Automated Blogs : Everything You Need to Know

by Mohammed May 02, 2021

If you want to know everything about automated blogs, you’ll find great value in this article.

Automated blogs are blogs that fetch content from other sources on the internet using an RSS feed.

Thanks to automation tools and user-friendly content management systems like WordPress, anyone with basic knowledge can do it.

It’s a completely automated system, that’s why the name “Automated blogs”. So, you will not be producing your content.

The biggest plus of automated blogs is that they allow you to gather all the information related to your industry in one place.

Let’s say you are a news site that curates all the sports news across the web.You can give your readers a single platform where they can read sports news across the globe.

But, there are quite a few negatives of automated blogs. The biggest one is that it probably won’t get ranked in Google. You see, you are taking others’ content and putting it on your site. Some may call it stealing as well.

So, the chances of getting ranked and generating a substantial income source are quite thin with automated blogging.

But, some best practices can keep your blog profitable. We’ll discuss them later in the article.

Is Auto Blogging legal?

The answer to the question “Is auto blogging legal” isn’t simple. It can be legal if you practice it right.

However, if you are breaking the rules of the internet, it will be illegal, and your blog will get penalized for it.

You see, automated blogs pull content from other sources over the internet. And, if those sources allow you to take their content, you’ll be good.

However, most blog owners won’t allow that. It’s their property and they are working to make some money from it.

So, when you “Steal” their content, Google and other search engines may not be able to recognize which one is the source. This could lead to penalties for both parties.

So, in conclusion, if you are attributing content to its real owner and they’ve allowed you to do so, auto-blogging is legal.

However, fetching content from sources without attribution and permission is illegal.

Is Blogging Still Profitable in 2021?

Yes, there is no doubt that blogging is still profitable in 2021. It’s one of the lucrative sources of income online.

Thanks to the digital revolution, almost every person goes to search engines like Google to find information.

Your blog can be a source of that information, helping them out, and making profits along the way.

There are people that are making millions from blogging. But, you need to work in the right direction to achieve success in this field.

A small mistake and Google will penalize you, putting all your efforts into the dustbin.

Don’t worry. I’ll guide you through the process. Make sure to read the article till the end to have a good understanding.

What is Automation in Blogging?

Blogging isn’t easy. You need to produce consistent and quality content that satisfies search intent. However, automation in blogging isn’t about that.

You don’t have to produce your content with automated blogs. There are WordPress plugins that you can use to fetch content from other blogs and publish them on your blog.

Automation in blogging is automatically publishing others’ content on your blog. You can also automate your WordPress blog, but make sure to weigh its pros and cons before getting started with it.

How Do I Automate a WordPress Blog?

Automated blogs use RSS feeds to pull content from other sources. They use software that does the job automatically. Although automated blogs don’t have a good reputation simply because they are associated with scraping.

For instance, you can create a news site where you gather all the news related to one topic in one place.

Another way to utilize automated blogging is to collect information from multiple private websites or within a company intranet.

Let’s now see how you can create an automated blog in WordPress.

Setting up an automated blog is quite simple. But, you still need to put a little effort in the beginning. It will work on autopilot after that.

Find the Sources

First of all, you need to list the online resources you want to fetch content from. The right way would be to ask permission from the owners.

Create a Blog

You can then create a WordPress blog, which is quite straightforward. You’ll be able to create one even if you’ve never done that before.

Install the Aggregation Plugin

Source: WordPress.org

The next step would be to install a plugin that can automatically pull content for you. There are many plugins in the WordPress library.

The WP RSS Aggregator is one of the best ones. So, I’ll take it as our example in this guide.

Just go to the website or install the plugin directly from the WordPress library. Although it’s a free plugin, you’d probably need the addons in Advanced Feeds Bundle.

wprssaggregator.com

After installing the RSS aggregator plugin and the add-ons, you can simply copy and paste the URL of the source you want to import content from.

The RSS Aggregator is one of the most popular automated blogging plugins. However, there are others that you can use too.

You won’t have to do anything. Your automated blog in WordPress will do the heavy lifting for you.

Blog Automation Tools

Let’s get into a few blog automation tools now.

Feedzy RSS Feed

Source: themeisle.com

Feedzy comes with a free as well as a paid version. While the free one is enough for basic auto-blogging needs, you’d want to buy the premium version for more functionality.

The paid version lets you add feed items to custom content types, posts, and pages. Moreover, the plugin lets you filter out articles that have specific keywords.

Not only that, if you want to do affiliate marketing, the plugin adds your affiliate links to the posts automatically.

WPeMatico

WordPress.org

You can create your feeds in the “campaign” section of this automated blogging WordPress plugin. There are three types of posts. Posts, media, and pages.

The plugin allows you to add multiple feeds to a single campaign. Not only that, but the plugin also has a feature to fetch YouTube videos into the written content.

CyberSEO

WordPress.org

This one is one of the best options in the free plugin market. Another good thing about the plugin is that it’s quite simple to set up compared to other plugins.

The plugin allows you to pull the full version of articles, create tags, group feeds, set post statuses, reject/accept comments from users, and more.

Not only that, but you can also have your articles translated with Google translate.

WP Pipes

This one has pipes as feeds. So, when you are dealing with feeds with this plugin, consider them as pipes. The plugin offers a simple, user-friendly interface using which you can get the full text, filter your feeds by keywords, and show their source.

You can also choose how to display the feeds on your blog in this plugin. It lets you adjust parameters like excerpt, content, category, meta key, slug, and title.

WordPress Automatic Plugin

codecanyon.net

WordPress automatic plugin is one of the best ones when it comes to variety. It offers a lot of import options to the user.

Not only does it support articles, but you can import other formats as well. For instance, you can pull YouTube, Dailymotion, and Vimeo videos.

The plugin allows you to fetch Walmart and Amazon products as well. Not only that, but it also supports social media posts, Craigslist classifieds, iTunes, Soundcloud, and Envato items.

In addition to choosing your content source, the plugin provides an option to filter your content based on author, tag, and category. So, not everything will be posted to your blog.

You can also control your post template, type, format, status, and images. Plus, it has the features of translating and rewriting content.

WP Crawler

WP Crawler is another plugin that can help you import a variety of content types on autopilot. The content that you can fetch includes:

- Design collections from Behance and Dribble
- Photos from Unsplash
- Applications
- Social media posts
- Product listings from Alibaba and Amazon
- WordPress themes
- And more

Moreover, it’s a beginner-friendly, easy-to-use plugin. All you’d have to do is insert your sources, select your options, and run the plugin’s crawler.

In addition to that, you can also import data from other websites using HTML selectors and attributes. You can then select post category, status, type, and check whether the text is duplicate.

You can extract data from any number of resources you want. You can also set the plugin to post randomly. Just set it to once per day, twice a day, or once every hour.

The WP Crawler is one of the most versatile plugins for automated blogs. It allows you to fetch almost all types of content from any number of online sources you want.

These plugins provide everything you need to set up automated blogs. You’ll just have to see which features you want and go with the one having those features.

Other Ways to Automate Your WordPress Blog

While automated blogs refer to blogs that collect and display content from other sources, you can also automate repetitive tasks in WordPress with plugins.

Plugins are software that adds functionality to a WordPress website. For instance, if you want to design a website’s page, you can install Elementor page builder to do that.

Generally, automation in blogging aims to save your time and allows you to work on important tasks in blogging.

For instance, you won’t want to optimize your blog images one by one. There is a perfectly effective tool that can reduce the size of the images, helping the speed of your blog pages.

So, the automation that steals other’s content without their permission isn’t legal and you shouldn’t do that. However, automating your blogging tasks with plugins that save your time can actually let you succeed in this competitive industry.

Best Niches for Automated Blogs

The topic or niche of your automated blog is one of the most important factors that determine whether your blog will be successful or not.

You don’t want to fetch content on a topic no one is interested in reading.

If you pick a broad topic, your blog might not get ranked for competitive keywords. Short tail keywords or short keywords are quite difficult to rank, reducing the chances of success.

On the other hand, if you choose a niche that’s too narrow, there won’t be many blog visitors, which is not good too.

So, it’s important to find out the niche that’s neither too broad nor too narrow. Your niche should be fairly easy to rank and get traffic too.

How to Find the Perfect Automated Blogs Niche?

To find out a non-competitive niche, you need to do some keyword research. Find out keywords that aren’t that competitive.

You can either search Google and find out what people are searching with Google auto-complete, or you can use paid and free keyword research tools.

But, Google autocomplete doesn’t tell you the keyword search volume and keyword difficulty. However, you can target long-tail keywords even without knowing about their search volume. This is because they are mostly low-competition keywords.

Let’s see how you can find out long-tail keywords for your automated blog using Google search.

See if your main topic generates enough suggestions to allow you to target them in an automated blog. Scroll down to see more ideas.

If there are enough search queries around your main keywords, the next step should be to find out if your niche has enough search volume or not.

Go to Ubersuggest and type in your seed keyword. It’s a free tool that gives valuable information. However, you only get 3 free searches in a day. So, use them wisely.

Source: Neilpatel.com

The above screenshot shows the search volume and SEO difficulty of the keyword “autoblogging”. You can find out information about any keyword related to your niche.

Another thing to keep in mind before creating an automated blog is its profitability. Sure, the search volume should be high andshould be able to rank on the keywords.

But, can you sell affiliate products related to that niche?

Find out if there are companies that have affiliate programs around your topic. You can then insert your affiliate links into the content to maximize your earnings.

Let’s dig into the process of finding the best affiliate programs as well.

How to Find the Best Affiliate Programs for Your Auto-blogs?

When it comes to affiliate marketing, Amazon is the king. The huge online audience that trusts the platform makes Amazon Associates one of the most lucrative affiliate programs out there.

As people trust Amazon, they won’t think twice after they like a product on your website that takes them to Amazon.

Finding a profitable niche on Amazon isn’t that difficult either. You just have to go through the commission rates and the products to select a niche that can prove to be profitable.

Source: Amazon.com

Make sure to choose a niche that has good enough commission rate, demand, and fairly low competition.

The keyword research part of the article will help you land on the most profitable topics for your niche.

While Amazon Associates is one of the most popular affiliate programs, there are many others that you may find even better.

One of those is CJ Affiliate. You can browse the platform, pick any company, and join hands with them to sell their products. For every sale, the company will pay you a set amount.

Some other popular affiliate platforms include ShareASale, Sendinblue (Email marketing), Teachable, Coursera, Bluehost, Kinsta, eBay, and SEMrush.

Lastly, the best niche for automated blogs would be the profitable one. Don’t go for a broad niche, for example, “Health”. It’s quite tough to get visitors to such a competitive niche.

If you want to create a health blog, you can go with “Keto diets”, for instance.

But, keep the balance between the demand and competition. You want to be able to rank your automated blogs on Google and bring a fair amount of traffic.

Now that you know how to find your niche for an auto blog, let’s get to the next part.

Reasons to Avoid Auto-blogging

While there are a couple of fair-use scenarios in auto-blogging, it’s generally considered stealing. So, you would want to steer away from that shore.

If you are still thinking of doing that, let me tell you why you shouldn’t.

- Automated blogs create duplicate content, so you’ll have a hard time ranking on Google
- It’s essentially stealing when you don’t have the permission to post other’s content
- It doesn’t build your brand. You are just curating content from other sources.
- The probability of getting high-quality traffic is thin
- You’ll probably waste your investment as it’s not a profitable and viable long-term business model

That said, auto-blogging has some fair practices, which include:

- Avoiding scraping of whole articles
- Giving attribution
- Not publishing copyrighted images
- Publishing excerpts and titles only

Frequently Asked Questions

Is Automated Blogging Legit?

Automated blogging can be legit if you do it the right way. It will also depend on how you define automated blogging.

If scraping content from external sources without their permission is how you see it, it’s illegal.

You can’t use anyone’s content without their permission or at least attribution.

Google and other search engines don’t rank or give value to the content that’s not original and authentic.

So, by copying content from people, you won’t be able to rank on Google, which is the main goal of every blogger.

Without Google ranking, your blog won’t be able to attract relevant traffic, keeping it isolated from your audience.

Even if you get ranked, there is no surety that you’ll stay there. Any update can penalize your blog at any point.

There are a couple of scenarios where auto-blogging is safe and legal.

- You create an auto-blog to curate content from multiple of your own websites and provide users an all-in-one place to consume it.
- You have a company intranet where you want to have a centralized blog that curates content from all the other sources.

So, yes, automated blogging is legit if you keep it legit.

How to Monetize an Automated Blog?

The key to monetizing an automated blog is picking the right niche. After you’ve done that, you’ll get traffic to your blog pages.

As discussed before, you can partner up with an affiliate program and promote others’ products to get a commission. Examples of lucrative affiliate programs are Amazon Associates, ShareASale, and Bluehost.

Final Thoughts

Auto-blogging is a method of pulling content from other sources. And, if best practices aren’t followed, it can land in the territory of plagiarism.

There are a lot of plugins that allow you to pull content from other sources. Some are free and some require a small investment.

Make sure you stick to all the best practices and avoidunfair use of someone’s content to avoid any future problems.

If you can follow fair practices, creating and running automated blogs can be quite lucrative. You don’t have to manually do the work, the WordPress plugins discussed in this article do the heavy lifting for you.