If you are thinking about creating an automatically updating blog using WPomatic or a similar program… let me advise against it!  The allure of creating a auto-updating blog is high because 1) there is no work involved and 2) you automatically build links by getting ping backs on other blog’s comments.  Both of these things are true: you will do little work and build lots of links.  But in the end, you will get banned by Google.

About a month ago I set up a blog at TruthfulNews.com that would automatically take news stories from political blogs and post them using WP-o-Matic.  The results were good.. in a few days I broke the 1000 visitor mark.  After about a week I was getting over 700 visitors per day.

At this point I was sitting high thinking, “This is too good to be true.  Just wait until I put up some Adsense ads… I’ll be bankin”

But then a couple days later I checked out my Google Analytics stats and noticed that my once 700 visitors had dropped down to about 200.  To investigate, I did a quick search for my domain name “truthfulnews.com”  What I discovered is that my site was no longer listed.  Instead, I found hundreds of results with titles like “truthfulnews.com « Stolen Content”  and “Who or what is truthfulnews?” all complaining about my blog.  I then checked my truthfulnews’ gmail account (that I never use) and saw a bunch of threatening emails.

So at this point I realized that my site was both banned by Google and making lots of people angry.  I quickly took the blog down and realized my mistake

Let this story be a lesson that there are no easy ways out and that in order to make a truly successful, high traffic website, you need to put in the effort!