building mainstream sites using free articles? will it work?
 

there're millions of free articles out there on every topic imaginable

I'm thinking of building mainstream sites using exclusively free articles, the SEs shouldn't have problem with that

what I want to know is what are the chances of other websites linking to such sites? what other problems I might run into?

has anybody done something like that? what are your thoughts, experiences?

of course I'll write the text on the index pages myself, but every other page will be a free article with links to the author's website

You will need a better plan :2 cents:

You will be the 19321897392187392817392817132 site to do this, like veteran said, you need a better plan , SEO is not only building a site with content , you need a clue after that

dynamic, relative content ... and more and more and more and less is more and more is less

damn, and I thought I might get some useful replies

it wouldnt work unless you add something to the articles (rss, scarpe, rewrite them using synonyms ,etc), just copy a paragraph from some of those articles, put it in quotes and search it using google. How many results u get, how many of those are supplemental ?

ok, everybody says it wont work, and nobody says why

here's an example:

I build a cooking recipes site, which contains 50 000 recipes, they're all taken from a free articles sites

Is there a reason for somebody interested in cooking/recipes NOT to bookmark this site?
no, there isn't

Is there are reason for the SEs to penalize this site?
No, there isn't, although the same reci[es can be found on many other sites, the site will not be penalized for 'duplicate' content, correct me if I'm worng

The only difficulty might be to cinvince other webmasters to link to the site since it doen't have 100% original content

bottom line, if the site is well optimised, has good linking structure. appropriate title, gets enough external quality links etc, it should rank well on the SEs

what am i missing?

Yes it will work however, 'free articles' is a quite worrying statement, most articles you'll find on the web are copyrighted and if you just use them willy-nilly you could potentially end up in a lot of bother.

A better approach might be to contact Gene and ask if he could write a bunch of articles for you to use on specific topics.

Regards,

Lee

by free articles I mean articles that people publish and are free for you to re-publish on your website, ezine, blog etc

Most of the authors requre you to include a link to their site at the bottom, and allow you to publish their article as long as you don't make any changes to the text.

Typical Terms of reprint below:

00000000000000

Feel free to use this article for your web site or e-zine as
long you include the author bio and make sure all links are
live and working. Please don?t change anything in the
article. Please let me know if you use the article and
where. I wish you the best success if you use my article.
This article is copyright protected by ......

0000000000000000

That's pretty much what Chio is doing with his autoblogger ... copy RSS automaticly.

Eventually:

1. someone will report you to google for Copyright Infringement and google will ban you

2. someone will sue you

agreed 100%, but I've never done mainstrem before, so building 20-30 sites using free articles is much cheaper than paying for original content, basically I don't want to spen a lot of money at the very beginning

what are you talkin about, he is going to be using articles from places like article city, goarticles and all the other free reprint sites

:1orglaugh

please read reply number 9

here's a site that offers articles that you can publish on your site
http://www.goarticles.com/
abd here're the typicals reprint terms:
http://www.goarticles.com/publisher.html

I'm NOT talking about stealing other people's work

If you need a LOT of original custom content for cheap, hit me up.

heres an even better idea, join 2-3 private label content sites, you get like 250-300 limited articles per month, you are the author, seed them sparingly through your own article directory site and then compile ALL articles of each niche into an ebook and sell each book for 15 bucks


shhhhhhhhhhhhhh Im givin it all away now :mad:

Want to hear my two cents? Screw content that has been reused more than the 45 year old hooker on the busy street corner. Write your own content. Update frequently. You won't be punished for having duplicate content and the SEs will thank you for it. :thumbsup

If you are just publishing materials that are already published on other sites you run the high risk of being penalized by SEs for duplicate content. There's ways around this though. It's best to use fresh, customized, and highly specific content. Hit us up. We provide very affordable dedicated writers.

OK...:2 cents: worth. If by "free articles" you mean syndicated content, newsletters blah, - there is nothing wrong with using this. That's what they are for and among the garbage there are some damned good articles.

Tho, doubt that stuffing a load of free articles alone would be beneficial. You may want to think of niches and "wrapping" your website with context relevant content around such articles.

Simple example... if you are creating a website on eg php and scripts, write some decent "real content" on these subjects and inject the contributions by others into the relevant sections.

Optiminizing and linkage is another story :-)

Ah! At last! Least some folks have come up with constructive suggestions!! :thumbsup

...or have Gene do the dirty work for you. :thumbsup

I've built various sites on free articles from the places you mentioned etc. Some have been successful, some haven't It did take a while, and you will have to update frequently. And get some links back to your site of course.

I think it can be done, I don't really see why not.

Pay attention to waht Equinox said, I think he's one to something :thumbsup

Personally, I tried using free articles before and feeding them into directories, blogs, you name it. Even made large RSS feed farms with 10s of thousands of feeds. All automated, all wonderful.

But nothing came even close to the success I've had with my own content. Sure, it takes more time and effort, but it pays off 10 fold.

Damn! Nice site at rexmag.com! :thumbsup

finally we're getting somewhere ;)

lots of good suggestions

Quick case study. Note, I am not selling anything, just trying to make people get a feel for what is possible when you do your own content or buy custom content. About 9 months ago, I started a blog in a niche category that was tapped, but poorly. Not even a niche that I really had an idea about. Started posting 2-3 times a day, on-site optimizing, doing little link exchanges with the competition, but the traffic was poor. 9 month and 690+ blog entries later, the site is at about 8k uniques a day, 40% of which is Google traffic from a vast variety of keywords. Don't ask for the URL, for I will not share it.

http://www.promogrid.com/adsense.gif

Mind, this is the numbers for the leaderboard channel only, since it's pulling the most clicks.

I started three other blogs a few months back, each of which take roughly one hour of work per day each. They are starting to pick up similarly, but the numbers differ since they tackle different niches.

Sure, free content is nice to work with and easy to obtain, but it is just as easy to run your own ship, do your own writing. It does help tremendously with establishing a healthy, natural backlink structure, people are generally much more inclined to link to your site if they like your style of writing and the content you provide. I haven't spent a single breath on backlinks in months, and MSN reports 19,221 backlinks for this particular site. PR of 7, if anyone really cares.

My point, I do believe in custom content, the surfers love it and appreciate it, and my bank account likes it better than any auto-generated or free crap that's gotten me banned in various SEs before. Think of custom content as a long term investment. Speaking of adult, ultrawiredsex.com wasn't doing (and still does) as bloody well for years because he used dime-a-dozen content.

I don't mean to come off as a hardcore advocate for the mainstream. I just love what I do and I feel like motivating people and show them what can be done.

Make the Internet a better place and don't stuff it with the same crap over and over again. :thumbsup :1orglaugh

Thanks Equinox - have only recently started my mainstream blogs and they're just starting to come along - input like you've just provided gives me ALOT of motivation :thumbsup

You're welcome, good luck with it!

there's an argument to be made and a method.




2hp

to the guy who posted the stats
what sponsor do you use????

Looks like google adsense to me

Who's that?

If you put free text without changeing it it won't be se friendly because you will be spamer (acording to some se rules: google and yahoo...) try to make your own text or maybe parts from a couple of text tied in one good text with good sense.... and this will work.... for sure...

if you say you update 2-3 times a day. may i ask how long your average article is? thx

alot of people over exagerate the dup content penalty, of which I have never had happen to, but obviously the se's have had to adjust their rythm to compensate for RSS feeds now. Any one using rss feeds would be penalized which couldn't be farther from the truth.

Yep indeed. Word of the day: purses. :winkwink: