Hi there Frank ..

Thanks for always keeping us posted with useful, timely, information.

I have about 20 odd autoblogs set up, but in truth should have limited myself to no more than 10. A case of me never completing the finishing touches to any one blog, so as you can imagine they have never performed particularly well. Occasionally autoposts were sprinkled with content manually inserted and most monetisation was by way of either a-links (using the a-links plugin) or manually inserted links and banners. At one point I had them monetised with Adsense but was warned to pull the ads because of the 'duplicate content' which could be seen to be in contravention of Google's policies. I am working my way through now updating with the new Clickbank ads and in light of what you've said before will also take a look at the Amazon widget.

I thought to share with you some of the hurdles I have encountered with them, and would be pleased to receive your comments.

1. When I first set these up, this was before I wised up to focusing on micro-niches. So, much of the content ex RSS feeds is broad. For example, one of my blogs was set up to provide information on stopping aggressive dog behaviour .. but to find feeds with such a narrow focus is all but impossible. The feed introduced might be on 'caring for dogs' and then one is left to weed out the inappropriate posts introduced which may relate to walking one's dog, feeding etc etc. Quite a time consuming task over so many blogs and inevitably there is still a lot of content left in, which really has little to do with stopping aggressive dog behaviour.

2. Many of the posts introduced are very brief (perhaps just 3-4 lines) before the link shows up through to the writer's site. This can make keyword selection rather difficult, unless one inserts one's own content. But, this somewhat defeats why one sets up an autoblog in the first place.

3. Because the content in the feed is so wide ranging, it is often not easy to find keywords suited to one's microniche. And then when one does, these are infrequently dispersed through the copious content which is there.

4. For certain niches it can be challenging finding good, consistent feeds which will regularly update. Despite its popularity, paintball is not an easy niche to find RSS content for. Also, I find many of my feeds dry up or 'break' and then off I have to go to scramble around for some new ones.

5. A lot of the content feeding in has absolutely nothing to do with one's niche whatsoever .. for example in a feed on 'Camping' you may find a breed of violin being commented on. Again .. regular editing.

I know this all sounds pretty negative, but in fact I've found them pretty high maintenance, despite the odd sale resulting.

I would be really keen to know how the autoblog compares with your wife's manual blog. Perhaps, part of my problem has been in me trying to get too many up too quickly – although my mentor felt I should have put up a 100 – not 20. Any thoughts you have about addressing some of the things I've mentioned above would be appreciated. Please also advise whether you will be fronting the blog with a 'sticky' post or a static page with the feeds running on in behind. Although I have not really worked at it, how easy do you think it will be getting quality inwards links to an autoblog?

Thanks for the chance to comment ..

Kind regards

Dale Calder