The New Year is here and so it’s time for you guys to get yet another way to start making money.
First off - the credit for this idea has to go to Keith Kogane, who brought it to my attention through this awesome Warrior Forum thread. A couple of weeks ago, I didn’t even think about starting an automated niche blog; when back I plan to run a few hundred of them. The thread is old but the idea works.
I constantly test different ways to make money online… now I have no problems with admitting that most of them don’t work. You can’t get lucky all the time, and individual people aren’t good at everything. The key is to keep testing until you find things that work, and then build on those methods.
Anyways, blogging is commonly tipped as one of the best ways to make money online - build a website, put out good content, and the visitors will come. Sadly real life doesn’t work like that.
You can make money blogging - but don’t count on your blog becoming one of the biggest in its niche.To build a single large blog that you can live off, you’ll need to have thousands and thousands of visitors.
This is why the concept of niche blogging is becoming more and more popular these days.
And of course, the best thing about automated niche blogs… is that once you’ve set them up, you can forget about them… because they’re automated!
The Duplicate Content Myth.
If you visit most webmaster / marketing forums, you’ll find people scrambling over themselves to warn others about the “duplicate content penalty”. Woe betide anyone that has even a sentence of duplicate content on their blog as the mighty Google doesn’t like it.
Luckily for you, that’s all BS.
As long as you don’t have duplicate content on the same website, you’re fine.
You can use the same article in multiple places without any issues. You can take articles from article directories that have been used countless of times before, you can use private label rights content… neither will affect your ability to rank in big G.
You will notice that quite a few of the largest websites out there - Yahoo included - are not much more than syndicated content from elsewhere.
Anyways, let’s talk about the automated niche blog model.
You can read the above thread to find out more about this, but I’m going to put out the results of my tests, as well as what I did.
I setup one blog with this idea, not expecting much. I already had the blog idea in mind, but didn’t have the time to organize unique content for it, so working with an automated solution seemed a good enough idea to me.
I bought the domain - a .NET three word domain with the keywords I was trying to target in it; used Fantastico to setup a simple Wordpress blog on my reseller account.
I decided to go with Adsense for this blog, as I couldn’t really find decent affiliate products for the niche and didn’t want to spend too long searching. I already had the niche in mind, and knew it was hot because it’s a fairly large niche.
Now, the above thread recommends you pick an optimized theme. I like to use Pilkster on my Adsense niche websites, so used it for this one. It’s a nice, easy to customize (all you do is change your Adsense pub-ID in). Delete all links in the footer except the one back to Pilkster.
Next, we have to automate the blogging process. You already have a theme and blog with your Adsense ads, so all you have to do is start publishing content.
To find RSS feeds that are relevant, I use Google.
Just type in “keyword blog” in Google and you’ll find plenty of potential blogs for you to use.
Choose 4-5 good ones. The above thread recommends using WP-O-Matic plugin; I installed that, but saw you had to do a cron-job which scared me (I’m a tech newb and have no idea what that is - it’s probably very simple but hey) so decided to go with Feed Wordpress, something I’ve used in the past and know how to work.
It also recommends using the GoCodes plugin to redirect common phrases to affiliate links (for example, on a weight loss blog, you could redirect how to lose weight to a product like Fat Loss 4 Idiots). I didn’t use GoCodes for this blog as I couldn’t find products, but will try it on a few other ones.
Remember to change your permalinks structure for posts. Change them under your Wordpress dashboard, Settings, Permalinks; choose custom and enter in /%postname%/
Lastly, install Google XML Sitemaps and build a sitemap.
Next step (now that you have posts going out) - submit your blog to Digg. Create or use a new / undeveloped account for this; you don’t care about promoting it, just about the high powered backlink. Ping the Digg entry using Pingoat or Pingomatic.
You should see your blog indexed in Google within 24 hours, usually 1-2 hours. This little trick works for any kind of website, so go wild with it.
Next step… the ping list and the RSS feed directory submissions.
For the RSS feed submissions, I outsource these on every blog I create. You can find a list of decent places to submit to in this article by Susan Suarez.
The ping list… my list isn’t massive but it’s good enough.
http://rpc.pingomatic.com/
http://pingoat.com/goat/RPC2/
http://pingqueue.com/rpc/
http://ping.feedburner.com
http://www.bloglines.com/ping
http://blogsearch.google.com/ping/RPC2
http://rpc.pingomatic.com/
http://www.a2b.cc/setloc/bp.a2b
http://api.feedster.com/ping
http://api.my.yahoo.com/RPC2
http://api.my.yahoo.com/rss/ping
http://www.blogdigger.com/RPC2
http://www.blogshares.com/rpc.php
http://www.blogsnow.com/ping
http://www.blogstreet.com/xrbin/xmlrpc.cgi
http://coreblog.org/ping/
http://ping.blo.gs/
http://ping.feedburner.com
http://ping.syndic8.com/xmlrpc.php
http://1470.net/api/ping
http://api.feedster.com/ping
http://api.moreover.com/ping
http://api.my.yahoo.com
http://bblog.com/ping.php
http://bitacoras.net/ping
http://blog.goo.ne.jp
http://blogbot.dk
http://blogdb.jp
http://blogmatcher.com
http://bulkfeeds.net
http://coreblog.org/ping/
http://mod-pubsub.org
http://ping.amagle.com/
http://ping.bitacoras.com
http://ping.cocolog-nifty.com/xmlrpc
http://ping.exblog.jp/xmlrpc
http://ping.feedburner.com
http://ping.myblog.jp
http://ping.rootblog.com/rpc.php
http://ping.syndic8.com/xmlrpc.php
http://ping.weblogalot.com/rpc.php
http://ping.weblogs.se/
http://rcs.datashed.net
http://rpc.blogrolling.com
http://rpc.icerocket.com:10080/
http://rpc.newsgator.com/
http://rpc.pingomatic.com
http://rpc.technorati.com/rpc/ping
http://rpc.weblogs.com
http://thingamablog.sourceforge.net/ping.php
http://topicexchange.com
http://trackback.bakeinu.jp/bakeping.php
http://www.a2b.cc
http://www.bitacoles.net/ping.php
http://www.blogdigger.com
http://www.blogoole.com/ping/
http://www.blogoon.net/ping/
http://www.blogpeople.net
http://www.blogroots.com
http://www.blogshares.com
http://www.blogsnow.com/ping
http://www.blogstreet.com
http://www.lasermemory.com
http://www.mod-pubsub.org/ping.php
http://www.newsisfree.com
http://www.popdex.com
http://www.snipsnap.org
http://www.weblogues.com
http://xmlrpc.blogg.de
http://xping.pubsub.com/ping/
You can copy and paste the above list into your Wordpress admin, under Settings ==> Writing.
With all the above, you should generally start seeing a trickle of visitors start flow in… sometimes quite a bit more than a trickle if you syndicate content from multiple blogs.
End results? Of course, this is the most important thing.
My Adsense blog has so far made $8.62 in three days. Enough to live off? Definitely not. A hugely positive figure for the amount of work put in, and considering I’ll never have to work on this blog again? Hell yes!
I plan to build as many of these as possible. The above one has already paid for it’s domain, which is the only cost (I get RSS feed submission under a bulk deal) per site. One hundred sites making $2/day is two hundred dollars per days… hehe.
Remember, test, tweak, see what works, see what doesn’t. Good luck!
If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!
January 4th, 2009 at 4:40 pm
Jason, you make all the methods seem so easy! Yet every time I try one of them I either end up failing or taking more then triple the time it took you!
This is a great article, I’m sure it will go on my list of “money making ways I should try out.”
Oh, even though it may seem obvious, you could probably make loads more money by selling the autoblogs after they’ve made you some cash.
January 4th, 2009 at 5:13 pm
Thanks Jason. It seems that the Big G wants to scare everyone with the duplicate content penalty but this is not going to work, eh?
Cheers mate!
Ion
January 4th, 2009 at 5:32 pm
Great article, do you care to share with us the URL of this example website that you have created? It seems like a fantastic idea!
January 4th, 2009 at 5:40 pm
Jason, I went through the thread and was a little confused about how the site will gain PR. I understand that that is not the main idea of automating a niche blog, but if you are posting links to affiliate products from your blog, how exactly is your blog getting backlinks and how is it getting PR. It seems you only ping it the one time at the beginning to get it crawled by the search bots, so how are you continuously building links. I would ask on the forum but you have a way of explaining things that make it extremely easy to understand.
Thanks, and enjoy your vacation. Never been to Hong Kong but sounds like a good experience.
January 4th, 2009 at 5:41 pm
Since you used adsense on the site, can you share what size adsense blocks you used and where you put them?
January 4th, 2009 at 7:27 pm
I’m sorry, but what you are recommending doing is illegal in most countries, and I object to it, being a legitimate blogger.
The “duplicate content myth” is most certainly not a myth, Google does penalize pages on other domains that have the same content as others. It’s not so simple as that, but it does happen.
While it is legal to use free article sources’ content, it is not to search for blogs and auto-post their RSS feeds. That is stealing, and it violates intellectual property laws in most countries. You are taking another’s property and making money from it. Your host is likely to recieve a DMCA takedown notice from one of the bloggers you are scraping content from, and your site will be taken down immediately without notice to you, as a result. You would be free to dispute that matter in court, in the country the copyright holder lives in, but copying entire posts would not be considered Fair Use in most countries.
And Yahoo? They are paying for the right to syndicate those stories, from notables such as Associated Press, Boston Globe, New York Times, etc. And you may notice that most of the syndicated content is not ranked in Google, but the original post is.
January 4th, 2009 at 9:50 pm
This sounds like a really cool way to make money. I will definately try it when I have time. The hardest part is finding a niche that will work and be profitable for you.
Good luck with creating another 100 sites.
January 4th, 2009 at 10:15 pm
What a sad approach to making money online. Why not put your time and effort into creating something original and useful rather than scraping what others have written and cluttering the internet with the same content that is out there already?
I think you should also warn your readers that they run some risks doing this.
Yes you’ll make a little money doing this but you also run the risk of being banned from ad networks like AdSense who prohibit the use of content that you don’t own the copyright of. It is so easy to report an AdSense publisher for using content that they don’t have the copyright of - you just click the ‘ads by Google’ link and there are ways to do it. Get banned from AdSense and you lose your income already earned and potential income into the future. Many other ad networks have similar restrictions of what kinds of content you can run ads on.
You also run the risk of getting into legal trouble for using other people’s content. Copyright is a serious issue and if you use content of others in this way without permission you leave yourself open to be sued - particularly if you’re monetizing it.
Lastly you run the risk of running into issues with your hosting. People can issue your host with a DMCA notice. This can lead to your hosting being deleted and sites lost.
Lastly - when Google works out what you’re doing your site gets penalized and eventual deleted from their index. At a flick of a switch your traffic dries up and the work you’ve put in counts for nothing.
I don’t know about you - but for the work you put into it I think you’d be better off to put your time and energy into building a blog with original and useful content that helps people. Over time you’ll build a site that has the potential to earn you an income in an ongoing way - you’ll not get banned from ad networks, you’ll stay in the Google index, you’ll not get sued and your hosting won’t get deleted. But then again - that’s just me….
January 4th, 2009 at 10:32 pm
I was wondering why it was taking you so long to post a new article here, but WOW! I am definately gonna test this method out!
January 4th, 2009 at 10:46 pm
Then again, I just read Darrens comment and never thought about the consequences… I should focus on my long term goals instead of getting caught up in the quick money makers.
January 5th, 2009 at 2:05 am
@ Darren
In this particular instance I agree with you–ripping feeds for adsense is not a good idea, (for both legal and smart-pricing reasons) I don’t agree with your general view of blogging.
Most “bloggers” will pour their soul into a website, writing great useful content and will never make a dime. The big MMO blogs such as yours and JohnChow’s entice thousands of your followers to do the exact same but the outcome is almost always starvation for the participants.
Sure, there are the rare “A-listers” who will rake in the thousands with their blogs, but for the rest of us, earning an automated 5-figure income is sufficient.
Not to mention that real internet marketers are free to start their own blogs after having earned a bankroll from their automated $1/day sites. And we get to do it without the pressure and expectations of earning income or gaining RSS subscribers.
You yourself have pointed out that much of your readership earns less than $100/month through blogging…maybe they should take up our view of internet business and see how they fare?
January 5th, 2009 at 1:50 pm
Sweet, this blog has some pretty solid posts on it so i’ll start with this one! haha, check and respect if it ain’t John Wayne steppin into a rugged saloon full of delinquent spammers to lay down the law. Is their a problogger movie coming?
“He came to make the sploggers pay . . . and post a blog about it later”
Be well wicked if Darren turns out to have like a robot claw or some shit that shoots lasers at all the spammers and saves the world, and has to debrief president obama. I’d definitely see that on the big screen.
January 5th, 2009 at 4:02 pm
I gotta agree with Darren. Its pretty risky having duplicate content along with Adsense.
But I definitely agree that niche sites can make (lots) of money. I recently started my niche site about New Year Resolutions. I followed the posts of a few guys whom I and believe trust a lot - Garry Conn, Jay (from SuiteJ) and Jason Pereira :p . I built it from scratch on December 13th. With a built-from-scratch, ultra-SEO-friendly, clean coded and neat theme, one backlink on Wikipedia’s article related to that niche, and 5 articles on the blog, I earned $15 between December 31 and January 3rd. I also received almost 3K visits within those 4 days from Wikipedia and Google. This was really encouraging for me. I’m now going to keep building more niche sites that earn income without any work. However, I’m somewhat hesitant to experiment with duplicate content, so for now, I’ll stick with original content.
The most important thing for making money online, niche sites or something else, is TAKING ACTION! Action is the most important thing above all. Even if you get tips from the niche site experts like Jason (
), you need to motivate yourself inside and take that leap which will put you on the path to success!
LOL! I spoke too much, I guess.
Thank you for the great post Jason.
January 7th, 2009 at 10:12 pm
Well, perhaps we can switch out the “scraping” part in exchange for using plr articles or a ghostwriting service, but other than that I think this strategy is pretty slick.
January 9th, 2009 at 6:49 am
Won’t you feel Shame …How about I duplicate http://www.makemoneydynamo.com/ using your method? anyway .thank for your idea.
January 10th, 2009 at 3:10 am
Excellent content here and a nice writing style too - keep up the great work!
January 10th, 2009 at 8:03 pm
Thanks for debunking the duplicate content myth. I’ll take your word for it and stop listening to other people.
January 16th, 2009 at 4:20 am
Hi there, firstly i’d like to thank you for pointing out this great idea and I will be putting it to use very soon! Secondly, i’d like to bring to the attention something from the original author’s posts regarding the copyright problems which DO make sense and makes everything seem clear and beneficial to everyone concerned, including the original content owner!
(from warrior forums)
I’m syndicating them. That’s part of the whole reason RSS exists. “Really Simple Syndication”. If they don’t want it re-published, they shouldn’t put it in a feed, is my thinking. But depending on their specific TOCs, I might be stepping on some toes, but not so far as I know.
I also link back to the sources too, so they’re all getting benefit. It’s no different than if I was a news site, quoting stories and linking back to the source. I just do it automatically. Isn’t that really what something like Google News is, after all? I’m not stealing the content or re-labeling it as my own, I’m republishing it intact. I just also add in my own links, and then further re-publish.
My goal as stated is to make a niche authority site. What better way to do that than to set my blog up as a crossroads for all niche related discussion and new content, no matter where it might appear?
In fact, I never bothered to follow up, but I bet original posters who get re-syndicated by me also get a huge SEO benefit from my process as well. Their backlinks get syndicated as well as mine. Never had anyone complain or contact me to be removed. If they did, I could, but what are they getting out of it - free links and traffic?
I hope this clears things up for anyone that is a little put off by the method because of copyright issues!
January 17th, 2009 at 1:03 am
WordPress takes too much work to set up. I tried using WordPress but it’s just too complicated to setup everything with all these plugins and it’s hard to do if you have like 10 or more sites.
I created my PHP script that does it in less than 2 minutes. No MySQL and is only 7 files and fast as heck. Just upload to server and it’s instantly populated with content. Anyways, check it out if you like what I am describing. http://www.instantadsensemachine.com
January 17th, 2009 at 4:33 am
Wow this site is going downhill fast. Way to trash up the internet… methinks this site will be “flipped” soon for a nice profit for Jason.
January 17th, 2009 at 7:30 pm
Sounds interesting, but I try to not piss-off Google (since we depend so much on Goog) so I think I’ll stick to the old-fashioned way of doing things, and slowly build original content niche blogs.
January 18th, 2009 at 12:29 am
Hmm, it’s been almost two weeks since this post with no new content. Did you guys give up already?
January 22nd, 2009 at 6:01 pm
This is just terrible…
January 23rd, 2009 at 8:10 pm
I remember vaguely having touched on this topic with you (i.e. automated sites).
In regards to the whole scheme of content generation there is a ‘flaw’ I think; Video works best and video sites such as youtube etc provide loads of ‘free’ content, bypassing a lot of the critique you are getting to this post. ofc it brings its own unique gripes but…
In regards to monetisation…again I would have to disagree and say adsense is a nono there are ‘automatic’ and ‘un-trackable’ methods.
Again Auto sites are not to make money in the conventional means anyhow…my associate DK1 wrote a little guide explaining the thoughts a bit further http://thenexus.tk/automated-video-sites/
January 26th, 2009 at 8:11 am
Too damn NICE this blog dude. Just came across this article while reading datmoney.com - And I can say that I perfectly agree with what you said about duplicate content. Just bookmarked you on the rss. Gonna keep in touch.
March 16th, 2009 at 5:33 am
Hey all you naysayers, if anything he provides a good ping list! Good list for any blog
March 16th, 2009 at 8:32 pm
…seems like the days of old and AdSense Blog Farms. While this works, yes it’s only a matter of time before AdSense/Google shuts you down. You can go from thousands per month to zero-zip-nada. It has happened to me and it WILL happen to you.
With respect to what Mike said above - just because it’s out there does not mean you can republish it. Take a look at APs feeds - they clearly state that they DO NOT want users to republish their content without permission - in fact most major publishiers will state this and some of these companies are coming down hard on bloggers that violate their terms of use (they’ve got billions and you’ve got ???).
While I was not ripping off content or RSS feeds (I was using articles from article directories) all it takes is one complaint and you are done - so always be cautious!
Mo
April 4th, 2009 at 10:36 am
hey Jason,
Thanks for the ping list.