Written on July 9th, 2009 at 12:07 am by Darren Rowse
Why Automated Blogging Tools Should Be Avoided
In the last week I’ve had 3 emails from makers of Automated Blogging tools, scripts and plugins (or RSS to Blog tools) asking me to promote their plugins and systems.
These tools all claim to be able to help you create content for your blog without you having to do anything except set it up, choose a keyword/s for your blog to be about.
The tools sales pages usually make claims like:
- “create targeted blog posts on any topic without writing anything!”
- “start hundreds of blogs on any topic and never have to lift a finger to keep them pumping out as much content as you like!”
- “generate traffic, money and blog posts while you sleep!”
- “Achieve Higher Search Engine Rankings And Massive Affiliate Revenue With Self Updating Blogs”
You get the picture – the list of the hyped up claims that the developers of automated blogging tools make goes on and on!
The fact that these people are asking me to promote these kinds of tools scares me a little as I’ve been pretty anti them in the past and don’t want to be associated with the in any way.
However it also makes me wonder how many bloggers are innocently signing up for them without knowing the dangers of doing so. After-all the sales copy on many of these tools sounds too good to be true – blogging made easy, lots of money, no work….
As a result I thought I’d put together a list of reasons why I would avoid ‘auto blogging’ tools at all costs.
Reasons to avoid Automated blogging Tools and Services:
1. Non Unique Content – at the heart of every successful and profitable blog that I’ve come across is unique content. Auto blogging tools all take content from other places on the web and automatically pull them together on your blog. They replicate what others are doing. They create duplicates of other people’s work. It’s not unique, it’s not original and it creates clutter.
Many of the automated blog tools sales pages say you can add to the content that these auto blogging tools use to add uniqueness to your blog but I’d argue that if you’re creating hundreds of blogs it’s pretty unlikely that you’ll be adding unique posts to many of them.
Blogs that are not unique, that don’t have a personal voice, that contain no original thought don’t tend to get links from other blogs, don’t tend to attract subscribers, readers or comments and don’t generally rank well in Google or other search engines.
2. Useless Content – the other main factor in successful blogs is that they create ‘useful’ content – the type of content that solves people’s problems, helps them solve a problem and makes their lives better in some way.
While some might argue that automated blogging tools can help people by finding this type of information my observation of most of them in action is that they are very hit and miss. Most rely upon you identifying keywords that you want your blog to be about and they then go searching for all kinds of content on those keywords.
As a result you can be publishing who knows what on your blog. Some of it may be useful but some of it might be completely irrelevant and even potentially harmful to readers. Many automated blogs that I come across are a step up from being ‘gibberish’.
3. Personal Satisfaction – early in my own blogging I created a number of blogs that I called ‘link blogs’. They looked at what others were writing online and manually (no tools) collated some of it onto one site. I added some of my own thoughts and it did provide usefulness to readers because it was high quality and all in the one place for readers – but the process almost killed my passion for blogging. It was an empty process for me with no real sense of satisfaction. I stopped doing these kinds of blogs (even though they did make me money and readers complained that it was useful to them).
At it’s best – blogging is an exciting, interactive and fun experience that can give you inspiration, ideas and energy. This kind of blogging (ie using these automated tools) is about none of that.
4. Risk – all of the sales pages on these tools talk about how you can use these tools with all kinds of content legally by using content from sites with APIs, open source content or creative commons content. However almost every time I’ve come across a blog using automated blogging tools they have been scraping content from other blogs without permission from their RSS feeds.
Some blogs allow you to use their content but most do not. There’s real risk in using content from other sites in this way on a number of levels:
- Breaking Copyright – use the wrong persons content without your permission and you could end up on the end of legal proceedings.
- DMCAs and Risk to Your Hosting and Ad Partner Relationships – when I catch someone scraping my content I generally give them a warning but follow that up by issuing DMCAs to them, their site’s host and sometimes their advertisers (like AdSense). This can lead to you losing your hosting and being banned from ad networks (for example AdSense don’t allow you to put your ads on pages where you don’t own the copyright of the content). I know a lot of bloggers who issue DMCAs without warning and push a lot harder on these issues than I do – it can be a nightmare to have to work through these kinds of things.
- Damage to Your Brand – many bloggers skip the DMCA process and go with a ‘name and shame’ approach and publically call out those who steal their content. This can have a lasting impact upon your brand and personal name. There’s nothing worse than doing a Google search for your name and seeing the #1 result being a post an angry blogger wrote about you stealing their content.
- Google Penalties – ever heard of ‘duplicate content’? It’s what Google calls content that appears in more than one place on the web. I don’t know exactly how they treat this content but do know that they try to weed it out of their search results. They don’t get it all but they do get a lot of it and I suspect that a site that is largely classified as ‘duplicate’ will never be seen as an authoritative site on Google.
5. Create Something Worthwhile – my take home advice for bloggers is to create something online that is worthwhile, something that matters, something that inspires, informs and educates. Do this over the long haul and you’ll create something that not only means something but that has every chance of having lasting success.
I’ve heard from a few bloggers that they’ve had some success with automated blogging tools (although most of these were a couple of years back) but in every case they tell me that it’s usually temporary. They start blogs, see a bit of Google traffic before being banned from Google.
Their blogs never really amount to anything, they never build their own profile or become known as authorities in their niches, they never create useful sites that become niche leaders and to make money they have to keep starting new blogs over and over again.
To me this seems like an empty existence.
Me – I’d rather create something worthwhile that will not only survive but that will grow in momentum, build my brand and mean something to people.
What are you experiences of automated blogging tools?
102 Responses to “Why Automated Blogging Tools Should Be Avoided” - Add Yours
Michael Aulia
July 9th, 2009 12:44 am
I get a few “backlinks” from these automated blogs. I was amazed at how people actually use these automated tools to build a “ghost blog”.
I guess the only thing they want is to make money. At least the ones that I know only grab a paragraph of my posts and link back to mine.
and no, I never use an automated tool apart from the WordPress post scheduling feature :)
Roman
July 9th, 2009 12:55 am
My experience is to quickly look away when I hear the words: automated, easy, without lifting a finger.
I have never heard a successful blogger claim that becoming a success was easy, automated and that they did not need to lift a finger. But I have heard a lot of failed bloggers claim that blogging was not as easy as they thought it was going to be.
Manrevo
July 9th, 2009 12:59 am
I think the main reason I’ll avoid these is the whole unique and personalized content. I too like the feeling of satisfaction of writing an excellent post and knowing that it was all 100% my thinking and writing. It’s that whole feeling of pride.
All the content I write on my blog is 100% me, and it lets my voice speak. Every advice that I give to people, I feel like I’m speaking to them directly. I don’t think these tools can replicate that kind of feeling.
Kavey
July 9th, 2009 1:01 am
Mine is just a fledgling blog and whilst I love gaining new readers, it remains about the joy of it for me.
I was very upset to find some of my content scraped without permission and copied onto another site – presumably one of these soulless money-making ventures where new content is needed in order to pull in advertising revenue.
Luckily, it was taken down after I complained in a variety of online fora, though I hadn’t been able to complain directly as no contact details were provided on the site.
I do offer an RSS feed but only a partial one, mainly in the hope of discouraging the use of such automated RSS scraper tools.
Of course, that may lose me some readers – those that prefer to read my content without having to click through from their aggregator to my blog for the rest of the post. So be it.
The trouble is that most people reading your blog are people with a genuine interest in producing their own high quality site and high quality content.
Not the target audience of the makers of such tools.
SpikeTheLobster
July 9th, 2009 1:26 am
I think you’re missing the point. The whole purpose of automated blogging tools is to not give a damn about the actual content, where it comes from, copyright or anything else.
It’s to generate background babble upon which to generate context-based ads.
The owners don’t actually care about the blog, except for the clicks it gets on their ad accounts. That’s it. End of story. Talking about the pros and cons is really rather extraneous, if you’ll excuse my bluntness!
Don Mak
July 9th, 2009 1:28 am
The only real legitimate use of these automated blogging tools would be for an information stream you wished to monitor privately. But then again, this can all be handled via an RSS reader just as easy.
So then we come to the illegitimate uses. If you query “make money online” in Google you’ll see tons of people promoting these tools to create keyword rich sites with Google Ads scattershot across the pages.
My belief is that Google will get better at filtering these out of the results and keep promoting sites with strong communities and original content.
Like you said, it amounts to what your goals are. Some people get off on tricking the search engines and taking advantage of loopholes in search algorithms – constantly starting new blogs to take advantage of new loopholes, and make money teaching others how to do it. Others, like yourself (and myself) would rather build something worthwhile for the long term.
In any market there will be shysters, and the blogging community is no different. Thanks for giving your readers a heads-up on what those automated blogging tools “really” bring to the table.
Don Makoviney
Makovision.com
kosmo @ The Casual Observer
July 9th, 2009 1:30 am
You’re preaching to the choir on this one.
I blog for fun – having something go out and collect content to dump onto my site isn’t fun. Maybe it will make me a few bucks, but I have a day job to make money. If I make money of The Casual Observer, that’s a nice bonus, but I write for personal enjoyment.
I recently added 4 writers to my staff (we’re at 7 total, and will probably add a couple more). How many of them asked about money? Zero. How many of them made any comments after sharing my profit sharing agreement (which I developed just to be on the safe side) with them? Zero. We’re just 7 guys who enjoy writing (yeah, yeah, we’re looking for a female voice to add to the group :)
PraShawn
July 9th, 2009 1:39 am
These are clear points why you should avoid automated blogging software. I think it is all hyped up too. I bought once a very automated blogging software. I do not use it anymore. I think manual blogging is the best. It is more fun then automated ones. Thanks for sharing. Great post.
Agent 001
July 9th, 2009 1:45 am
I was doing a search for ‘Make Money Online’ and ‘Make Money Blogging’ on Google and I got one specific result on both searches. It was a RSS to Blog tool i.e. a Automatic Blog tool. Lucky me I read this article before or I was going to do more search on this tool. I saved some of my time.
Thanks Darren for saving my time.
Preston
July 9th, 2009 1:47 am
Darren, along with these ideas, I’d be interesting in hearing your thoughts on the value of content syndication deals. I’ve been approached by a number of ad networks who also want to syndicate content on the ad network blog. I’ve wholesale rejected all of these because of the duplicate content issue. Thoughts?
Roy Hayward
July 9th, 2009 1:57 am
I haven’t used any auto-blog tools, but I have seen people begin to place their twitter feed content on their blog. The technology seems similar, but (as long as they are using their own feed) the content is their own and hopefully original.
I know you are on twitter, have you thought about putting your twitter feed on your blog? What are the pros and cons to doing this that you see? I still haven’t decided so…..
Dan
July 9th, 2009 2:09 am
I tried some autoblogging tools early on in my blogging career. Although I made several thousand dollars doing nothing, I felt guilty and shut them down.
Laura Bergells
July 9th, 2009 2:33 am
I also see quite a few new “auto Tweet” schemes, running Twitterfeed to update Twitter posts with blog headlines that include selected keyword terms. The Twitterer hasn’t personally vetted the article or provided additional insight — just uses TwitterFeed + RSS to churn content on a regular basis.
The link goes to a blog, so it avoids the copyright issue, but this kind of automation takes the “social” right outta social media.
Without real, human interaction — what’s the point, really?
shajib
July 9th, 2009 2:34 am
I dont like automated tools…. I want to connect with my blog.
Mikes Sumondong
July 9th, 2009 2:37 am
My point of view is this: IT IS REALLY Tempting!!!!!! DOllars without doing anything. But points of view from respectable bloggers like you Darren only say one thing: it’s not worth it!
First, I’d like to thank you for giving an idea on what people do just to earn money: deception and lie. I didn’t know these kinds of services exist but really I praise God for not allowing to know them. AT least for now, i’m serious about my blogging life and am giving a lot of energy to make it beatiful and link-worthy!
Thanks for the tips again as always!
Big Robby
July 9th, 2009 2:42 am
I agree – Blogging has always been – to me- about sharing myself with the world. It’s the same thing over and over – a new technology comes out and there’s major exploitations… then we all move to a new platform. It sucks. But it’s not going to change. I just do my part by creating unique, varied content. Thanks for the post.
Charlene
July 9th, 2009 2:50 am
If I’m trying to develop a relationship with someone or build a community via my blog or Twitter or LinkedIn or any social media, my posts should be hands-on and written by me. Anything else is an insult to my clients, my colleagues and my potential clients. If I were to use an autoblog program then the only ‘community’ I could hope for would be uninteresting autocommenters.
If it’s not mine, then who’s is it? Must mean it was written by someone and chances are good they don’t want you getting credit for their work.
I joined a blog group on LinkedIn because of copyright issues and plagiarism that is rampant on the ‘web. I want to learn more about how to spot it and rectify it – peer pressure is an incredible tool.
AnastasiaCarroll
July 9th, 2009 2:55 am
I haven’t even heard of tools like that. But even if I did I wouldn’t be interested in them. What can a machine create? I can imagine how clumsy the articles will be :)
Merle
July 9th, 2009 2:59 am
Here’s a thought for you. I was using an automated blog posting software to post my own original content, but instead of logging into Blogger where my Blog is hosted I used this third party software to send up my posts every few days. Again, my own content but instead of logging into Blogger to post I used this software. Anyway, not too long ago my Blog was flagged by Google as a possible spam account and I had to ask them to personally review the account and unlock it. Of course, they did, but I’ve gone over and over in my head why it was flagged in the first place and in my mind it must be the third party software I was using to post with. They must have some type of detection in place that flags these accounts. Just my thoughts and I have no proof but thought I’d throw it out there anyway.
Merle
mari
July 9th, 2009 3:10 am
I really would like an auto blogging tool to add some posts, not all. I read and comment on a lot of various blog posts in Google Reader that I’d like to share with my blog readers (i.e. my mom and mother-in-law) w/o having to manually cut and paste and create those posts. It would also ensure content on my blog (so something new to look at when they come look at the page). BUT I use Blogger, which one would think would work with Google Reader, but the only thing I could find was a WordPress plug in so I gave up.
But I agree the idea of an all-auto blog is just ridiculous.
turisuna
July 9th, 2009 3:10 am
The idea of generate traffic, money, and blog posts without do anything is tempting, but blogging is a hobby for me, if you don’t like to write something, then why you should make a blog? Maybe you will get some money, but do you feel satisfied with that? That’s why till now I never use any kind of automated blogging tools.
Dainis Graveris
July 9th, 2009 3:18 am
So much true, I just hate to see stuff like that on social networks – people really think with such rubbish they could earn something and rank good on google. I really hope Google recognizes such sites who do that.
Charles - Big Idea Blogger
July 9th, 2009 3:28 am
I agree with everything you said, Darren.
My content was copied by quite a few blogs using automated tools, but I’m not concerned at all because I know these blogs won’t get anywhere by stealing content. Like you said, there must be genuine effort to create something worthwhile.
It’s amusing that some people still don’t get it.
@CoachDeb
July 9th, 2009 4:01 am
I can’t imagine any automated tool being able to capture my voice & passion for a subject. I can barely communicate my style of writing to a human being doing copy writing for us – let alone automating content.
oi!
Sometimes, a machine just isn’t as good as “the real thing”.
Jim Logan
July 9th, 2009 4:52 am
As someone who’s been ripped-off by the piranha using such tools, your fourth item is the one that boils my blood — taking content from others without asking. More than once, I’ve had my content stolen by such tools to help generate money for others too lazy or creative to earn it themselves.
I too issue DCMAs. And they’re a hassle. More work because someone looking for an easy road to wealth steals your intellectual property.
Todd - Home Construction Improvement
July 9th, 2009 5:01 am
This stuff drives me nuts! I’m so tired of seeing my content hijacked by these ridiculous features! I wish there was an easy way to prevent this.
SEOSpidy
July 9th, 2009 5:05 am
when i start blogging i never want to go for earning money as what spammers do using automated blogging tools. Blogging is the way to success for branding yourself and for sharing your knowledge about your industry and for making people understand and aware of latest technologies and getting most from blog in effective manner.
Sudeep
July 9th, 2009 5:13 am
I am lucky to use Blogger which has a gr8 automated blogging program involved in it . No ideas, but yes these days I have started to use an program called tweetlater which post my tweet any time which I want . I am fine with that ghost programm for sure . Thought being automated tweet applicant .
Patty Reiser
July 9th, 2009 5:21 am
Very informative post. I have seen these ads as well and am happy to say that I was not impressed by their claims. Yes I would love to shave some time off my blogging duties but not at the expense of my readers and offering unique quality content.
Wishing you a scent-stional day!
Patty Reiser
Nicholas Z. Cardot
July 9th, 2009 5:57 am
I completely agree. I’ve seen a few of these myself and I’ve pretty much avoided them the same way that you have. I suppose that it would appeal to someone that is money hungry and wants to power a blog without actually caring about the satisfaction of knowing that it is has good content and is engaging and caring for their readers. Great post.
Cameron Goble
July 9th, 2009 6:02 am
GREAT POST. I’ve run a few blogs myself, and I hope the effort to be creative and personal made its mark on my readers.
Automated blogging tools … BLEAGH. I can’t imagine the draw, other than a tacit admission that a person is uninteresting and has nothing worthwhile to contribute.
Jessie James
July 9th, 2009 6:06 am
Number 1 says it all. Blogs should be unique as these mostly reflect who the blogger is. And each person/blogger is unique!
Asswass
July 9th, 2009 6:15 am
It would be a shame if any respected blogger used these tools. This goes against every little thing we’ve worked on as bloggers.
Chanda | BizDharma
July 9th, 2009 6:18 am
It simply kills the purpose of a blog, and at the end of the day do u just want to name a website as your blog that keeps on dumping garbage or do you want to connect with like minded and achieve your goals with them. Depends on You..
HAVOC MARKETING
July 9th, 2009 6:24 am
You shouldn’t fall for these blogs if you are serious about building a business and your brand online.
We Fly Spitfires - MMORPG Blog
July 9th, 2009 7:06 am
I avoid any sort of automed blog like the plague. What’s the point of them? They usually seem made just to try and make some money from advertising off the backs of true bloggers.
Jhay
July 9th, 2009 7:58 am
It’s a tool for lazy, uncreative people who want to try blogging but don’t really want to blog.
RaceDriven
July 9th, 2009 8:02 am
With these types of tools out on the internet, it makes you wonder if bloggers should revisit partial rss feeds again. Yes I know, this subject again, but my only reason for exploring this subject is stolen content and isn’t some automated blogging tools promote just that?
Dave Doolin
July 9th, 2009 8:06 am
Thanks for posting this.
These kinds of blogs are scourges on relevant search results.
If I may, I’d like to publicly thank Kevin at Blog Traffic Exchange for denying his linking service to such websites.
Dave Doolin
July 9th, 2009 8:09 am
One further comment: many of these blogs DO rank very highly in search engines. As in first page on Google. Which really sucks. I’ve posted examples of totally gamed results on my tinobox blog (search if you’re interest, not grubbing for links here at DRs expense). I think they are sort of like junk mail: if it didn’t work, people wouldn’t keep getting junk mail!
Josh Hanagarne
July 9th, 2009 8:12 am
I’d never heard of this. one of my favorite things about my blog is that it’s mine. Good or bad, I’ve created something–and continue to create something that didn’t exist before me, and couldn’t exist without me.
This just sounds so impersonal and greedy and lame that I don’t even know how to come at it. The best blogs have personal enthusiasm and passion behind them, no matter what the subject is. It’s not hard to spot the greedy phonies. What’s phonier than a robot blogger?
Logan
July 9th, 2009 9:02 am
The point of an automated blog isn’t to have a blog with readers. The point of that blog is to link to another site and to support this other site. They call this other site “the money site”. On the money site they sell stuff.
Josh
July 9th, 2009 9:20 am
I couldn’t agree more.
The users of these tools prey on legitimate blogger’s hard work and steal content.
I don’t give a shit if they point a link back to our sites or not, the fact of the matter is that we all spend a long time getting the formatting right, styling, and crafting the content people consume on our blogs.
As a developer myself, I think the creators of these tools should be ashamed of themselves.
David Eedle
July 9th, 2009 10:06 am
In a burst of complete curiosity I once set up a blog in this totally automated fashion. I wanted to explore the overhyped and extravagant claims some high pressure internet marketers make about these tools. Because I “too could reap $10 a day from Google AdSense” for no work.
I used WordPress tools like the one that sucks in Yahoo Questions/Answers content, and another that sucks RSS feeds.
What a crock. At last check I made $2.58 in 8 weeks. Not much of a business model.
In my experience the purveyors of these tools and schemes are feeding along the bottom of the pool.
Darren’s position is sensible and valid. Great unique content beats everything else hands down.
We too see a bunch of backlinks coming into our sites from these automated blogs, where they’ve RSS sucked stories from us. If we see any inbound traffic at all, it’s always low value – eg doesn’t result in either a sale or a genuine interaction with the visitor.
I’ve seen some pundits suggest these types of blogs are worth setting up as traffic conduits to your real site. But I suspect Google and the other search tools are wise to this, and designate the links as low grade.
Don’t hand over your hard earnt money to these tools makers. For a start there are free plugins for WordPress. And in any case it ain’t a path to riches. So let’s all do the world a favour and focus on creating great content that’s valued by our audiences instead of ripping off other peoples’ stuff.
David Eedle
http://www.NicheContentMillionaire.com
Isaac Yassar
July 9th, 2009 10:17 am
Be yourself in blogging, and be proud of it no matter what. One more addition Darren, if the tool is offered in one lengthy page of a static website (never updated) with big fonts and containing testimonials that are too good to be true. That’s pure scam. Just like crappy site selling scripts, ebooks, and get-rich-quick shemes.
Larry
July 9th, 2009 10:29 am
Thanks for the informative post, Darren. I am just getting into blogging and have been looking for tips. Your suggestion for blogs to be unique, useful, give satisfaction, not risky, and worthwhile are excellant tips. Also, I will definitely stay away fro auto blog software.
Online Surveys
July 9th, 2009 11:51 am
Darren,
What tools are you using to find if somebody using your content on their web sites ?
zolar
July 9th, 2009 12:16 pm
I don’t know about this tools and not use it …
Your tips will help me..
Russell Coker
July 9th, 2009 1:01 pm
When I notice someone making unauthorised copies of my work I search the site in question for content that is copied from major mainstream-media organisations and inform them. Some of those cretins are in a position to ignore DMCA requests that I write, but media companies with in-house legal departments still seem able to get at them. One such SPLOG was shut down three times after I informed various MSM companies about unauthorised copying of their content.
I never give warnings to SPLOGGERS, they know the law and don’t care. If someone has a blog that is mostly original content and goes too far with quoting in a way that I don’t like then I’ll discuss it with them – this hasn’t happened yet.
Google could stop all this if they wished. All they need to do is to institute a policy of not paying for clicks on unoriginal content and paying 3 months after the clicks to give time to process complaints about such content. I believe that a large portion of the SPLOGGER market is for blogs of short duration, when the DMCA complaints start arriving they just move somewhere else after having already been paid.
Peter
July 9th, 2009 1:39 pm
I’ve only used feedwordpress to automatically update my personal stuff from Flickr, Qik, Blip.tv and other places I upload or put my day-to-day lifestream type stuff.
Using it to create a whole site just seems like cheating, and probably only monetizes through search engine traffic as almost noone would become a regular. But that’s probably not the aim.
Sean Davis
July 9th, 2009 1:47 pm
Using these types of tools don’t even cross my mind now. I used them in the past when I would set up a blog, get some content, and flip it for profit. That was OBVIOUSLY a completely different business.
Would I ever use it on my personal blog? Hell no. I hope that’s everyone’s answer.
buy dofus kamas
July 9th, 2009 4:04 pm
Great advice especially about checking out the adsense ads.
Nate Holland
July 9th, 2009 7:13 pm
I would probably get someone to do my writing for me, but I would never go as far as getting tools to generate/create blog and articles for me. How are you going to get original blogs that way?
L-Jay
July 9th, 2009 7:27 pm
Thank you!!!!! for writing this post!!! Slowly more and more of these automated blogs are stealing our original content. I didn’t know what they were called or if anyone else was being effected so badly. (We also recently discovered people have been stealing out original pics and using them of their own blog – they didn’t change the name of the file…lol – and still had our watermark on!) As soon as we get a ‘pink-back’ we ban all thieves, but a question:
How do you stop them doing it in the first place?
Can you ban certain user agents or their spiders without damaging the chances of being categorised by Google and other search engines?
How can we stop these abusers – is it worth while reporting them to their host? Maybe if we all help, one by one we can stamp out these content abusers!
Does anyone have a list of which user agents these automated blogging tools use that they could share?
SpikeTheLobster
July 9th, 2009 7:38 pm
Tip of the day: don’t report them to their ISP.
Report them to Google AdSense. Stolen content = suspension of AdSense account = no money.
Michael
July 9th, 2009 10:37 pm
I totally agree with Darren – “automated” blogging is not worth the risk.
Original content is where it is at – there are no shortcuts to becoming a successful blogger.
Haroun Kola
July 9th, 2009 10:53 pm
I’m one of the people guilty of grabbing content off your site, and now I’ve removed it after having a short chat with you. I’m not using auto blogging software, just a wp-o-matic, a wordpress plugin that brings feeds into my site.
This comment however is about something I read on the Adsense blog at:
http://adsense.blogspot.com/2009/07/speeding-up-attracting-more-visitors.html
They say:
Tip #2: Learn to share
My second tip is more counterintuitive. To attract more readers to your website, consider putting your content under a Creative Commons license so it can be widely distributed. Everything on wikiHow is under a license that allows other websites to publish and even modify or adapt our content for re-use on their sites.
I don’t know all the technical aspects of duplicate content, and the connection between serps and adsense, but its always interesting to me to find authoratative voices giving contrary arguments about the same thing :)
But not wanting to be a thief, at least now I know where I can turn to for content that others are happy to share freely.
Thanks for opening up the discussion Darren
Luca
July 9th, 2009 10:57 pm
It all depends on the tool and how you use it. If it’s just used to post articles from articles sites or rss feeds completly on autopilot then I agree – stay away from them. If you use them to add info to your blog from time to time and you vet what’s actually going to be posted then I don’t have a problem with that.
Let’s face it there are times that we need some help with our content. Used wisely these tools can enhance your readers experience. Don’t get me wrong there’s no such thing as set it and leave it or no work required. I personally like and use utility poster – on occasion – only to add to what I personally write. I
John Paul
July 9th, 2009 11:10 pm
I agree that automated content tools are not a good idea, and def will ruin your brand.
But there are automated tools that can make you more efficient with managing your blog.
Robin
July 9th, 2009 11:22 pm
I had about 10 posts from my blog lifted by one of these – it was pretty scary! I had woken to find lots of trackbacks in my mail box, from internal links. I tracked down the guy with WHOIS, Googled him and sent him a Facebook message (his email didn’t work) and he removed them, saying he was experimenting with the kind of software you mention. While no-one would take the blogger seriously, it’s stealing and we never really know how Google treats duplicate content – maybe it doesn’t do any harm – I dunno.
Felix Albutra - SighNetDollars
July 9th, 2009 11:34 pm
Thanks for the information Darren. Yeah it’s true that there were many of them were offering this kind of offer.
Carleenp
July 9th, 2009 11:44 pm
I take content theft very seriously. I send DMCA take down notices to all sites that republish my content in full and actively follow through by reporting to hosts and advertisers as needed. I worry less about partial content theft/headline aggragators simply because I lack time to pursue it all and those are less damaging.
I find that about 50% of the sites are rather naive: They don’t know that they are doing something wrong and are surprised to learn about copyright laws. Or they think because they linked back it is all OK–again, they simply don’t understand the law. The other 50% know full well what they are doing. I’m kinder to the first group by giving them more time to remove my content and I and try to explain how it works. The second I give very little leeway too–After my initial request they get the full DMCA notices sent to all who might take action quite quickly if my content is not removed. I have no sympathy for those folks.
One further note, I state that I charge a rate of $85 per post per 3 months of use if my content if not removed. I have yet to actually bill someone, but I know of a photographer who has done this and who successfully pursued the action in court. So taking content could have another direct monetary risk as well.
Muiden
July 9th, 2009 11:46 pm
Good to see you spent a blogpost about this matter. I have a colleague at work who thinks autoblogging tools are fantastic and I have tried (but not succeeded yet) to make him see he is not only stealing other peoples’ work, but also not adding anything useful to the web.
I think you should have switched your #1 and #2 reason though, first and foremost splogs are completely useless!
Note that I have reported a couple of splogs to Google, but it seems they really don’t care, all of the sites in question are still ranking on the first page and Google is earning its commision via Adsense. Quite shocking for a company whose motto is ‘Do no evil’!!!!
ITrush
July 10th, 2009 12:08 am
Been researching for this kind of tools because I’m really curious about how they work.. thanks Darren for opening this up to us.
Nihar
July 10th, 2009 12:20 am
Agree with you.
I heard first time that there are automated blogging tools which can create posts for you.
Anyways it is not good. It is always better to write your own post rather than copying it.
Youngistaan
July 10th, 2009 1:34 am
I really hate these kind of tools. I can do all these things then why i need any tool.
Wayne
July 10th, 2009 1:46 am
There is a place and style made for automation, but it isn’t when you care about subscribers, comments or the content itself.
The posts that some of these tools create is true crap, but there ARE ways of making this work when all you want is search traffic.
You know my history a bit Darren, I started off my blog by creating some automated posts, and went about it completely wrong. I’ve since found a way to create a blog, get it indexed within hours, and have it update itself. My blogs get some really good search traffic and make me some decent money with AdSense and other affiliate programs. (Finally!)
I don’t care about subscribers or comments on these “blogs” (as if you can call them that after scaling back the functionality to such an extreme) as they are targeted to obtain long tail search traffic.
I wouldn’t use any of these methods on my personal blog, but they are very worthwhile for those of us that own a few hundred domains and simply want a way to monetize those domains beyond the normal default AdSense landing pages they start as.
There is absolutely no risk what-so-ever with the way I do these sites, there is original content, enough to pass muster at least, and nothing is copyrighted nor illegal.
I agree with you Darren, but also disagree with you. There are ways to make the automated tools work to your advantage…it’s all a matter of perspective and approach, but there are reasons and ways to use these tools without hitting any of the points you brought up.
Just thought I’d share that.
Cheers!
Wayne
July 10th, 2009 1:53 am
I’m also finding most of these comments amusing. So much for thinking outside the box eh?
Seems that SpikeTheLobster has a fair grip on the possibilities, however, I’d also disagree with creating it just for background noise.
vaibhav
July 10th, 2009 2:42 am
I liked your tip SpikeTheLobster
“Tip of the day: don’t report them to their ISP.
Report them to Google AdSense. Stolen content = suspension of AdSense account = no money.”
Steve
July 10th, 2009 3:10 am
All good points, Darren. Just another lazy get-rich quick scheme.
Keller Hawthorne
July 10th, 2009 4:08 am
I’ve noticed a few websites have “scaped” my content, added it to their blog, and provided a link back to my post to read the rest. This would be nice, except they don’t provide any thoughts of their own on my post. They aren’t publishing it to discuss and share with readers – they’re publishing it to add content to their website hoping the search engines will find it useful. Their entire website is made up of these worthless posts.
I’ve been asked if I allow people to share my content. I would LOVE for people to share, but they need to do it in a way that benefits readers and provides me with credit.
These scraper sites have been around since I got into the Internet marketing world, and they’ll continue to be around in the future. In the past, these tools were targeted at websites, but with the explosion of blogs, the industry has shifted to what should be a QUALITY CONTENT environment.
I don’t care for websites/blogs that post crap content just to help monetize the owner’s domain or make a few bucks on Adsense. This activity seems to just clog up the Internet with more and more worthless websites.
BloggerDaily
July 10th, 2009 4:34 am
Automated blogging tools is an easy way to get content with just a little effort. Maybe it’s fun doing this but you’ll find yourself in a great later on.
For me, satisfaction of creating content is the keyword of my passion for blogging. We create articles and tips, peoples read and leave their comments for it. That’s awesome!
Why not you choose a way to be a professional blogger? The road is there!
Ola Zulawinska
July 10th, 2009 4:47 am
Besides
I’m blogging in Polish (and in this language verbs, nouns and everything else changes) and I think such tools are useless for languages other than English. I saw some blogs created by such a programme in Polish and their grammar were pretty funny.
fas
July 10th, 2009 7:03 am
High end bloggers like Gary Conn also say that making sites using auto blog tools is cool, you can make 100 of them, earn $1 a day from each a day and thus earn around $3000 a day.
Mohnish
July 10th, 2009 9:40 am
Making Money this way isn’t cool. This is a crime. This is as good as stealing someone’s money. @Fas
Technology Slice
July 10th, 2009 9:42 am
If it seems too good to be true it usually is.
edos
July 10th, 2009 10:02 am
i dont see any reason a blogger should opt for such automated tools for blogging, afterall you are a blogger cause you want to share your opinions.
Debbie
July 10th, 2009 10:32 am
I’m still rather new to the professional blogging world. I can tell you that any program that has too much hype immediately looses my interest. My mother always use to say “if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.”
But I did have a question: What is a DMCA take down notice? How do you create one in the event your content is stolen?
Thanks for another informative post,
Debbie
karsten h.
July 10th, 2009 10:38 am
That’s ridiculous! How can you ever expect their to be quality content if everything is automated. The only way that one of those tools would work is if there’s actually just real people behind the tools writing all the content and being paid for it. Technicall they aren’t scams, but in a way they’de be lying if this is true.
Joshua Parker
July 10th, 2009 12:47 pm
Wow, never knew a service like this existed. It’s like phantom blogging, but worse.
Anna
July 10th, 2009 3:10 pm
This is an excellent post. I really appreciate it. When I see those sales pages the same thoughts go through my head, but it helps to hear it so clearly from someone who really is running a highly successful blog.
I am very curious about the DMCA issue you spoke about. I have been frustrated in the past when I found my writing used and even plagiarized without my permission. Even my poetry with someone else’s name attached! I contacted people, filled in some reports, and tried to research more on what to do but I got a bit lost … is there a lot of red tape or am I just not following the right procedure? I would love it if you considered writing a post about that topic! Ie, what to do when someone is stealing/plagiarizing your content.
Nate
July 10th, 2009 3:36 pm
Automated will only produce crap for sure. Just spend a little time and create a great blog people will actually want to read. I’ve been to so many sites where all of the content was a garbled mess.
Alex
July 11th, 2009 2:10 am
Excellent illustration on why you should never use “zombie” tools to build your business. I don’t have any experience with any kind of automated blogging tools, but I’ve seen people rave about these new automated backlink builders like Free Traffic System and Linkvana. Those are very similar to what you’ve described. The first one is free and Linkvana is ridiculously expensive ($150 a month) The idea behind those is that they supposedly spin one of your articles and you get 30+ backlinks just from one article.
The fact of the matter is – your content becomes junk spread over hundreds of blogs. I personally think it’s a waste of bandwidth and almost certain Google will be banning sites using these services in a near future.
George Hall
July 11th, 2009 7:05 pm
Have to agree, after a little lesson on that over on Twitter.
For awhile I’d been using my Friendfeed-aggregated news links to automate providing news items, which saved me heaps of time having to search for such news myself.
However, one of my Twitter followers pointed out that he’d been talking to a few other Twitterers and had come to the conclusion it wasn’t a good thing.
I did my own survey of other Twitter followers and found they too had problems with it. Extra layer of linking, for one, detracting from my usual “voice” another…you get the drift.
There was also a problem I’d noted personally…that news items often came in ten-item bursts, which I found personally not what I’d wanted.
It was a correct decision to cut out all ABC Australia news items from my Twitter feed from that aggregation, as well as Herald-Sun items.
I still leave TechCrunch and geek.com feeds from Friendfeed there, and it seems I haven’t heard anyone complaining yet. This is more newsworthy to my local followers…and it’s spread out a bit more evenly.
For a while, doing this helped me concentrate on the conversation side of Twitter, but it still had a negative effect and it was a valid point to do something to solve it.
Tall Blogger
July 12th, 2009 1:52 am
I agree with you on that. I think writing isn’t hard at all and should go from your heart and mean something to you and others.
Cell Phone blogger
July 12th, 2009 3:02 am
I have to agree that the automated way of doing things is a recipe for trouble. These tools may be faster and more efficient, but produce a lower quality result and lessen the effectiveness of your message. You have to look at quantity versus quality when it comes to what you are doing.
tracelemental
July 12th, 2009 10:48 am
I love it when I read articles like this. Having turned my attention to internet marketing and blogging only 2 mnths ago, I’ve found myself wading thru so much crud. Its great to read truthful and straight forward info.
cheers Darren, you’ve made my day :)
Make Money
July 13th, 2009 2:59 am
Creating that kind of blogs are “supporting blogs” and they do not have value in google,as for getting your link juice for your main blog,it is good,so how this is different from “paid links”,many bloggers do not have money to pay links,so they decide to create this kind of blogs.IMHO
Miss Edie
July 13th, 2009 9:25 am
I have never used them, but I haven’t gotten that far to know of them.This is one for my book marks
Thank you
Make Money
July 13th, 2009 8:24 pm
I agree with you, the “content” created by such plugins and other scripts has no use. But if you want to monitor some content then this can be useful but this aim can be achieved via a normal feed reader.
Real Content Makes You King
Copied Content Makes You Miserable
tracelemental
July 13th, 2009 9:35 pm
Since I commented on this a few days ago, my blog content has been used as extracts with links to my blog twice. Through this blog entry and discussion with a number of my twitter colleagues, I’ve learnt the process for dealing with copyright infringement. I useful exercise for any blogger I’m sure!
One of these sites that is using my enteries simply scrapes hundreds upon hundreds of posts as extracts onto a blog with no creditials, no contact info.
Its all good experience for me in defining and tuning into the type of internet/web blogger citizen I wish to be.
Jason Su
July 14th, 2009 1:39 am
These tips were very helpful, Thanks.
As a blogger, I also have been offered some auto blogs or I was requested to advertise these autoblog tools which i turned down immediately.
There are some things these companies are not telling you; sure the autoblog softwares work, but many of these have codes in them that links your blogs to theirs, so that they can get free back links. What that means is that they are using your blogs to get free advertisements for them!!!
So yea, Thank You Darren for using your blog to tell people that they should not use autoblogging softwares.
Hank Heister
July 14th, 2009 3:47 am
Darren, just an excellant message… I’ve been a nutritional researcher and health coach for 30 years and have just begun to learn about social media. I see all of the hype ads on twitter and know that this has little value and much risk to ones reputation. Your words bring much wisdom! Be blessed. Hank
Jeff
July 14th, 2009 7:37 am
Good points all.
I recently saw a system where a guy claimed to have put up 400 sites. He said 200 were making money. If that’s true, and I don’t know, then that’s 400 crappy sites I might have to compete against.
I want to start a blog and write about things that interests me and it wouldn’t hurt my feelings to make enough to cover my expenses. But I don’t see any way of making just a little money. It seems like you need 500-1000 visitors a day to make anything. And I don’t know how to get that kind of traffic today without ranking on a search page.
How can I blog about say, solar energy and expect anyone to ever see my post, let alone make any money.
I think Google needs to do a better job cleaning out the trash. That would be a good start.
SURVEYS FOR MONEY
July 19th, 2009 12:59 pm
What’s the point of blogging if your going to use automated tools. Blogging is the bloggers thoughts put into writing. Automated tools take away from unique and original content. You want to blog so the reader will remember or subscribe, and using automated tools just does the opposite.
Mike
July 20th, 2009 11:31 am
I also wonder whether providing full or abbreviated RSS feeds has an impact on these automated content splogging systems that are in turn based on RSS pulls (for those who aren’t aware Feedburner for example gives you an option to provide abbreviated posts only).
You kindly responded to an email question about this by saying that with full feeds ‘less people visit but more people are reading’ but I think there is also a marginally reduced risk of people ripping off content with abbreviated RSS feeds.
How big that risk is who knows: I was amazed when I wrote a spoof post about the worst blogging ‘advice’ I’d come across which included an imaginary splogging system ‘Nichesplogger’ to then get an email from a reader asking for more info on it.. So I guess there’s a market!
Ed Hardy bags
July 22nd, 2009 5:48 pm
You kindly responded to an email question about this by saying that with full feeds ‘less people visit but more people are reading’ but I think there is also a marginally reduced risk of people ripping off content with abbreviated RSS feeds.
backlink builders
August 10th, 2009 5:47 pm
“Thanks for the post. It was o.k.. I have a backlink builders site at when you have the time!!”
JOHN
August 17th, 2009 3:28 am
Hello, are you saying Automated blogging is not good enough for blogging?If yes What are your options?
romanzick
September 7th, 2009 4:49 pm
for master maybe it is not important, but for newbie? it is very curious things to try honestly
Alek
September 17th, 2009 7:09 pm
There is a constructive way of using these tools where it adds value instead of taking. They can be used as a tool for speeding up certain things, instead of the flashy “run a blog on autopilot” marketing. Here’s how I see it.
(must) Only use supervised posting (nothing gets posted to the blog automatically)
1) Guest posts—>
These plugins find any new articles on article directories that fit your theme… Say (wordpress design)… So i have it post the article in my drafts folder, with the following template:
-> [My introduction text, like hey guys, this is a nice article on wordpress design by a guest poster, check it out]
-> [The actual article]
-> [The resource box]
-> [My outro for my readers]
* I just write/edit the intro/outro
** The point of this is that you can feature 1-2 relevant guest posts per week without doing too much work… You get all the related articles in your drafts folder, you just publish the ones you like.
2) Yahoo Answers
Quite a few these plugins have a “yahoo answers module”… What this is, is that it pulls all the yahoo answers related to your blog’s theme, and turns them into drafts. Here’s what My template looks like for these:
Here’s another interesting question I found at yahoo answers guys. See what [name] wants to know.
[question]
And here’s what I think the best answer is… (this is where I answer that question)
And, here’s what some of the other folks on yahoo answers answered:
[other answers].
*I put in my answer and sometimes customize the intro if needed.
STRATEGY:
Mix&Match… I have something like :
-4-5 yahoo answers I post a week, and
-1-3 guest posts (articles) I Feature
-1-3 articles I write in my own voice*
… In addition to me writing 3-4 articles from scratch a week.
*If I like the theme subject of one of these articles that end up in the drafts, but I don’t like how the person wrote it, I just write it in my own voice/opinion. Keeping the title
This a legit, value-adding way of using these tools… It allows for a busier, faster growing blog, while adding value at the same time.
**How you add value**
- The yahoo answers end up being about 70% unique content (just adding 1 paragraph answer makes for an awesome looking post) and I give an awesome to-the-point answer (these attract a lot of long-tail traffic coz they’re natural real-world questions)
- The guest posts add value to the original author (these are article from article directories with republishing rights) as the author gets a free backlink (the autoposter keeps the author box intact)… adds value to my blog (these get almost as much traffic as my original articles from scratch, and adds value to my readers (find out about other authors)
-The articles from inspired writing… As any post you would write. You just use the original article to inspire you. Its a topic you go “wow, why didn’t i think of writing that article!”… And you just write the same article in your own opinion/voice.
How it saves time:
-Yahoo answers: I get 5-6 unique pieces of content a week with basically… a total of 5 minutes work altogether… Saves a few hours of trying to think what people want to know answered. You end up just needing to write a paragraph of 30 seconds, instead of researching for 20-30 minutes.
-Article ideas – these just appear straight in your drafts… If you like the author’s original article, just click publish and you both win. If you like the point of the article, but not how its written, select the full text, hit delete, and write it in your own words… Saves hours a week of thinking what to write about.
Elvin
October 3rd, 2009 11:04 am
Hi, Darren
Thanks your advice.
In my opinion, automated tools will help to save time, but we should not rely on it totally. We may automate some contents but we need to put in some effort to deliver quality contents also. This will create uniqeness to our blog while save some time of blogging for busy people.
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