Automated Site creation tools
Which Tool Should You Use To Build Your Site?I was recording a seminar with my friend Peter Twist recently, where Kirt Christensen came along and spoke about the 'Freedom sites' that he and James Brausche are promoting. Several people signed up for his $10,000 workshop and I was surprised at the time at the lack of knowledge that a lot of people there had about the options available.
I'll give you the basic lay-of-the-land as I see it.
1) Kurt Melvins 'bomb' scripts (www.dombom.com) - There are bombs for just about every aspect of creating web sites and content, from page-makers that email the articles to an ezine list, to rss to html tools and clickbank product feeds. These scripts are excellent and provide huge versatility in what you can create. The downside to the bombs is that documentation is minimal and if you're not totally comfortable with FTP and changing attributes of files on your server - they may be too much for you(It wouldn't surprise me if some of the more automated solutions stemmed from the bombs)
2) Smart Page Generators, Traffic Equalizer, Ranking Power, Traffic Turbocharger etc. - These are very simple to use and will make the pages quickly, but having been around for a while have started being 'filtered' by the search engines. Some people still have sites making money from one or more of these tools (myself included) but I wouldn't regard anything created with them as long-term
3) Metawebs, Secret Money Generator etc.. - These are a mid-way position between cranking out lots of pages, and providing a more user-friendly experience. Again, there are footprint issues and even though Nathan Anderson is leading the Metawebs team, and he has a good reputation - he's even had a lot of negativity aimed at him about the 'lack of added value' and 'footprints' that these programs give you.
4) NichePortal, Nichemonster, Freedom Sites -these are very easy to create and pull in articles and have traffic selling revenue streams built in. Again, these sites will leave a footprint and I wouldn't make any guarantee about how long they'll be successful once the SEs start trying to target them. The principles are sound and they've worked for years so far, so we'll have to see.
The bottom line is - The best way to create long-lasting websites is to NOT try and trick the search engines, but to create quality content. If you can do that using one or more of these tools in a way which offers value to the visitor and doesn't leave huge footprints where lots of pages have been made, then you should be fine.
The trade-off seems to be along two lines:-
1) Those people who don't care what the site looks like or offers, and who just want anything that might make some money.
These people just need to make the decision based on price. It looks like the NM, NP, Freedom sites are currently the best bet for making lots of sites quickly that might last. (The big thing with all of these sites is that they're so general in their targeting that you need to be able to drive traffic to them to make any money - most people buy these tools hoping that they won't have to do any work - They're wrong)
and
2) Those people who want to create valuable sites but without all the time and hassle involved.
These people need to find the balance between automation and content. Using RSS and making sites in small chunks (using either 'bombs' or TTC type tools (but with fewer keywords) is probably the way to go).
At the end of the day, no matter how you do it, you need to understand what search engines want and what they're likely to need to do to keep getting it, plus be able to convert the traffic you get.
There are lots of ways to get links and traffic to your sites and the importance of those is increasing all the time, so alway make sure you know how to successfully promote a site (any site) once you have one. If you can't do this, you'll never make money without having to buy the traffic.
Regards,
Andy
www.learn-seo.com
www.pheedcentral.com
www.moneyandmotivation.com
posted by Andy H @ 3:51 PM
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