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Automated blogging has been around for a long time. I remember one of the first tools I used to create content was called Traffic Equalizer. There were probably blogs then but they were nothing like the easy to use content management systems we have today. But that tool worked like a charm to trick Google into thinking it was a valid niche site. The program created content with search results based on keywords you entered and because the results naturally contained a high concentration of the targeted keyword and a good mix of related one they started ranking really easily and I made a lot of money with Adsense in those days. It worked for a while and like all systems designed to trick Google, it started not working as well.

Then along came blogs with feeds that you could ping and rss directories to pick your links up and spread your auto blog posts even further across the internet. Blogs could be posted to remotely or you could find scripts or WordPress plugins to grab content from anything imaginable. Reposting feeds was an easy process and many auto blogging warriors started with feeds. There are endless supplies of feeds on the internet. If you found a niche set of keywords that showed a high cost per click in Adsense, all an aspiring auto blogger had to do was search for feeds related to his target keywords at one of the many feed directories and copy and paste those links into his feed posting plugin . He had just started a brand new business for himself.

But this didn’t stop at feeds. Google had been warning people for years that duplicate content would not rank as well, so people simply reposting other blog posts from feeds were no longer showing up on page one for those high dollar keywords. Some of these automatic blog guru’s resorted to building hundreds of these blogs to make up for the lost income. Some added other content sources like videos, articles from article directories, plr articles and Yahoo Answer results. Again, automated content worked for a while and as Google started filtering out even more duplicate content, article spinners and content generators were being used more and more often as tools in the automatic bloggers toolbox.

If Google was going to stop the rise of more spam content sites in it’s results, then those in the automated niche blog business would just use article spinning software to mix up the words and phrases of one article to create dozens or hundreds more. These then can be posted all around the internet on article sites and blogs for even a bigger network of content. After all, search engines were dumb. They might be able to tell what duplicate content was, but they had no idea what real English looked like. If the keywords were in the right place and proximity and the blogger had built enough links, the posts would rank. You may have run into a few of these posts or articles. They look alright while you glance over them, every word in English. But if you read the article, some parts just didn’t make sense. It was almost as if the previous slap by Google had opened a whole new horizon to content spammers.

Some spinners working as simply as using Google itself to translate one article into another language and then translate it back to English. Other replaced synonyms. Either way, the articles read like ads for Chinese fireworks. But Google never stops. They eventually adjusted their algorithm multiple times this year so that is could recognized and unindex spun, unreadable content. Yes, you now may actually need to know grammar in order to get a better rank in Google now and your sentences may have to make sense. After all, it is Google’s job to present useful content for readers and it’s not useful if you cannot read it.

So content is king again but I have no doubt there will be another generation of automatic content blogs that infects our Google results with spam. It really will be an endless cycle. Because as soon as Google comes up with algorithms that read text like a human, the reverse will also be possible, algorithms that write text like a human. For me, it’s just not good for my health, trying to keep ahead of Google. It can give a a person a stroke. I can’t say I don’t play around with automated blogging, but I never trust that anything done the easy way will last forever. But it is fun, so I will always experiment.

But the best long term plan is unique useful content monetized correctly. You can write or have it written. And the cost of quality content for the internet is going up. Which is a two-edged sword for me. I write. It is good to see a new market for the written word open up that is worth investigating. I would love to be paid just to write, to tell you the truth. But I also run sites that run on content and sometimes, I have to say, content I would rather not write. I have my interests. So to get well-written content, I have to wait for guest posters who aren’t spammers or pay well for good content.

Which has me lately looking at options like Auto Power Blogs which gives you automated blogs and real written content for a monthly price. I just can’t get my words around some topics at times. Oh, I can rehash my research but it ends up flat and lifeless. So open up your blog for guest posting, maybe even pay a bit to attract better writers. Because content is once a against king and while not demanding a kings ransom, it is good to see that Google changes benefit real writers. Unless of course, you study a lot of Natural Language Generation techniques which is beyond the abilities of most people.

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Why would you need to host RSS feeds?

If you don’t using a blogging platform or website that provides feeds for you.

Why do you need RSS feeds to begin with?

RSS feeds provide a way to spread the content from your site across the internet. Most blogging platforms inform feed aggregators and search engines each and every time a new blog post is posted. If your content is not on a blog, you don’t have this option of instant notification.

RSS feeds are one way to help your new content get indexed quicker. Without them, you are just waiting around for the next time a search engine decides to stop by for a visit.

RSS feeds also have another benefit due to their universality. There have been feed directories for a while. Each one sending a link back to each one of your last ten posts. And just about any social network or blogging platform allows you to add feeds to either a sidebar or a profile, giving you even more opportunities to build more links and/or clickthroughs.

The List of RSS Feed Hosts

• dapper.net
• hostmyrss.com
• hitrss.com
• webrss.com
• feed43.com
• feedity.com
• feedburner.com
• page2rss.com
• rapidfeeds.com
• rssfeedgenerate.com
• links2rss.com
• rssholder.com

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#1 Article Tool Chest – It has a built in article writer, knows spin syntax, has an article spinner and a new tool called an article blender that will take articles in a directory and randomly mix the paragraphs into unique content. And it runs on your desktop.

#2 Article Queen – Paste your article in online and have synonyms suggested for you automatically or choose them and then spin as many articles as you like. If you sign up for an account, it will remember your article from last time. There does seems to be a limit on the article word count. I didn’t check what it exactly was, but a few of my articles got cut off.

#3 Article Rewriter – I am not sure what this actually does but put in one article and it spits a new version out. It runs on the Google Application Engine

#4 Free Content Rewrite Tool – This one claims to always make it past CopyScape. I don’t know. Check it out for yourself.

#5 Article Changer – Another automatic article rewriter.

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How To Create Content Series – Part I

I have fought with content for a long time online. It is hard to come up with content. And writing it is a weird thing. When you are in the groove, you can do a lot. However, one day you stop, and then it is hard to get things started again.

I have tried many tools to help me jumpstart the process but tools aren’ writing. And here are times when writing just does not work. So what other options do you have for content at these times?

One type of content you can use is free reprint articles. The only problem with this plan is that everybody and his brother knows about using freely available articles. Which meansthat the same article that you post to your site or blog could be posted on hundreds of other sites across the internet and search engines don’t like duplicate content.

If you were a company expected to provide perfect results for millions of searchs a day, would you? Think of it. Why be bombarded with he same article for pages and pages of results? Instead Google and others use an algorithm to determine which of those articles will continue to be in the search engine results and which will just never make it.

So whatever time you saved using a free reprint article is mainly wasted because your chance of getting your article indexed is lowered. So essentially, we are back at square one again, writing your own articles, at least using a free route to content.

The thing about duplicate content is that is taken as a whole. It’s a percentage. I am not going to give you an exact number but if your article is above a certain percentage different than other similar articles online, then Google let’s you in and counts your content as unique. The exact percentage is unknown, but I have heard anything from 40% to 60%. And that gives you another, let’s call it a loophole.

But written content is only one type of content. There are videos, images, audio and various subtypes like PDF’s, slide shows, etc.

I hope to make this article first in a series of articles on content because links are great and have written a lot about them, but for the most part, once you learn the concept of link building and social media optimization, you pretty much get it all. However, you have to have something on your site when they get there.

And I am assuming that most of you are an army of one, which makes content hard to come by. Well, let’s explore that aspect of affiliate marketing, shall we. And by the way, I am not quite sure how many parts there will be in this series. That part I’m playing by ear.

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• What content is best?

• Article Directories
• Guest Posts
• Content Sites
• Your Own Blogs

The Results from 4 Manually Written Articles

• 4 Unique High Quality Articles
• 40 Better Quality Articles
• 520 Good Quality Articles

Doesn’t It Make Crap Content?

• No all is done manually with a little help from a spreadsheet
• There is a diminishing level of quality starting with 4 manually written articles
• Just put the best quality results on the best quality, higher profile sites and tweak them necessary

Oh, I will just send you there already so you can learn how to turn one article into hundreds.

I am looking for guest bloggers. The topic matter could be anything I cover on this blog, anything that somehow relates to affiliate marketing. Any of the following will be accepted: basics of affiliate marketing, seo, link building, niche blogging, article marketing, pay per click and the list goes on.

I will only accept original articles, no reprint articles and would prefer to all to have unique content not published elsewhere. This site has a pagerank of 3 and many of the interior pages have a pagerank of 3. And I promise I will promote your posts here as if they were my own and possibly even more. And you can link back to your site in your article. I would prefer no direct linking to affiliate programs in your articles, but if you link to a post on your site that has affiliate links, no problem.

If you are a Clickbank product vendor that has written a article specifically for this blog and I can use affiliate links, that is OK also. But I won’t accept a product post unless I see value in the product. There is plenty of crap out there that I would rather not promote.

You can reach me at my contact form. I hope to set up a better system down the road, along with a new theme, which is already ready for this site, I just need to customize it a bit. But for now you can copy and paste the following for a template for your submission:

Title: PASTE TITLE HERE

Article: PASTER ARTICLE HERE

Resource Box: PASTE RESOURCE BOX HERE

And then paste your submission in my form. I will let you know by email if the post is accepted and when it will be published.

I just have a lot on my plate now and this is the best way I see of keeping fresh content on my blog. I will be writing more articles once I free up some time.

Now the landscape is a little different. Sending the same article to hundreds of different directories may not help that much. Once Google notices that they are all the same article, some of the pages containing these articles will be devalued. It won’t hurt you, but it won’t help you either. Your link won’t count.

One way that article marketer’s have found a way around this is by using article spinners. Article spinners take one article and using an algorithm and a synonym dictionary, turn it into tens or hundreds of “articles”. The quotes are there for a reason. I have tested a lot of article spinners. Every single one I have tried out are worthless. Halfway through the first sentence you can tell know human being wrote the article.

About the only other choice is to write a bunch of articles yourself or hire someone else to it for you. An article for each major article directory. And that takes a lot of time.

So Matt Callen, founder of iNet Innovation, Inc decided to give an article spinner away free. That way, you can test it out and make your own decision. When he had this article spinner written for him, he put some guidelines in place:

1. No worthless articles. The articles had to be readable by humans and make sense. Tricking search engines into thinking the articles were unique was not enough.
2. At the same time, the articles had to be unique enough that Google would in no way count a single one of them as duplicate content.

And now you have a chance to try ArticleApps Standard for free. There is a pay version. I am not going to lie. But, giving you access to the free version will tell you more that any sales letter will. Try it. Make a decision. Nothing to lose.

For the most part, I am going to use my own content. My content will do the selling. My content will be what brings in the most search engine hits. I like writing posts, but sometimes in the midst of a project, a blog may get neglected. There are a few ways I can think of to quickly add content to your blog.

Reblogging

This is something I have tried to keep away from. There are some highly ranked blogs that don’t do much more than post an excerpt of a post from another blog and then a paragraph of commentary on the posts. And then there are MFA that just rob other posts.

I have used ShareAPost here for a few fill in posts. I have used the service twice. And four times someone has used one of my posts on their blog.

You can find more information on reblogging at my other blog.

Feed Posting

This covers a lot of things. You can access your bookmarks from delicious via feeds. You can list your Stumbles via feeds. You can list your Tweets. I also wrote about posting feeds to WordPress blogs. With one of the plugins I listed in that article, you can create really custom posts via mixing and mashing feeds.

But if you want to get more specific, here are some WordPress plugins you may be interested in:

• Twitterdoodle – Just installed this one here. It posts keyword searches of Twitter daily.
• Delicious – You don’t need a plugin for this. If you have a delicious account, you can set it up to post to your blog for you.
• WP_StumbleDigest – Post’s your daily Stumbles.

Those are just a few. Do you have a special way of keeping your blog active while you’re busy elsewhere?

One major problem that people face as an affiliate marketer is that not enough online merchants know how to sell a product. You know what I mean right?

It�s easy to drive traffic to a merchant�s page, but once they get there, there�s not a lot we can do to secure the sale. If the merchant can�t close the deal properly for us, it�s bye bye ROI.

Some of them suck at it badly, particularly online stores. The product page has a list of a supplements ingredients, it�s intended user, a small blurb written by a low rate salesperson at the company and finally a button saying ADD TO CART (what�s wrong with saying BUY NOW!). What about a quality headline to catch attention? What about calling out the users by introducing an problem that will be solved by the product? What about benefits, reasons to buy, testimonials, special offers?

Too often a well searched, lowly competitive product has it�s potential for profit ruined by a crappy marketing team.

Anyway, rant over with.

What I was recently reminded of is the ability we have as affiliate marketers to use our own content to do what this crappy product description page cannot, that is, properly convince this person that they should buy a product!

Of course pre-selling is not a new concept, but let me put a little twist on what you might know about it.

The concept of pre-selling is gently describing the product, providing neutral information in a positive way before passing a lead on to a proper sales page to be completely sold. This is great when you�re promoting a product that has a proper sales page and CAN close a customer that has been presold – but what if your merchant�s product doesn�t have that?

One of the reason�s why it�s better to use a landing page for affiliate promotion’s is that you can use your own page to do a better job of selling the person on the product, and in doing so increase your conversion rates and ROI – in the above situation it was by pre-selling but in the case of the petty online store, you don�t have to just pre-sell, you have to SELL SELL.

What do I mean?

I�m talking about using the content on your site, the article you have about XYZ product, to SELL it.

I don�t mean write a sales letter for it but I do mean putting in the selling triggers that the merchant doesn’t have in a way that is also informative and article like.

The content on your site can�t be penalized for being too salesy like it can in an article directory. You can lose respect from a viewer by seeming to promote a product too blatantly but you can get more sales from the visitors by disclosing the benefits, and reasons why people should buy the product.

For example, there is no reason why you couldn�t include a sentence or two like the following in your product name article:

�As customers of product XYZ who have had positive experience would tell you, product XYZ has shown to be:

(List Benefit)
(List Benefit)
(List Benefit)

Furthermore, if you�re the kind of person who has XYZ problem, you�d know how frustrating it can be blah blah (highlight their pain) and you�re probably always looking for a solution to the problem. It seems that so far, many people such as yourself have found product XYZ to be the solution.

I even notice in the sales material (impartial tone) that certain customers have said product XYZ has given them

(Reason to Buy)
(Reason to Buy)

etc., etc.

See how you can sell by being informative but WITHOUT being a salesman.

I guarantee that articles like this will get you greater CTR’s and great conversion rates on the clicks that you do receive.

Of course you do have to gauge the appropriateness of a technique like this on the merchant you�re promoting for. If they have a great or even decent sales letter of course it�s not necessary but if you�re driving plenty of traffic through to them with no result it might be worth a shot.

Source: advertising