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Rochelle
Mark over at The Niche Store Builder recently wrote about a WordPress plugin called Caffeinated Content. This is a plugin that I have started using and I am LOVING it! The Caffienated Content plugin allows users to pull content related to whatever keywords you enter in quantities that you choose.
I actually think this is one of the most useful WordPress plugin I have come across. So, I thought I would share how I am using it, because this plugin is a fabulous way to add content to your blog.
Before I go on I should say that there is nothing this plugin does that you cannot do yourself. The value of it, for me anyway, is that it saves a tremendous amount of time, as I will explain.
For the sake of this post I am going to pretend I have a site that blogs about seaweed, as well as a niche store selling seaweed items. I don’t, but it is what I am eating as I write this, so it is as good as any other topic I could come up with. Plus, it should show the diversity and power of this plugin. Hmmm. I wonder if eBay even sells seaweed? Could be a good niche…
Why I am loving the Caffeinated Content plugin: |
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Content pulled from Yahoo Answers
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| Yahoo Answers is a place people go to ask questions about pretty much anything. Then, readers offer answers to the questions. There are probably millions (billions?) of questions with answers there. | |
| This plugin will pull questions from Yahoo Answers. You can even include the answers, which I highly recommend. However, do NOT autopost any of the posts or comments. This way, you can go in and edit the posts (and you should edit the posts). | |
| So, I went to the Caffeinated Content Management and had it search Yahoo Answers for ’seaweed.’ (Just out of curiousity, I checked to see how many questions there are at Yahoo Anwers. Turns out, there are 1,576.) I requested 10 posts, as this should get me started without overwhelming me with posts. I did not autopost the posts or comments. | |
| Now that I have my posts, I need to edit each post before I publish it. First, I go to my draft posts (which is where they are saved) and look through my 10 drafts: | |
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| Since I am eating seaweed tonight, I think I will choose the ‘How can you tell if seaweed is still good?’ post. Here is how it looks without my doing anything to it: | |
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| After reading it over it looks like a good question. But, are there any answers? I have no idea how to tell if seaweed is good or bad, so I am hoping that one or more of the answers will be able to help me with this post. So, next I go look at the answers. I do this by clicking on the ‘See Comments on this Post’ link: | |
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| Lucky me, there are three comments for this post. Even better, they are helpful: | |
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| Now that I know I have a good question with good answers I can get to work modifying this post. If I published this post exactly as it is I would get the Google Slap big time for having duplicate content. Plus, for me, I do not want a blog full of questions. I want my blog full of useful content. | |
| I will go back to my question and remove a few things. I do not like seeing the ‘futurefashiondesigner asked:” text at the top or the ‘Website content’ link at the bottom. The posts will always start with the name of the person who asked the question and end with a link to Caffeinated Content’s website (it will use different text but will always go to their site). So, I delete these: | |
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| Next, I start rewriting the entire post. I combine the question with information from the answers. Here is what I ended up with for this sample post: | |
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| How does that look? I took the contents of the original question, mixed it with answers, and came up with a unique post written in my words. It took me less than five minute to write this. Next I would modify the title of the post, then save it. I can either publish it right away or schedule it for a future post. | |
| Psst… Did you notice the cool image of seaweed in the upper left corner? This plugin automatically adds an image to each Yahoo Answer post. I have no idea how it figures out what type of image to add, but I have yet to see it put in inaccurate picture. If you don’t like the image then you can simply delete it. I, however, love them as it adds a nice touch to my posts. | |
| Lastly, since I do not want to keep the comments (I only use them to write the post) I need to delete all the comments associated with the post I just saved. I do this by clicking the ‘Delete’ link: | |
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| As I already stated above, I could achieve the same thing (minus the images in the upper left corners, although I’m sure I can add those, too, if I want to take the time to look for images to use) by going to Yahoo Answers. I can find questions, copy them, and edit them. | |
| I like this plugin because it does the work for me in about 20 seconds. Plus, if I do this manually I am likely to start running into duplicate posts. By this, I mean I will get to a point where I do not know if I have already used a question or not. This plugin prevents this from happening by keeping track of questions it has imported. If you ever clear the history for this plugin then you will start from the beginning as though you had not ever imported questions. | |
| Content pulled from YouTube | |
| If you want to add videos related to your blog’s niche then use this plugin to easily add them. I have gone to YouTube in the past and found that I can take 10 minutes finding a video relating to my niche. I have found it to be much easier with this plugin. | |
| Again, I will enter ’seaweed’ and see what I get. This time, though, I will NOT include comments. If I do I might end up with hundreds of comments (in fact, this did happen to me, and I quickly learned not to do it again after I deleted over 200 comments of people praising the video). Here are the draft posts for the YouTube videos this plugin created: | |
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| It took me 10 seconds to create 10 draft posts with seaweed-related videos from YouTube. Plus, I did not have to copy and paste code. | |
| Here is what the post looks like without any editing: | |
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| Note that the name of the person who posted the video is at the top (it says jfk529B asked:), as well as the Caffeinated Content link at the bottom. Note, also, that there is whatever text the creator of the video included with the video. This is great because it gives you a start on creating unique content for the post. In this case, I will reword this slightly. | |
| Don’t worry if you can’t see the video. You won’t be able to while you are editing the post. If you preview the page you will be able to see it. | |
| Now, I am ready to edit this post. I will remove the user name and link, then reword the text that is already there. I have actually saved this post so you can see exactly what a YouTube video post created by Caffeinated Content looks like after some editing. See the Video of Cat Eating Seaweed. | |
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Content Pulled from Article
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| I cannot speak about this aspect of the plugin because I have not use it. I did a search for articles using the keyword ’seaweed’ and it created 9 posts (I asked for 10, so apparently there are only 9 articles from whereever this pulls articles from). But, if you want to use this feature it would be pretty much the same as above. | |
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There is only one other plugin that I intend to spend time on. I have done so now because I think this plugin is truly a timesaver and worth the cost of purchasing it.
Speaking of its cost, according to Mark, the cost of this plugin has been creeping up. I cannot verify the accuracy of this statement, but if true [edit: I just found this on Caffeinated Content's website: "Why does the cost go up every time I visit?! We do things a bit differently around here. Every time someone purchases a piece of software from us, the price will go up by a random amount for the next person."], my guess is that it is being raised to prevent a flood of users.
Lastly, I want to say that I completely disagree with how the creator’s of Caffeinated Content are promoting this plugin. If you watch their video demonstrating how to use it, you may get the idea that you should import questions and comments and publish them as is. Do not do this! Doing so will result in duplicate content, which you do not want. Spend a little time rewriting each post, then publishing it.
I would love to hear from any of you who are also using this plugin. Do you like it? Is it helping you create unique content for your blogs? Or would you rather do this all manually?
Check out the Caffeinated Content plugin and decide if it will be as helpful to you as it is for me.
Rochelle
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Great post Rochelle - Now I want to buy it!!!!
Mikes last blog post..Build a Niche Store Earnings Update
I’ve been using this plug-in on a few of my niche sites for a while now and find it very useful. I use it pretty much the way you suggest but I leave a couple comments from time to time, rewritten of course to give the blog the appearance of activity and encourage others to comment. Finding articles is a little tricky for smaller niches, but there a plenty for the broader ones.
Steve
Home Based Businesss last blog post..The Secret to Making Money with a Home Based Business
Only $27 via this link:
http://forums.digitalpoint.com.....p?t=880629
Taos last blog post..Rocky Horror movie to be remade
Tao,
If you purchased the plugin through the link you provided then you got lucky. I just checked it out and the link is no longer valid. My guess is the auther of the plugin forgot about this link, then was alerted to it from someone purchasing from it.
Rochelle
Great job as usual with your walk-through tutorials Rochelle!! I checked that link too.. its dead. Looks like it was a launch promo or something.
I have to ask though… what does Seaweed taste like? I am a meat & Potatoes guy, so lettuce is probably the closest I have gotten!
Also - did you know you have 2 subscribe to comments checkboxes? One above the comment form and one below. I JUST noticed as I was getting ready to press the add comment button.
Mark
Mark - The Niche Store Builders last blog post..Showing the Right Ads to the Right Visitors!
I don’t know that I can explain what seaweed tastes like, but it is nothing like lettuce! I absolutely adore seaweed salad made by a local meat market in town. I suspect seaweed doesn’t have much of a taste on its own, but the sesame seeds and seasoning make it fabulous. Fresh seaweed is crunchy. Good stuff!
Nope, I sure did not realize I have two ’subscribe to comments’ boxes. I think I will leave them alone, as removing one might unsubscribe people from seeing additional comments.
Rochelle
Sounds good, Rochelle, but when I’ve seen it in action (yes, it’s recognizable!) it’s removed all attribution and articles from article banks have all their links and author credit removed.
Don’t know if that’s an optional setting on the plugin but as an ezinearticles author myself it’s not a practice I endorse!
James,
I think this is recognizable only when people are somewhat lazy about using it. If you completely rewrite the posts, as I did above, then the only thing that might give it away is the picture. But even that is questionable, as I have seen plenty of blog posts that include pictures (including some of my own).
James brings up a very good point regarding articles. If someone pulls articles with this plugin and uses the articles verbatim, then you should leave in the author information. I agree with you that I do not endorse that.
Rochelle
In regard to seeing all the original text from questions on the import… you can actually edit the templates that are provided with the plugin, removing those areas so they never show at all.
I have actually left them in place on purpose, just to make sure I do not auto-approve them, thus having duplicate content.
I like to review every question I import, sometimes deleting the ones I didnt really want, then rewrite the questions and ansers to my own needs.
Mark
Mark - The Niche Store Builders last blog post..Showing the Right Ads to the Right Visitors!
Great review, Rochelle.
I just found out that the owner is offering a special $30 rebate through this link
Make sure you type this in the discount code box: Bhw30off
Like Mark said, you can edit template/default.p.txt file to remove “xxx asked”, no need to edit post by post.
Rochelle, by way of the BANS (I’m new to it) I came across your site and have it bookmarked for reference.
Meanwhile regarding Caffeinated Content, your discount code has already expired but this one TRICKORTREAT worked just now.
peter - blogs unlimiteds last blog post..Blogging To The Bank 3.0 Or 2.0 Which Is It?
Hi Peter,
Welcome to BANS! Glad to have you as a reader. There’s a lot to go through, whether at this site or any of the other great sites that help niche store owners. Make sure you give yourself plenty of time for the learning curve (assuming you are new to this stuff).
Much luck to you,
Rochelle
Hi Rochelle,
I arrived at your site checking our RSS for BANS sites. Is the process you write about for a stand-alone BANS site?
Peter
Peter,
This is a plugin for WordPress, so you would not be able to use it on a BANS-only site. You could, however, set up a WP site that is for you and not the public, and use the plugin to get ideas for writing about. You could then create Content pages for each idea. That would be a little awkward, but you could do it.
Rochelle
Hi Rochelle,
This is awesome post. I have had caffeinated plugin since April 2008. But it has been lying in the hd collecteing virtual dust. Woo-hoo… Now I know how to use it properly to help me with my IM.
Thanks so very much. You made my day! ;-p
Kaori,
Glad I could help : )
Rochelle
Cool looking program. I can’t believe I haven’t seen this one before. I have to check it out.
CC used to be a good plugin until the support became non existant. Too many problems with the plugin at the moment. Will not post to Yahoo Answers anymore AND no more titles for articlebase source pulling.
There is a reason why it’s so cheap now. Half of the plugin doesn’t work! I have been an owner for a lil over a month and the problems with the program continue with no support. Didn’t use to be like that when I first purchased though.
I think the creators are aware of the problems. I just got an email yesterday or today stating they are working on an update to take care of issues that arose when Wordpress 2.7 was released. Personally, I haven’t had any problems (but admit that I’m still using WP 2.6). I still use this and still recommend it.
Rochelle