What's This Auto Blogging Thing I Keep Hearing About?
Auto blogging is kind of the new craze for bloggers. The theory is that you can set your blog to fill up with content without any help from you. So, first off, is this possible and secondly is it something you should be doing?
Is auto blogging possible?
Well, since we're talking about people using computers, the short answer is yes. Humans are typically lazy, especially when it comes to repetitive tasks. Computers enjoy doing the same thing over and over again (or at least we haven't programmed them to complain about this yet). So the idea of getting a computer to put a post on your blog at an interval you specify is the natural progression for this.
WordPress has lots of different plugins that will allow you to drip feed content into your blog. Some of these plugins are free but most, because the authors know you're likely to be using this to increase your income, are chargeable.
They all work much the same way: you say which keywords you're interested in and they go off and find content that you're allowed to re-use. This could be in the form of articles, videos, Amazon style reviews, news items and quite a few other options as well. If it's up for grab on the web, there's a good chance someone will have found a way to grab it.
You then drape adverts around this free content that these other kind people have created for you. And hopefully earn money from those ads.
Should you auto blog?
That's not as easy to answer.
Google is said to hate auto blogs with a vengeance and to remove or downplay them from its index at the slightest opportunity.
Which, of course, doesn't stop them from being either created or indexed. It just means that you have to make sure the program you use leaves as small a "footprint" as possible. Things such as random posting times, different sources, adding in royalty free images, allowing comments, and so on all help confuse Google and keep your automatic blog indexed for longer.
Most humans can spot this kind of site a mile off. We're still smarter than computers as a general rule. Web surfers may get tricked into clicking onto your page. Your hope then is that they'll click an advert rather than the back button.
Auto blogs can help you to get through "dry" periods where either you don't have the time or the enthusiasm to write blog posts. Mixed in with real content that either you or your ghost writer has written, they're a good way of keeping your blog updated with fresh content, even if it's not original.
So, the choice is yours. My advice would be to keep auto blogs away from any site you care about. Just in case you incur the wrath of the search engines. But then I'm typically cautious about that kind of thing - my motto tends to be "better safe than sorry" when it comes to earning income from blogs.
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