Keep in mind that no matter what sort of automated strategy you pursue, you must still do your business research so that it is focussed as narrowly as possible on your target niche audience.  You also want to give thought as to how you will monetize it, and whether or not you'll collect subscriber emails. Again, there is probably no limit to how programming skill can be combined with blogging to automate and manipulate the presentation of content.  What I'd like to discuss are four variations on automated niche blogging that can be put to use in a home business setting. 

1. owner generated content
2. article content
3. rss feed content
4. data feed content
5. other content: Amazon, eBay, Clickbank, Yahoo! Answers, etc.

Owner Generated Automated Niche Blog

This is what I call a blog for which you write and/or edit the content and then schedule the posting of the articles.  For this sort of blog you write and schedule the posts in advance.  Here you write anywhere from 50 to 75 (or more) short posts of 300 to 350 words and use the WordPress publishing editor to schedule posting times.  You can also use private label rights material or hire someone to write the posts for you.  WordPress has built into it the capability of scheduling post times in advance.  However, there are also plugins that allow you to upload and schedule hundreds of articles at a time.  Personally, I don't bother and just use the WordPress scheduler, but who knows, maybe later on that will fit my own modus operandi.

Niche Blog Using Article Content

Content for this sort of blog is generally provided in one or a combination of two ways:

• through the use of a WordPress plugin that pulls articles from an article directory (or directories)
• through the use of a plugin that allows you to upload and schedule posting times for your articles

RSS Feed Content

There are a number of plugins available that will publish rss feed content to your blog.  Basically, you enter the feeds you want published into the software, and the plugin will publish according to whatever schedule you set.  Some plugins allow you to edit feeds, and save feed contents as drafts for editing or pre-approval before publishing.

Automated Data Feed Blogs

This sort of blog uses a plugin that automates the publishing of data feed content.  Generally speaking, the plugin converts the data feed into an rss feed that you in turn publish using an rss feed plugin.  Blog publishers using data feeds generally run stores selling some sort of physical product.  However,  some people convert large numbers of articles into data feeds and publish them to their blog in that manner. 

Miscellaneous Content Sources

Other sources of content used in automated blogs include reviews and comments pulled from Amazon, product listings from eBay, product listings from Clickbank, Yahoo! Answers, and I have even heard of one person who figured out a way to publish content posted in Yahoo! Groups.  When using WordPress, content is generally automated and published through the use of plugins designed specifically for WordPress.

The point of running an automated niche blog will in part depend on your business model.  Some businesses will simply not be right for automated blogging.  Generally speaking, you want to publish and promote niche targetted content of sufficient quantity and quality that you keep visitors on the page long enough to make a decision that results at some point in payment to you.  Examples of such behavior would be clicking on Adsense, watching a video, clicking through to an advertiser page, buying an affiliate product, or simply signing up to your subscriber list.

Well, its past time for me to hit the sack.  I'll mention again that the examples I've mentioned here are just that–examples of a few of the ways in which automatic publishing is used with WordPress.  I'll also mention that I have a very low cost, six part video series that will introduce you to the basics of WordPress blog automation.

What's a Blog Platform?

I'm going to pause for a moment to further define blog and blogging platform for anyone who may be unsure of what this is, and why I'm talking about it.  In the "old" days of the Internet, blogs were just .html websites (websites where the pages all ended in .html), and people just cut and pasted new entries into the pages every time they had something new to say.  If we fast forward to present time, we now have relatively sophisticated, easy to use software that automates much of the publishing and blog site appearance.  A blogging platform refers to a system of managing content, or a content management system.  A blog content management system is a software program that allows you to publish content on the fly and have it appear in the context of a fully developed site. 

There are a number of different sorts of blogging platforms.  Some are free, some are paid.  Some require your own hosting and domain name; some use third-party servers, such as Blogger, WordPress.com, MySpace, and Typepad.  Two of the most famous, free, third-party platforms are WordPress.com and Blogger.  You simply set up an account, log in and start blogging.  Typepad is another well-known third party platform but requires a low, monthly subscription, though you get a high quality site on a protected web space.  Moveable Type is a well-known, highly regarded blog platform that you install on your own hosting; however you must buy a license in order to use the platform for business use.

WordPress is a free, easy to use, open source blogging platform that you install on your own hosting, though most hosting companies include the means to do an automatic install of WordPress on your domain.   The Simpleocity website is a WordPress blog, for example.  When I talk about blogging, I will be doing so with WordPress in mind because it is

• free
• reliable
• easy to install
• highly adaptable
• low cost way to do publish a home business site

 So why blogging?

See the 5 bullet points above.  Because it is a cheap, easy way to to reach huge numbers of potential customers and is highly adaptable to almost any business model.  You can use blogging as a stand-alone business model or as an adjunct to an already existing business whether online or off.   You can monetize a blog in any number of ways.  Examples of famous blogs and bloggers would be Perez Hilton, Mark Cuban, Shoemoney, Chocolate & Zuchini, and footnoted.org.  You can find many example of sucessful blogs at blogs.com.  Blogs can be simple, complicated, ugly, or elegant.  What you do with your blog is up to you and depends on your goals and objectives.

Niche Blogging

Personally, I think any kind of blogging can probably be tweaked to at least pay for itself.  If you plan on developing blogging as a business model, remember that you have to do your business homework or product research, market research, promotion and so forth.  Niche blogging and niche blogging networks have taken on a kind of life of their own in recent times.  Niche blogging refers to a relatively narrow market area or closely defined topic area.  The reason for their popularity has to do with the fact that blogs are relatively easy to set up, and in the area of business, relatively easy to monetize and make money from.

Automated Niche Blogging

Keeping a blog updated and fresh with your own original content, thoughts, ideas and so forth is not for everybody.  However, that doesn't mean that blogging can't work for you.  A more recent development in the world of blogging is the automated niche blog.  This is a blog developed purely for money making purposes where you automate the acquisition and publishing of conent  and concentrate on monetization, promotion, and developing other blogs.  The business model is more the creation of blog networks all running to a large degree on autopilot designed to appeal to a particular niche interest group.  How income is produced depends on how you choose to monetize your blogs.  Generally, you make money from blogs by selling your own products, running pay per click ads, selling affiliate products, selling advertising space, and through developing a list of subscribers.

In my opinion, success with automated niche blogging largely depends on how well you identify a niche with earning potential, how well you focus the blog/network on the niche, and how well you promote your blogs.  There really is no one right way to do this.

In a future post, I will discuss different kinds of automation for niche blogs.  If you do a little research on your own, you will see that people have come up with ingenious ways automating or partially automating their blogs, and that the solutions employed say quite a bit about the owners' perspective on marketing and business planning.

I have just recently posted a six part video series on automated niche blogging available through the link above.  The course takes you from blog installation  through indexing, marketing, and promotion, and shows you how to set up a particular kind of automation.  If you are new to WordPress and automated blogging, this course will mark the path for you.

Niche blogging is a highly effective home business system currently in vogue.  In vogue or not, niche blogging can bring in some serious change if respected and treated as a business. 

As it happens, niche blogging is all over the Internet marketing map and touted as the next, great, get-rich-quick way to wealth, but I have to be honest here and say that niche blogging is not a get-rich-quick way to easy money.  It can be a reliable and effective way to start making money online, but not a get-rich-quick way.

Niche blogging, just like any other business, whether a hamburger kiosk, clothing store, or electronics retailer, requires steady application of a reliable blueprint.  And that 's what I want to talk about here.

The blueprint I want to introduce you to is the automated niche blog.  You set the blog up, and it gathers content in your niche area and publishes automatically with little attention from you.  There is nothing to prevent you from adding your own non-automatic posts manually, but the point of automated niche blogging is to set up a network that requires little attention allowing you to focus on marketing.

The point of this course is to show you how to start from scratch and install and set-up a Wordpress blog on your own hosting, and then further tweak it so that it runs almost on its own gathering and publishing content.  I want to show you a method that you can begin to use to generate a flow of traffic to your blog that you can then use to begin building a list (or lists) of subscribers.

We offer a six part video series to show you how to automate your blogging.  In the interest of disclosure, I need to mention that you will need your own domain name and hosting account.  This is covered in the course, but there will be additional costs–relatively small–for hosting and domain names.

Video #1: Introduction – How it works and what you need

In order to successfully implement this system, you have to understand the basic concepts, and what tools you need.  We have laid out the groundwork for you, so once you do understand these basic concepts…then you can move on to the 'action' steps.

 Video #2: Get Your Content

Content, Content, Content. Before you start blogging, you will need content for at least five or more posts, so that you can start the automation process. But how? Well, it's actually very easy, and we will show you, how to take a few short cuts in this particular video. You'll also learn what methods to use to get your prospects to take action and sign up to your list.

Video #3: Installing WordPress & Finding WordPress Themes

Now it's time to install wordpress and make it look nice. I think this is self explanatory, and if you have Cpanel hosting, you should be able to do this with a few clicks. However, I won't assume you know how to do this, and leave you in the dark. I want you to get it right, so I am going to show you, every step of the way.

Video #4: WordPress Plugin – Blog Automation

In this video, you will learn which wordpress plugins are good to use for automating your blog posting. This is vital to the “automated” part of your blog, and will make your life easier and save you time. Once you've automated your blog, what next?
 
Video #5: Marketing – Getting Your Blog Indexed Fast

In this video, you will learn an easy to use marketing method, that will get your blog indexed fast…I mean within a few hours, to just a few days. We will explain more about this, in this particular video

Video #6: Marketing – Getting Ranked Quickly

In Video #5 we taught you how to quickly get your blog indexed into the search engines. In this video, you will learn an easy to use marketing method, that will increase your blog's rank in Google, Yahoo, and other popular search engines.

To sweeten the deal, I'm including a short report on additional WordPress automation plugins that you can use to add functionality to your blog.  In WordPress, a plugin is a piece of software that you can upload and install that allows the blog to do different things, such as automating blog posts, publishing RSS feeds, running surveys and quizzes, for example.  Don't worry–installing plugins is very easy and the video course shows you exactly what to do.

Please be aware that the video course asks you to buy a plugin to run the automation.  It is not necessary to spend money.  To repeat, I am including a short report that will give you free alternatives to automating your blog.

The cost of the course is only $7.95.  I am I am discounting this by about 70% because there is a small glitch in one of the videos.  You will probably never notice it, but I feel it would be unfair to charge the full price.  If you would like to get the course for free, I am including it as a bonus in the Affiliate Profit Guide course.  30 day money back guarantee.

Only $7.95

The particular home business system that I've been concerned about lately is affiliate marketing,  And I'm concerned about business newcomers starting affiliate markting and understanding that longterm success requires business know-how and planning.  This kind of marketingis a retail model that I employ, and one that I personally like as it seems to suit my personality.  I am not a terribly gregarious, social person, and I tend to prefer working alone or at least alone-ish, and this brand of direct marketing allows that.  So what is it?

Legitimate Affiliate Marketing

In my opinion, affiliate marketing is the collective body of practices and techniques that have to do with selling products of other people and businesses for a commission.   Because this is a commission based business, affiliate success depends on commission percentage and numbers of sales.

Legitimate affiliate marketing itself is simply a way of doing business, perhaps most closely related to direct marketing.  Direct marketing, of course, is the selling of products through done through direct mail, door-to-door, late-night t.v. infomercials, tabloid ads in the supplements to Sunday papers, and so forth.  So this is simply another form–highly effective–of retail selling.  The Internet has given direct marketers and affiliate marketer alike yet another means of reaching potential customers.

How you get numbers of sales is important  and the subject of never ending conversation and debate.  Basically, making money with  affiliate marketing is about the numbers, and ethical affiliate marketing practices–the only ones we are concerned about–are a give and take between getting the greatest numbers of visitors to your site pages and conversion.  Although affiliate marketing does not necessarily have to use the Internet, the Internet is an ideal tool because you have potential access to vast numbers of potential clients.

For better or worse, affiliate marketing has largely been co-opted by Internet marketing, which is the business sub-niche that specializes in selling information products about how to make money.  As a result, the field is frequently littered by bold, largely unsubtantiated claims that run the gamut of essentially harmless information to the most outrageous and flamboyant bullshit.  Honest marketers use hype to create excitement for a product but stay within ethical boundries of product representation.  Nevertheless, Internet marketing has created a sort of feeding frenzy in this area because of the potential for making money on the Internet with little upfront, start up cost.  One of the results of this furor has been the misrepresentation of affiliate marketing as a sort of get-rich-quick scheme, and it isn't.

My point is probably not clear, but what I want to convey is that success depends upon treating your marketing with respect and as a business, not just a set of techniques and procedures.  Yes, techniques and procedures are important, but without business planning you are not likely to be successful over the long haul.  Business planning gives you a measure of control and predictability over the future, whichh is why it is planning.  Done well, it will serve as a predictor for your success.

Here is some advice from the sba.gov:

The importance of a comprehensive, thoughtful business plan cannot be overemphasized. Much hinges on it: outside funding, credit from suppliers, management of your operation and finances, promotion and marketing of your business, and achievement of your goals and objectives.

This sounds just like conventional business.  And that is my point.  Although as a small, single person affiliate marketing business, you might not have to worry about credit from suppliers (but this could be a concern depending on the scope of your operation), affiliate marketing is still conventional business, and you need planning just as in any other business.

What are the most very basic elements of business planning?  Again, the sba.gov advises:

• What service or product does your business provide and what needs does it fill?
• Who are the potential customers for your product or service and why will they purchase it from you?
• How will you reach your potential customers?
• Where will you get the financial resources to start your business.

We do offer a video course on the fundamentals of affiliate marketing.  Feel free to visit our sales page here or here!

In my opinion, it is easier in some respects to get started because it really costs very little, if anything at all, to get started selling other peoples products.  In any business endeavor, it helps to have start-up capitol, and affiliate marketing (from here on out referred to as AF) is no different.  When you bring up a page on Yahoo! you see the power of money at work it those ads on yahoo.com.  Yes, all of those ads lead back to a "money page," and some affiliate marketer or marketing organization of paying top dollar prices for the Yahoo ad placement, and probably making top dollar in return, as well.

What I like about AF is that it is a sophistication tolerant business model.  Almost anyone at any level of sophistication and expertise can make money with a little effort.  However, to do AF consistently well enough to replace your income–and I think for most of us that means anywhere from between $30,000 to $100,000 a year–takes skill, and that means having the willingness and persistence to go through the learning curve.  Affiliate marketing is not easy in that respect.  You have to respect it, just as you generally have to respect any job or profession to do it well.

Now, on the subject of respect, for those of you seeking to replace your day job, let me ask you this:  Are you good at your day job?  Even if you don't like it, even if it is just a garbage suck of job, even if your manager is pig mutant of a human being, are you good at your job?  The reason I ask is that it is generally advisable to leave a job for another from a position of success.  That's not always possible as some working situations are a complete mess from the get go.  All right, enough said.  Regardless of whatever home business you start, be prepared to plan and have the persistence to see it through.

If you admit this, does that mean you are a cold, heartless bastard?  Mmm, maybe, but probably not.  Consider, even if you are building sites as a fund raising effort to feed starving children in the Sudan, if you don't understand that your sites are all about the money, how successful do you think those sites will be?  If you do understand the money issue, just think how many more children you'll feed because of it.  My point, here, is that hard nosed business logistics are not necessarily in conflict with ethical/moral standards.  The bigger point, though, is that if you and I are really in business, then we need to cut loose all the baggage that isn't about making the site as effective a money maker as it can be.

Understanding that your business, or website, is about making money can be liberating.  People who come to online business, Internet marketing, or ecommerce with a business background already know this.  Those of us who come to online business fresh, without any real business knowledge often take ages to have that epiphanal moment that what we are doing is business.  And business is business whether or not you are doing Internet marketing, ecommerce, or running an online site to promote your brick and morter retail store.

Along with understanding that it's all about the money, it is crucial to know what your business is.  I know this sound simplistic, but you'd be shocked to discover how many people supposedly in business don't really know what their business is.  As a result, they focus time and energy of directions that don't keep them solvent.  I'll say it again, you must know what your business is.  If you understand that, then you'll be able to align and target the many activities necessary to remaining solvent and making a profit.  In other words, you'll be able to focus and better ignore the many distractions that present themselves day in and day out.

Sticking to your business does not mean that you must do only one thing or that you must not diservisify your income streams.  Far from it. You can have as many business models and streams of income as you have time to manage and money to develop.   However, without a business plan to unify your diversified efforts, you'll remain a piker, an amateur.  Now matter what your success, you'll need a business plan to sustain and grow your income. 

Now, its possible that you might be one of those rare individuals who has a complete intuitive grasp of business logistics and planning.  However, if you've never seen a business plan before, you might want to check out examples at the Fed Small Business Administration website. This has great information.  And its free.  My advice, before you spend big bucks on lots of Internet marketing products, learn something about business. 

Many people coming to this site will be arriving after having been exposed to Internet marketing sales letters about how to make money online.  No matter how good those courses or people behind them, the one thing you can be sure of is that the successful people behind the sales letters understand business.  The one thing that most Internet and online home business products don't tell you about is business or the importance of understanding business basics.  With an understanding of business basics, you will be in much better position to know how to use the wealth of information that is particular to Internet marketing and making money online.

As for making money, if we leave money making gimmicks aside and focus on predictable income, then we are talking about following through on some sort of a business plan.  Anyone with the most basic concept of their business has a basic notion of marketing and the necessity of marketing whatever good or service you are selling.  And if you’ve done the research and determined that your goods and services really are in demand by a particular niche, then you know that it is only a matter of putting your goods/services in front of the target niche to make money.  Easy, right?  Well,  my point, here, is that this is a little like saying, that flying is easy.  All you have to do is get a cape and then fly.  So, you’ve got your products or services, and now all you have to do is market and then make money.

It is easy IF you already know how to do it.  Just as in flying after you get the cape, there is a missing ingredient needed in order to make it happen.  I think this is the spark of knowingness that occurs somewhere down the line after you have hurtled yourself off of the building top and crashed into the pavement the requisite number of times.  Unfortunately, there is no formulaic set number of times you have to hit the pavement before the spark ignites.

Now, I know that many of the people taking the time to read this blog–you, perhaps–are absolutely new and may not immediately grasp the importance of conducting your money making endeavors, whether they be online or off–as a business.  Keep in mind that behind every successful money making offer is business know-how.  The offer is merely the tip of the iceberg.  Beneath the tip is a significant amount of what might be termed "trade-craft" to make that offer successful.  This is why personal motivation is so important, because once you try to reel your fantasies of luxurious cruises and pina coladas on remote, pristine white sand beaches into the here and now, you hit the wall of self-doubt and the inertia of dealing with the "real" world of objects, people, and finances.  Lawyers, guns, and money, to borrow from Warren Zevon.

In my view, the purpose of personal business planning is to help you predict and soften your encounter with the so-called real world when you start taking action.  Very generally, and I mean really, really generally speaking, business planning comprises the research needed to determine what your business is and its relative chance for success, financial analysis, and the methods, procedures and techniques needed to pull it off.  If you are completely new, I can’t say strongly enough how important it is to take action.  However, don’t take action blindly.  You can take chances and even plan on losing a little money here and there in your research and development efforts.  But generally speaking (again), the more money at stake, the more important it is that you know what you are buying, that you do your research and planning to determine if the expenditure will be productive.

I suspect that many of you are also coming to this blog and to Internet business by way of Internet Marketing.  You have been reading sexy sales pages about courses and software designed to make you bundles of money right this instant.  Don’t get lost in the forest by fixating on a few trees.  No matter how good some of these products may be, none of them will do you or anyone else a bit of good without solid business planning behind them.  One very successful Internet marketer who has written extensively and articulately about this is Michael Campell.  I recommend two books that he used to sell and now gives away freely, Nothing but Net, and Clickin’ it Rich.  Of the two, read Nothing but Net first.  That is the one that lays out the importance of running your online activities as a business and outlines some of the fundamentals you need to have in place and what you need to do in order to get started.  It is also tantalizing motivation.

Time for me to hit the sack.  To your success!

Schedule Master Elite consists of three modules, or applications, as you'll see in the demo video below.  It includes the following modules:

• Person Minder

• Organization Minder

• Schedule Master

This simple scheduling program allows you to use the Person Minder and Organization minder independantly, but both applications are included in the Schedule Master and can be accessed from within the Schedule Master.  The software also allows you share files between the applications.  This will all be much easier to understand when you view the Preview and Intro videos.

The full instructional series is included in the download when you purchase.  However, the Preview and Intro will show you the software and you'll see how the applications can be accessed from the the Schedule Master module. 

The Introduction will expand on the Preview, and give you a better idea of what it can do for you.

Introduction

As you've seen, some of the overall basic features include data entry for:

• Name

• Business name

• Location

• Appointment subject

• Start Date and End Date

• Recurrence pattern indicater

• Home address

• Work address

• Alternate address

• Home phone

• Work phone

• Cell phone

• Email address

• Website

• Facebook info

• Linkedin info

• Twitter info

• Description field for extended entries and other relevant information

• Event field to describe event

• Results field to record any notes as a follow-up to the event

The Person Minder includes data entry for,

• contact type

• key organization

• first, middle, and last name

• address

• phone

• fax

• email

• marital status

• gender info

• birthday

• family information

• notes and observations

• photo

• online info

 

The Person Minder also includes a,

• picture file gallery

• documents and files library

 

The Organization Minder includes the following features:

• Kind of organization

• organization status

• organization name

• address

• phone

• fax

• email

• organization profile

• products and services

• photo

• online info

• access to Person Minder

• access to picture file saver

• access to documents file saver

• files sharing between the Person Minder and Schedule Master

 

The Schedule Master application allows plenty of space to enter the following:

• Event Subject

• Event Type

• Event Address

• Phone

• Fax

• Recurrence Pattern

• Start date/time

• End date/time

• Notes and observations

• Person Minder

• Organization Minder

• Picture files

• Document files

• the scheduling of multiple events within the same time frame

Please be aware that this software works only with PCs.  This will work on Windows 7, Vista, and XP and requires installation of the current .NET, which is a free download from Microsoft.  If you are running Windows 7, Vista or XP, this should already be integrated into the operating system.  The download is about 36 MB.  Because the video(s) shows you in detail all aspects of the software, all sales are final.  However, if for some reason the software does not work or there should be some conflict with your currect system, I will refund your purchase immediately.  Your download will include our support email address and a toll free number to call in case of difficulties.

After payment, you will be immediately transferred to a secure download page for immediate download of the product.  You will also receive an email giving you the download link.  In the event that you are not immediately transferred to the download area, you will be presented with a button to click that will take you to the secure download area.

Only $7.95

Our appointment book software includes the following features:

• inclusion of an image/photo
• event type
• event subject
• event location
• start and end time
• note boxes for related key people and organizations
• parallel event scheduling
• unlimited entries

Introduction

Scheduling Appointments, Entering Data,
And How to Manipulate Your Information

Please be aware that this software works only with PCs.  This will work on Windows, Vista, and XP and requires installation of the current .NET, which is a free download from Microsoft.  If you are running Vista or XP, this should already be integrated into the operating system.  The download is about 36 MB.  Because the video shows you in detail  all aspects of the software, all sales are final.  However, if for some reason the software does not work or there should be some conflict with your currect system, I will refund your purchase immediately.  Your download will include our support email address and a toll free number to call in case of difficulties.

Download Here!

Here is our YouTube video explaining how it works.  This will give an inside look into the software.  I’ll include more details later.  If you like it, I’ve included a payment link at the bottom.

 For a full screen view, click the button next to "HQ" above. Press escape to return to this page.

Please be aware that this software works only with PCs.  This will work on Windows, Vista, and XP and requires installation of the current .NET, which is a free download from Microsoft.  If you are running Vista or XP, this should already be integrated into the operating system.  The download is about 36 MB.  Because the video shows you in detail  all aspects of the software, all sales are final.  However, if for some reason the software does not work or there should be some conflict with your currect system, I will refund your purchase immediately.  Your download will include our support email address and a toll free number to call in case of difficulties.

After payment, you will be immediately transferred to a secure download page for immediate download of the product.  You will also receive an email giving you the download link.  In the event that you are not immediately transferred to the download area, you will be presented with a button to click that will take you to the secure download area.

Only $2.99