The mind behind Autoblogger
Pro, an automated blog tool that has taken the industry
by storm.
JBM:
First of all the folks on JBM don't know you very well, can
you tell us a bit about yourself, your experiences in this
business, and how you ended up in this industry..
CHIO THE PIRATE:
I've been in this business since 1996. I started out with
a bunch of small AVS sites, and built up enough to eventually
own my own AVS. AVS is still great for me, and I continue
in this area. Over the years I've been fortunate to be able
to move into a number of different areas, namely mainstream
ventures, billing, and software (autoblogger pro, password
site pro, p2pbuilder pro (coming soon) etc.)
Some of you that don't read that *other* board may not know
I have been building an adult alternative to paypal for some
time, which while progressing slowly, continues to evolve
into what I hope will be a worthy alternative to current epayment
systems.
JBM:
Tell us how you came up with the Autoblogger pro idea. Is
it unique
or would you say you just improved on an existing service?
CHIO THE PIRATE:
I am constantly looking for new avenues to build traffic,
but I also don't want to be working all day building. I've
always tried to automate as much of my workflow as possible,
thankfully I've been fortunate to have some very good employees,
and coders to help with a lot of it.
As for Autoblogger Pro... I was experimenting a lot with blogging,
and was pretty excited about the results, but it took a lot
of time to build, and deploy each site. I decided that in
order to get a serious network of blogs going I would need
to automate a lot of the site creation, and management. I
set about building a system using RSS to build up content
rich sites fast. The system which eventually became Autoblogger
Pro was rigged originally from some wordpress plugins, unfortunately
they didn't play nice together so I had a friend rewrite a
good deal of it, and thus autoblogger pro was born. It worked
so well, I thought others could benefit from using it as well.
We started selling it back in October, and so far have been
very happy with the results, and it continues to improve as
a product. Many new features were added to the 2.0 release,
and many more are planned for the next release. We've just
completed some minor fixes, and feature enhancements which
were added this week.
JBM:
We've had some personal conversations on ICQ about
SEO. What kind of
advice would you give to someone who is interested in optimizing
their
sites?
CHIO THE PIRATE:
Content as with any site is king. If you can build
sites quickly with decent content you are ahead of the game.
I see a lot of "Blogs" that are no more than tgp
galleries posted in blog format. This is a huge mistake. Blogs,
are not tgp's. Text based content with some pics will work
much better.
I've had Autoblogger Pro written in a way that takes a lot
of the guesswork of seo out of the equation.
I'm going tease, and say a huge announcement is in the works
for traffic/seo building soon. I can't say anything more than
that right now, but we have a bit of VC interest in the project
already, and I think it will revolutionize the way traffic
acquisition, and advertising on the web is done.
We also have some big news regarding autoblogger pro: We have
a stand alone version of Autoblogger Pro in the works which
will enable to you to post out to any blog platform, as well
as some big news regarding licensing ;)
JBM:
What is your outlook on Black Hat versus White Hat in the
SEO market? (For those who don't know a black hat is someone
who uses methods that are looked down upon by the search engines
in order to obtain their rankings, white hat on the other
hand plays by the rules)
CHIO THE PIRATE:
I personally think there are uses for both, but I prefer to
keep the sites I build within the established dos, and don't
of seo. Some extra hits, and a risk of banning are not worth
the time or trouble.
JBM:
Going back to autoblogger pro, here's something that I was
wondering about. Autoblogger looks great for onsite optimization
but what about incoming links? The overall trend is moving
away from onsite and focusing more on the linking network.
CHIO THE PIRATE:
We are planning to add social bookmarking features to Autoblogger
Pro, and already handle a lot of pinging services automatically
within Autoblogger Pro. I prefer to keep all my traffic within
my own network, and link to, and from individual sites accordingly.
JBM:
What do you see RSS evolving into in the next few years? Do
you think
its a fad or will it grow into something even bigger?
CHIO THE PIRATE:
I think RSS or some variation of the idea will be here a long
time. It's such a quick way to deliver content, it makes a
lot of sense for our business to utilize it as fully as possible.
Some programs have taken steps to start using rss, but most
are doing so ineffectively. A huge market in terms of organic
traffic, and income potential is within reach if programs
would get things "right". I have conversations with
people about rss, and some are starting to see the benefits,
but I think in terms of delivering content easily, and controlling
it from one central location is going to be huge for the companies
that invest some energy into the tools needed to get their
content out to the surfers quickly, and efficiently.
JBM:
Blogger.com recently got demolished on yahoo as far as SERP's
(search
engine ranking positions) are concerned. Do you see the same
thing
happening to wordpress with all the automation tools out there
today.
CHIO THE PIRATE:
Hard to say. It's like a chess game, something is rendered
ineffective, then someone figures out a new way to get around
it. As always it all depends on who's smarter/faster. The
key is to stay on top of it, and use tools that automate as
much as possible to free you up to explore other areas of
traffic creation, and site promotion.
JBM:
You are also launching what you call a "paypal clone".
Can you tell
us a little bit more about that. What makes you think that
you can
compete with giants like Epassporte?
CHIO THE PIRATE:
The idea is not to compete, but it seems there is a real lack
of services available to adult webmasters within the epayment
systems of today.
My system was built to take the best features of paypal, and
epass, and combine them.
I am very happy with the way it's going, and I think a lot
of the stuff we will be rolling out will blow a lot of people
away.
One reason for the delay in launching is some legal requirements.
For instance money transmitter licenses need to be filed in
each state. This is taking a huge amount of time, as each
filing, and fee is separate for each state.
A lot of people wonder why there have been delays, it's mostly
tied to those types of issues. We are meeting each challenge
as they arise. Another delay is a bit of redundancy between
the paypal type system, and an even larger project of mine,
that it may make more sense to not launch the paypal system
at all. No sense having two nearly identical systems.
When dealing with people's money you want to make sure everything
is right the first time. I will not launch either site till
I am confident that the business is ready.
JBM:
You told me in person that you only promote ONE program. How
does that work? and don't you feel that you're"putting
all your eggs in one basket".
CHIO THE PIRATE:
Not one program. My own programs. A bit of a difference ;)
What I meant is I have my own internal traffic delivery systems,
and my own site network (AVS, paysites etc.), within these
networks exist many eggs LOL. I only promote my own sites,
and can divert my traffic anywhere within my network as I
see fit. It has worked very well for me so far ;) best part
is I never have to worry about shaving LOL.
JBM:
I remember once you told me you run an AVS. I'm confused
a lot of people tell me AVS is completely dead. What do you
have to say on that matter?
CHIO THE PIRATE:
It's certainly not dead, not from my own experience
anyway. I would imagine a lot of the old school AVS guys that
understand the game are still doing well with them too.
JBM:
Its been a pleasure, thanks for taking your time to let JBM
know
more about you and your ventures.
CHIO THE PIRATE:
No problem Nick. I just wish you asked me some questions about
my silly pirate, and Theo characters LOL, and about my true
love... photoshop.
In any case I hope this helps someone out there. If anyone
wants to chat, pop me an ICQ. Keep in mind I am pretty busy,
but will try my best to make time for anyone that needs help.
Some very nice people helped me when I was first starting
out, and I'd be happy to do the same.
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