Automation = Money, but no quality?

Webmaster Discussion
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#1

I’m just wondering - and this is in no way critisism - There are more and more automated blogs, TGPs and even Tube sites which just use provided content (texts, images, vidoes) and republish them without much change - Refeeding?

Chub’s own project and work BlastReport seems to be indicating that by doing loads and loads of sites and republishing most things automatically it does equal a good profit. I must say its impressive!

Meanwhile I’m spending huge amounts of money each month on writters creating custom blog content, reviews and written work. When actually maybe people dont care. Instead I could have setup 100s of automated sites which refeeds sponsor content and potentially making a lot more money.

I am actually starting to doubt the value in creating custom content other than reviews. Maybe I’m just creating some nice custom stuff for a small amount of people where as most surfers would be just as happy with sponsor provided automated content?

I do however notice that for example on Bestmaleblogs.com, automated sites always gets scored very low by surfers (1 out of 5). However again these surfers might be a minority.

Is the future in automation rather than creating custom content?

#2

Re: Automation = Money, but no quality?

Yes the future is automating certain taske, but rss and copy/paste is not the way forward imo. I did a load of rss blogs and they do get sales, but not as many as the hand written ones. But with rss you can manage 500 blogs at a time as all your doing is making sure that the auto post tool is loaded up.

I know very little about google but I would very much doubt you will get the same attention from google by using text that everyone else is using. And Id be surprised if they get the same bookmarkers as properly written good text.

Why not do both as rss blogs dont have to take away traffic from your hand written blogs but could help to feed them and make sales on the side?

#3

Re: Automation = Money, but no quality?

Not sure I understand. So what would you do with the RSS tool, do you mean you create 1 custom entry and copy it to several sites?

Or how do you mean?

[quote=marcjacob;21880]Yes the future is automating certain taske, but rss and copy/paste is not the way forward imo. I did a load of rss blogs and they do get sales, but not as many as the hand written ones. But with rss you can manage 500 blogs at a time as all your doing is making sure that the auto post tool is loaded up.

I know very little about google but I would very much doubt you will get the same attention from google by using text that everyone else is using. And Id be surprised if they get the same bookmarkers as properly written good text.

Why not do both as rss blogs dont have to take away traffic from your hand written blogs but could help to feed them and make sales on the side?[/quote]

#4

Re: Automation = Money, but no quality?

RSS often given by sponsors. You have a script (free ones are about) that read the posts in the rss feed and auto post them to your blog. The sponsor then updates the RSS feeds with new posts. You set it up, and forget about it.

#5

Re: Automation = Money, but no quality?

Heres an example of its output

http://allasianboys.thumblogger.com/

I abandoned rss blogs and if you dont log into the auto post script every 30 days it stops posting, but if your adding more every day or every week it will just keep posting for as long as the sponsor updates it (with no effort from you).

#6

Re: Automation = Money, but no quality?

I support two people on my Universal Bear site alone. It’s a custom-build, custom written, totally originally hub site. A buddy of mine who tends to do automated AVS sites, or at least templated ones with very little original written content, does not do nearly as well. He waits a lot longer for a sale than I do.

I put up a blog and gallery the other day on The Pig for a new sponsor, and I got a sale within three clicks. In fact, I am constantly selling stuff off new blogs everyday.

Likewise with my freesites. One of my freesites hubs got almost 200,000 visitors last month, and over half of that was bookmark traffic. My freesites are not automated.

I think automation is deceptive. Automation certainly makes your job a lot easier, and it certainly allows you to pump out more product. If it takes me an hour to do a freesite, an automated webmaster may be able to pump out many more in the same time. I don’t think an automated webmaster is actually making a lot more money than I am, they’ve just cast a bigger and wider net. In fact, I know for a fact that Chubs isn’t making more money than I am.

I also think time and again we’ve witnessed one business model after another come and go. Let’s take TGPs for an example. When they started off, they were great. Everyone was happy. Then, as always happens, the hoards find out about it, and then, the bullshit starts. If I can make two sales on every TGP submission, then if I pump out 100 TGP galleries every day, I can make 200 sales. So webmasters start taking short cuts, they start automating, webmasters start slapping three recips on a FHG, they put the same galleries and multiple domains and keep submitting. Then the quality of galleries starts going down. TGPs start implementing rules to eliminate the crap and increase the quality of the galleries in their TGPs. Then they start swapping traffic with one another and jerking the surfer around. Eventually the surfers get frustrated, so when the next business model comes along, i.e. blogs, they start moving off in favour of quality. And it starts all over again.

I have a couple of webmasters who submit to the Pig. They simply slap up some recips on FHGs and submit about 5-10 a day. I never approve their galleries, I don’t even send them an e-mail saying they were declined. I just trash them. Yet every day they just put out more and more crap, and they haven’t a clue that their galleries are getting nowhere. How many other link lists do the same to these guys. Yet everyday they keep submitting. If they ever checked their logs, they’d figure it out. But their so business managing their automation that they’re just wasting a lot of time.

Bjorn, I think you can have the best of both worlds. I think you have an amazing site and the traffic you send out is pretty much second to no one, except Manpics, who has been around since God was a baby. I think a part of the reason you can do that is that you run a quality site with loads of original content. And I wouldn’t change that. I think you need that quality on Gay Demon. It’s the core of your business.

Now, I think you can start playing around with automation on other projects. Pumping out lots and lots of stuff, always trying to push as much traffic back to Gay Demon as you can. If you had ten automated hubs all pushing traffic back to Gay Demon (and sponsors as well) then I think you’d have the best of both worlds. But I think if you’re just going to rely on a totally automated system with little original content, then I think you’ll just always have to pump out piles of crap to make the sales.

Automation has it’s place, but time and again I see examples of how surfers like to see quality and originality.

Michael

#7

Re: Automation = Money, but no quality?

Is that because google loves unuique text, so you get google traffic so you get sales, or is that because the surfer loves to read your and text buys as a result, or would that be a mixture of both reasons?

#8

Re: Automation = Money, but no quality?

I’ve also just automated the Pig using Joomla. And I’ve had to keep links up to the old Pig and consistently my surfers keep sneaking into the old Pig. Now a part of that is because I have some confusing navigation issues, which I’m sorting out, but my traffic has resisted the automation from the get go.

Michael

#9

Re: Automation = Money, but no quality?

I think it’s a mixture of both. I think the automated type gallery really sets the surfer up for mass consumption. Click a thumbnail, the eye quickly scrolls through rows of thumbs … I’m done. Click the next thumbnail, the eyes quickly scrolls through rows of thumbs … I’m done … Oh this is all so boring.

Automated stuff just sets up a next, next, next phenomena. Everything becomes mundane and the surfer is just consuming mass quantities of porn without pausing very much to actually look at it or enjoy it.

I don’t kid myself, I don’t think that surfers read every word that I write, but I think it slows them down. Maybe they read a paragraph here or there. But I think I’ve slowed them down. And I think that this helps me get sales because when they’re finally horny enough to buy, they’re more likely to be on my site. Your 30 automated galleries might get them a bit revved up, but I’ve slowed them down and kept them on my site. You teased them, got their dick hard, but I got their load!

Michael

#10

Re: Automation = Money, but no quality?

I don’t see this as an either / or question. You should run fully automated sites AND handwritten sites. Invest a few days setting up your automation tools. Once you are setup, cranking out a new automated site will take you maybe 30 minutes. Do this twice a week and within a year you will have a network of over 100 sites.

Sure, productivity of those sites will be less than the handwritten ones, but given numbers you will come out with a nice boost to your earnings.

#11

Re: Automation = Money, but no quality?

I like to make my job easy, I would love it if I could plug in a concept, and the machine would just type it all out, but then, I’d not get the emails expressing how someone liked or hated the story.

Automation is great, for some things. For daily boring tasks, sure, but I think as Michael pointed out, you need to blend the two together, to really hold your business together, to keep it growing.

The more we water down the product, we may attract more sales, short term. But our survival is on new buyers, and keeping old ones. Long term, watered down products just don’t do either. IMHO.

#12

Re: Automation = Money, but no quality?

Automation is great if the surfer could never know the difference. For example I wrote a script to build free sites, it makes the thumbs and codes the html for me. I type my text and text links into forms. It produces a site that is exactly as it would be if I did it all by hand, but in a fraction of the time. That doesnt degrade the surfers experience as they get exactly the same site as they would if I had done it on my PC and uploaded it.

#13

Re: Automation = Money, but no quality?

Thanks Luke, I always see things very black and white. And you are right, why not do both. One can feed the other as well…

[quote=HunkMoneyLuke;21922]I don’t see this as an either / or question. You should run fully automated sites AND handwritten sites. Invest a few days setting up your automation tools. Once you are setup, cranking out a new automated site will take you maybe 30 minutes. Do this twice a week and within a year you will have a network of over 100 sites.

Sure, productivity of those sites will be less than the handwritten ones, but given numbers you will come out with a nice boost to your earnings.[/quote]