easily get a fresh list by searching sites with referer logs with good PR or those sites with the My top referers list. Yes you can find PRstorm around this forum somewhere.
Unlimited free .edu and .gov links - Another great potential is edu and gov links as Google and others give authority over these types of domain extentions.
The ’site:’ feature in Google allows only results with that domain name or domain extension to show up. You can “hack” this feature to allow Google to find the most relevant university and government websites related to your sites.
Heres a few examples.
Google query: site:.gov blog [or site:.edu blog]
Results in: Google finds any .gov website that is running a blog or has a /blog/ directory. You can then visit these blogs and post comments (if you can find wordpress blogs like this one), and get hundreds of free .gov backlinks.
[Alternative queries: ‘blog’ ‘blogs’ ‘wordpress’ ‘comment’ ‘guestbook’ ‘2007′ ‘2006′]
Google query: site:.edu *your niche* + blog
For example: site:.edu internet marketing blog
The top result is a .edu blog that links to a non edu blog, but that blog is related and is PR3 and has edu backlinks. That is also a great relevant place to comment, even if it is not directly a .edu. On the other hand, the third result was a PR3 highly related .edu internet marketing blog with zero comments. That is easy .edu backlinks!
You can easily replicate these queries to fit your needs, and it is highly scalable. You can find .edu, .gov, and if you are lucky, .mil blogs. If you are not as picky, you can just search specifically for the blogs without the .edu or .gov extension, and you can find some high pageranked blogs on the first pages of results. Play around with it, enjoy it, it’s free! Then ofourse you know how to drop a link on the comments.
Edu Guestbooks - Guestbooks can too be quite good for dropping backlinks and if you want a few edu ones with good PR heres a small list below. Ill not go into detail on how to add your link as im sure you will all know, anyway heres the links.
PR5
http://lsa.colorado.edu/guestbook-add.html
http://www.campusrec.neu.edu/partsea...guestbook.html
PR4
http://www.studentorg.umd.edu/phibet.../guestbook.php
http://nsa.union.rpi.edu/Guest/nsagb.php
PR3
http://www.public.iastate.edu/~bethanyt/guestbook.html
http://www.uaf.edu/webauthors/wagb.html
PR2
http://cratel.wichita.edu/guestbook/...hp?action=view
These are just a few just remember the trick i taught before this on searching google queries for edu links only you can use the + guestbook or whatever name is of a script you know of like vBulletin.
RSS Feed Directories - This ones for the bloggers and forum owners too, anything really with an RSS feed, even if you fake an RSS feed and randomize it, it can still work.
Here is a good list of places to submit your feeds or you can use those automated software like RSS Announcer or Submitter, Or Bloggergenerators free blog and ping tools, theres a ton out there.
* Feedest.com
* Postami.com
* 2RSS.com
* FeedsFarm.com
* RssFeeds.com
* Feeds4all.com
* Plazoo.com
* FeedBomb.com
* Page2go2.com
* Feedooyoo.com
* RSSmicro.com
* FeedFury.com
* Octora.com
* FindRSS.net
* FeedBase.net
* RSSmotron.com
* MoreNews.be
* DayTimeNews.com
* Rss-Feeds-Submission.com
* MillionRSS.com
* Yahoo RSS Guide
* MySpace.com News
* ReadABlog.com
* GoldenFeed.com
* BlogDigger.com
* RSSFeeds.com
* feed24.com
* Findory.com
* WeBlogAlot.com
* FeedBoy.com
* Chordata.info
* BlogPulse.com
* DayPop.com
* IceRocket.com
* Memigo.com
* Syndic8.com
* RSS-Network.com
* Feed-Directory.com
* Jordomedia.com
* Newgie.com
* Feeds2read.net
* NewzAlert.com
* Feedcycle.com
* Bloogz.com
* FeedShark.BrainBliss.com
* FeedPlex.com
* RocketInfo.com
Tagbox Linkdropping - Another like the Cbox is Tagbox it works the exact same way.
Powered by Tagbox
Contests - Contests are a good way of word of mouth or bloggers blogging about it, another good example is a giveaway for say the person who sends the most traffic to you, you can use a link trading script to check whos best or a referer script to see which person sends the most, this will bring links to you if you work it smartly.
Digging - Digging the same as any network like such brings an incredible amount of backlinks and gets the buzz around fast. You can use things like Piqq, which is a digg exchange, you can check my Piqq invites thread for an invite
Digg Comments - Digg comments can get you a few links and the latest comment is always usually at the top. So its an idea maybe to post on the popular diggs.
Commenthunt - Most of you already know this but commenthunt searches blogs without nofollow tags its a search engine type thing you can search for relevent blogs the url is http://www.commenthunt.com
Oggix.com - heres another shoutbox type way of backlinks Check This Query and get dumping links.
A Free EDU blog of your own - Get a free EDU blog of your own or many just by signing up heres the link. Free Edu Blog
Digitalpoint CO-Op Network - Another one that can work in some cases.
Digitalpoint developed a mass link exchange program called the DP Co-op Advertising Network (aff). After signing up, you then add 3-5 links on every one of your pages, and this earns you more linking power (coop weight). The more weight you have, the more links to your site you receive from other members in the coop. You can choose up to 15 anchor texts and there are over 30,000,000 available links in the network today. Sites have been using it to rank #1 for “Debt” “credit cards” “bankruptcy” and “loans.” Such a simple method is allowing them to outrank massive authority sites like Wikipedia, but the main concern is how long will this gravy train last and when will Google do something about it?
Google staff already know about the network, but have not yet done anything to prevent people from quickly ranking for popular terms. I just want to clarify that I would NOT recommend this technique to anyone that is going to be doing a long term link building campaign for their blogs, but I would recommend it for “made for adsense” sites, and even blackhat/greyhat temporary high profit earning sites.
Flickr Spamming - Flickr allows comments on photos taken by other people, now you can go wild and mass comment but i wouldnt recommend it, instead pick suitable pics about your niche and simply write a comment saying something smart like can i use this picture on my blog here, then drop your link, or go wild and do it anywhere.
Article Submission - If you have a product thats going to be released or a new site, its best to get the word around fast, using something like Article Equaliser or something that mass submits to a ton of article directories, this builds fast backlinks but sometimes takes time to get approved, and its best not using spammy type articles but interesting ones work better. And you'll find that a lot of other sites scrape article sites for there own content. Giving even more backlinks.
Using Software - You can also use software like Internet Business Promoter, I prefer version 8, because it scans the engines for you, and gets links using keywords, to semi-automatically fill link submission forms to niche related directories. It works well and although is a slow process works perfectly.
One of the biggest factors of ranking high in the search engines is other websites linking to yours. And one of the most often asked questions on Blackhatworld is....... Wait for it........... How or where do i get them.
Cbox Links - CBox; a Tagboard software that bloggers and website owners can add to their website. It works much like the Wordpress comments part of the wordpress script only its a simple shoutbox type script that you can throw a few links onto.
Google query to find an updated list of sites running this vulnerable software: allintext:[get a cbox]
Two Quick free links - Two simple ones that you have probably seen around a lot when your searching for sites is the aboutus.org and the wiki directory , these can just be thrown up in about 1 minute flat, and make sure in the wiki directory you add some related categories for better potential. They should get you indexed pretty fast.
Referer Spamming - Quite a simple method and a software called PRstorm thats found around this board should easily get you started, you add in the urls you want to referer spam, and the ones you want to be linked. This shows up in referer logs and you can easily get a fresh list by searching sites with referer logs with good PR or those sites with the My top referers list. Yes you can find PRstorm around this forum somewhere.
Unlimited free .edu and .gov links - Another great potential is edu and gov links as Google and others give authority over these types of domain extentions.
The ’site:’ feature in Google allows only results with that domain name or domain extension to show up. You can “hack” this feature to allow Google to find the most relevant university and government websites related to your sites.
Heres a few examples.
Google query: site:.gov blog [or site:.edu blog]
Results in: Google finds any .gov website that is running a blog or has a /blog/ directory. You can then visit these blogs and post comments (if you can find wordpress blogs like this one), and get hundreds of free .gov backlinks.
[Alternative queries: ‘blog’ ‘blogs’ ‘wordpress’ ‘comment’ ‘guestbook’ ‘2007′ ‘2006′]
Google query: site:.edu *your niche* + blog
For example: site:.edu internet marketing blog
The top result is a .edu blog that links to a non edu blog, but that blog is related and is PR3 and has edu backlinks. That is also a great relevant place to comment, even if it is not directly a .edu. On the other hand, the third result was a PR3 highly related .edu internet marketing blog with zero comments. That is easy .edu backlinks!
You can easily replicate these queries to fit your needs, and it is highly scalable. You can find .edu, .gov, and if you are lucky, .mil blogs. If you are not as picky, you can just search specifically for the blogs without the .edu or .gov extension, and you can find some high pageranked blogs on the first pages of results. Play around with it, enjoy it, it’s free! Then ofourse you know how to drop a link on the comments.
Edu Guestbooks - Guestbooks can too be quite good for dropping backlinks and if you want a few edu ones with good PR heres a small list below. Ill not go into detail on how to add your link as im sure you will all know, anyway heres the links.
PR5
http://lsa.colorado.edu/guestbook-add.html
http://www.campusrec.neu.edu/partsea...guestbook.html
PR4
http://www.studentorg.umd.edu/phibet.../guestbook.php
http://nsa.union.rpi.edu/Guest/nsagb.php
PR3
http://www.public.iastate.edu/~bethanyt/guestbook.html
http://www.uaf.edu/webauthors/wagb.html
PR2
http://cratel.wichita.edu/guestbook/...hp?action=view
These are just a few just remember the trick i taught before this on searching google queries for edu links only you can use the + guestbook or whatever name is of a script you know of like vBulletin.
RSS Feed Directories - This ones for the bloggers and forum owners too, anything really with an RSS feed, even if you fake an RSS feed and randomize it, it can still work.
Here is a good list of places to submit your feeds or you can use those automated software like RSS Announcer or Submitter, Or Bloggergenerators free blog and ping tools, theres a ton out there.
* Feedest.com
* Postami.com
* 2RSS.com
* FeedsFarm.com
* RssFeeds.com
* Feeds4all.com
* Plazoo.com
* FeedBomb.com
* Page2go2.com
* Feedooyoo.com
* RSSmicro.com
* FeedFury.com
* Octora.com
* FindRSS.net
* FeedBase.net
* RSSmotron.com
* MoreNews.be
* DayTimeNews.com
* Rss-Feeds-Submission.com
* MillionRSS.com
* Yahoo RSS Guide
* MySpace.com News
* ReadABlog.com
* GoldenFeed.com
* BlogDigger.com
* RSSFeeds.com
* feed24.com
* Findory.com
* WeBlogAlot.com
* FeedBoy.com
* Chordata.info
* BlogPulse.com
* DayPop.com
* IceRocket.com
* Memigo.com
* Syndic8.com
* RSS-Network.com
* Feed-Directory.com
* Jordomedia.com
* Newgie.com
* Feeds2read.net
* NewzAlert.com
* Feedcycle.com
* Bloogz.com
* FeedShark.BrainBliss.com
* FeedPlex.com
* RocketInfo.com
Tagbox Linkdropping - Another like the Cbox is Tagbox it works the exact same way.
Powered by Tagbox
Contests - Contests are a good way of word of mouth or bloggers blogging about it, another good example is a giveaway for say the person who sends the most traffic to you, you can use a link trading script to check whos best or a referer script to see which person sends the most, this will bring links to you if you work it smartly.
Digging - Digging the same as any network like such brings an incredible amount of backlinks and gets the buzz around fast. You can use things like Piqq, which is a digg exchange, you can check my Piqq invites thread for an invite
Digg Comments - Digg comments can get you a few links and the latest comment is always usually at the top. So its an idea maybe to post on the popular diggs.
Commenthunt - Most of you already know this but commenthunt searches blogs without nofollow tags its a search engine type thing you can search for relevent blogs the url is http://www.commenthunt.com
Oggix.com - heres another shoutbox type way of backlinks Check This Query and get dumping links.
A Free EDU blog of your own - Get a free EDU blog of your own or many just by signing up heres the link. Free Edu Blog
Digitalpoint CO-Op Network - Another one that can work in some cases.
Digitalpoint developed a mass link exchange program called the DP Co-op Advertising Network (aff). After signing up, you then add 3-5 links on every one of your pages, and this earns you more linking power (coop weight). The more weight you have, the more links to your site you receive from other members in the coop. You can choose up to 15 anchor texts and there are over 30,000,000 available links in the network today. Sites have been using it to rank #1 for “Debt” “credit cards” “bankruptcy” and “loans.” Such a simple method is allowing them to outrank massive authority sites like Wikipedia, but the main concern is how long will this gravy train last and when will Google do something about it?
Google staff already know about the network, but have not yet done anything to prevent people from quickly ranking for popular terms. I just want to clarify that I would NOT recommend this technique to anyone that is going to be doing a long term link building campaign for their blogs, but I would recommend it for “made for adsense” sites, and even blackhat/greyhat temporary high profit earning sites.
Flickr Spamming - Flickr allows comments on photos taken by other people, now you can go wild and mass comment but i wouldnt recommend it, instead pick suitable pics about your niche and simply write a comment saying something smart like can i use this picture on my blog here, then drop your link, or go wild and do it anywhere.
Article Submission - If you have a product thats going to be released or a new site, its best to get the word around fast, using something like Article Equaliser or something that mass submits to a ton of article directories, this builds fast backlinks but sometimes takes time to get approved, and its best not using spammy type articles but interesting ones work better. And you'll find that a lot of other sites scrape article sites for there own content. Giving even more backlinks.
Using Software - You can also use software like Internet Business Promoter, I prefer version 8, because it scans the engines for you, and gets links using keywords, to semi-automatically fill link submission forms to niche related directories. It works well and although is a slow process works perfectly.
Sunday, 13 December 2009
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