Blogging 101: Mass Generation Of Blogs

Blogging 101: Mass Generation Of Blogs

by Gobala Krishnan, IAHBE Staff Writer

What if, at the click of a button you can create 1,000 blogs that update automatically every day while you sleep? What if, by end of the month your network of 1,000 blogs generates one million visitors and makes you a cool $15,000 with Google Adsense or affiliate programs?

No, it’s not a dream and it’s not a scam either. With certain “mass-generation” tools on the market today, you can do this for a moderate investment.

As easy as it may sound, no one can guarantee that it will work for you. Some people call these mass-generated Blogger or Wordpress sites “spam blogs,” “splogs” or “scraper sites.” These people claim that it’s just a waste of time, since Google and other search engines will eventually ban your sites.

Others can prove that it works and are even willing to teach you how to do it properly. Therefore, take this article as an educational experience, and do your due diligence before dishing out your hard earned cash.

How Does It Work?

In general, free blogging tools like Blogger are easy to set-up and use. So easy in fact, that certain processes can be automated. When you can automate the process of creating and posting, then it won’t take long for someone to create software that enables you to create as many blogs and blog posts as you want with the click of a button.

That’s how mass-generated blogs got started. Here’s the process in general:

1. Upload Keyword List—Using a centralized control panel, you can import a list of keywords into your account, and the software automatically creates blogs using those keywords. These blogs will either be created on Blogger.com or on your own hosting using subdomains.

2. Multiple Templates—For every blog you create, you can assign a different template to it. In fact, some of the software explained below even allows you to randomly assign templates from a set of pre-designed generic templates to your mass-generated blogs.

3. Grab RSS Feeds—The software will then use the list of keywords to find and syndicate RSS feeds from:

a.Popular news sites like:
i.Google News
ii.Yahoo News

b.Blog directories and search engines like:
i.Google Blog Search
ii.Yahoo blog Search
iii.Technorati
iv.Bloglines

4. Post to Blogs—Once the RSS feeds are syndicated, the software will then post the content of the feed into your blogs, with a link back to the original source. The posts themselves appear as individual pages on your blog, adding to your blog content and size.

5. Ping Process—After each post is created, the software automatically pings popular ping sites. When a “ping” is made, your post summary usually appears on the ping site, and search engine spiders that already visit the ping sites everyday start to follow the links to your blogs and start to index them.

6. Automate Tagging—Some software also enables you to “tag” popular blog services like Technorati, resulting in links from the sites to your blogs.

7. Cron Jobs—A “cron job” is a script that allows your Web hosting server to do routine tasks at a specified date and time. You can specify cron jobs to run every day, every hour or even every minute. Using cron jobs, the software can put the steps 2-4 (above) completely on auto-pilot.

8. Inter-Linking—All your sub-domains are set to link back to your main domain name, or randomly to other blogs in your blog network. Although the linking method was quite obvious at first, newer versions have complex linking systems to make it appear more natural.

9. Easy Adsense Insertion—The software also allows you to easily insert your Adsense codes. In fact, most of the templates already contain pre-defined areas for your codes. All you have to do is insert your code, save it, and refresh your main blog to see the Adsense codes.

10. Automate Article Posting—Some of the advanced software allows you to pull articles (in TXT format) from any folder on your Webhost and post them to your blogs as if a real person had posted it. Most of these articles are generic and contain no author name or copyright.

That’s basically how all mass-generation software work. However, to really understand in detail you’ll probably need to try a few yourself. For the benefit of IAHBE readers, I have tested and listed two of the market leaders, and listed a few alternatives that I have not personally tried.

Blog Solution & Content Solution

Blog Solution developed by HalfAgain Marketing LLC is probably the best example that has all the features mentioned above. Retailing at $297 for the script, once you’ve purchased Blog Solution you can upload the script to as many domains as you want.

Blog Solution creates multiple subdomains on your main domain name and mimics the programming structure of Wordpress. However, the blog software itself is proprietary, not the open-source version of Wordpress.

The toughest parts in installing and using Blog Solution:

1. Getting Your Own Server—If you have 100 blogs posting 10 articles a day, by the end of the month your server account could be so clogged up that you may be shut down by your hosting provider. I don’t mean to scare anyone, but it’s the truth. If you’re just testing the concept you can use whatever host you’re on right now, but to have a full-fledged Blog Solution system you need to spend a little bit more. The best way to do it is to get your own server:

a. Dedicated Server - Since you own the entire server, no one will ever shut you down for taking up too much space. Of course, if space does run out you’ll need to get more.

b. Virtual Private Server - A cheaper option that still maintains most of the control and feature you get with a dedicated version.

2. Getting wildcard domains—The “wildcard domains” or “catchall” domains feature allows you to create domain names automatically. This functions needs some custom programming on many Web hosting plans. Personally, I had to contact my Web host with this requirement and they got it done within a day.

The rest of the set-up process is fairly simple, and their user guide is helpful. Once you passed the set-up stage, you can just paste of list or keywords, select the RSS feed source, and your entire blog system is set-up.

Half Again LLC has another product in their line, called the Content Solution. Content Solution (CS) basically acts as a central depository for text files that are added to your Blog Solution sites as new posts and articles. In other words, instead of just getting RSS feed summaries on your Website, you can also add real articles (minus images) to your mass-generated blogs.

Here’s how a Blog Solution site may look like, based on the default templates:

RSS To Blog

RSS to Blog by itself is not a mass-generation software. It’s a software that enables you to publish RSS feeds as new posts in your Blogger or Wordpress blogs. For this purpose, it does an excellent job and justifies the hefty $297 price tag.

A newer addition to RSStoBlog however, enables mass-generation. Called the “RSStoBlog Mass Installer,” it does exactly that. It allows you to create many Wordpress blogs or Blogger accounts and uses the original software to feed content via RSS. This is stated on their Website:

You do not need to have RSS to Blog to use R2BMI, but it does work better if you have the RSS to Blog companion tool to top off the blog creation process.

R2BMI costs $297 as well. Getting both solutions together will cost you around $540, a discount of approximately 10%. To get this offer you need to click on the link at the bottom of their Website.

If you’re not ready for such an investment, you can just get RSS To Blog, and set-up your own blogs one at a time. Otherwise, you could try Blog Solution mentioned above.

Other Generation Software

Here’s a list other mass-generation software that I know of but have not tried personally. You can explore these services at your own time and space:

1. WP Burner (WP Only): http://www.wpburner.com
2. WP Mass Installer: http://www.wpmassinstaller.com
3. Manager DX (Wordpress only): http://wpmanagerdx.com
4. Blog Generator: http://www.bloggergenerator.com
5. Auto Blog Generator: http://www.autobloggenerator.com
6. Fast Blog Generator: http://www.fastbloggenerator.com

Ideas On Making It Work

To achieve better results with Blog Solution, RSS To Blog or any other mass-generation software, I strongly recommend that you follow these strategies:

1. Get Your Own Templates—Don’t use the standard templates. Hundreds of other BS site owners are using them. Pay someone to develop a few simple yet beautiful templates for you, and if possible put more images on them to increase the attraction of an otherwise text-only blog.

2. Get Rid Of Footprints—There’s some generic text on your Blog Solution templates. Get rid of them as soon as possible to stand out and remain undetectable by search engines and prying eyes.

3. Get Better RSS Feeds—Although Blog Solution already gets feeds from Google, don’t depend on this default feed source. Browse the Internet and look for other lesser known and lesser used RSS feeds. Sticking to the default will only get you “default” results.

If you don’t make these simple changes as soon as possible, you’ll be easily identifiable as part of a group consisting of all other users of the software, and it would be easier for search engines to block or even ban your sites.

I can hear you say “What? I can get banned?”

Well, of course. There’s a possibility of that happening, especially if your blogs have zero value and only take up more space in Google’s data storage servers.

Conclusion

The bottom line in using mass-generation software is that you need to be prepared to do some extra modification work before unleashing your “army” of blogs into cyberspace. While it’s easy to create 1,000 blogs by tomorrow, you should not do it.
Instead, let your mass-generation software create blogs slowly and naturally, and even though it may take you more time to get indexed and start making money from Adsense or affiliate program, you’ll be the last one laughing when your sites perform well in the long run.

Gobala Krishnan is a staff writer for the IAHBE and a home based entrepreneur in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. His company helps frustrated and underpaid employees transform their passion into a profitable home based Internet business. For more info visit http://www.OneDollarCoaching.com.