Autoblogging software allows site owners to produce content on whim and literally puts a site on auto-pilot for the pure sport of making money. For serious bloggers, autoblogging should be avoided.
How It Works
The site owner installs the script or plugin (there are some companies that offer autoblogging software). They adjust the settings of the software to specific keywords that the site should crawl and publish. For example, if there was an all WordPress website, or perhaps an all marketing site. It is very random and even topics are not always on target because bloggers do not tag or categorize their posts properly.
Some of the settings also include scheduling posts, so if the script crawls 100 articles, it will publish each post at the allotted time.
A lot of times when the article has been posted, the site tries to send a trackback to the original article, trying to get backlinks.
Why It Should Be Avoided
Because the crawling can be random, the site becomes just one hot mess of spam. While it seems great to try to make money, it is annoying for visitors because they found the site in the search engines and it had nothing to do with what they were searching for. It also makes the site very messy in organization because the posts publishing will re-publish tags. Unless the site owner has a care, they may have to edit the post.
Another issue is that maybe the full article was not publish or perhaps it was, and no attribution was given. This would be content stealing.
Autoblogging in few cases might serve a great purpose if it were carefully monitored. However, it would be better to blog naturally. Another person’s article is being published and frankly, I find it a bit disturbing that no one is seeking monetary retribution for the money earned by autobloggers making money off of their blog posts.
People are not stupid. They will not leave a comment on a site that is painfully obvious to what is going on. Nor will they click on ads or do any business with a site that does not care one lick about what they publish.
Autoblogging does nothing for backlinks expect for build meaningless ones. This is why bloggers should make sure to check any pingbacks or trackbacks before approving them. A lot of people blindly approve these without taking a deeper look.
Autoblogging, while companies who make this software may say it is great for affiliate marketing – again I say… if you do not care to publish your own content, why should people do business with a person trying to make money off of other people’s hard work.
Truthfully, I believe autoblogging could have had a better and more honest approach. However, all the companies out there (and I am not putting down the developers of the software) that are selling these plugins are not setting a good example for bloggers.
For those who are new to this concept, I recommend checking your comments for pingbacks and trackbacks to check to see if you have been visited by autoblogging spam.
What are your views on autoblogging? Are there really any sites out there powered by autoblogging software that have been exceptions?
I hate these autoblogging programs, they have a terrible tendency to gleam from other blogs and the majority of the time stealing well written posts and not giving any back links to the original post. Also these are usually used by a lot of spammers, just looking for posts on a blog they have created to do nothing but make money from!
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I'm right there with you Niles, auto-blogging isn't any good for me. Not to mention I like the personal interaction with my blog readers too much.
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Autoblogging just gives a very bad quality to the content and to the site. Google is very well aware of this and autoblogging will soon be disappearing from the search engine landscape since google will move even more towards social media hype and actual traffic stats and those blogs usually get zero social activity response.
If anyone wants to be seen as a credible blogger or online business person, then he or she should stay away from autoblogging. Aside from being detrimental to credibility, this will also show people that you do not have the drive to really share information to your target audience, thus putting you in a bad light.
– Wes –
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Autoblogging is risky if you're monetizing them with Adsense. Some users lost their accounts due to duplicate content and violating adsense TOS. I don't understand why people still don't understand value of original content and more behind cheap, junk and useless content generation?