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Auto Content Cash from Alex Goad, Brian Johnson and Jared Croslow is the latest automated mini-blog solution to hit the market.

It promises to build niche and product targeted WordPress blogs that you can set up in under an hour. Custom plugins are then used to auto-generate content so you never have to visit the blog again, you just leave it to build itself while you get on with building another auto-blog and then another and another until you have hundreds or thousands or millions or billions…

…because what we really need is a whole bunch more spam sites on the web. We can never get enough of these things, especially when it comes to actually trying to find useful information on the search engines.

I ran a search on Google just yesterday, I was looking for a tool to transcribe my mp3 recordings. I can’t recall the range of keyword searches I used but no matter what I tried all I could come up with was a whole bunch of spam sites offering the same tool I already knew was out of date garbage. I gave up in the end, I just didn’t have the patience to wade through hundreds of results only to find each one I clicked lead to a mini-blog stuffed with adsense, download links and the same, utterly uninformative article re-spun to death.

What I was seeing was the wreckage of a previous affiliate marketing effort for a product long since expired. Whilst Google isn’t my “bestest” friend in the whole wide world, I do have sympathy for the guys who try to figure the algorithms so genuine searchers stand a chance of finding what they are looking for.

I guess you can gather by now I’m pretty damn disappointed by Auto Content Cash. Maybe it’s the cleverest tool on the block, maybe it does exactly what it claims, maybe the price is a whole lot better than the alternatives out there. But whatever happened to the concept of building a real, sustainable online business? Why are we seeing more and more of these lazy and brainless methods for generating cash with zero regard for the effect on our community and the Internet in general?

The Internet is the most valuable tool we have today. All the other media outlets have long since been captured by the corporations. Television, radio, the mainstream press – these are all tightly controlled and heavily filtered. Only on the Internet can a little guy compete with the big dogs. So along comes Auto Content Cash and a whole load of other methods designed to vandalise our most precious asset so a few shirkers can stuff their pockets at the expense of the rest of us.

I am massively disappointed to see a genuinely good guy like Brian Johnson involved in this sort of thing. This is the same Brian Johnson who pushed the merits of unique content in his excellent course Commission Ritual. Listening to Brian last night on a webinar arranged by James Jones, I got the impression he has the best intentions as he tries to help people who can’t make the break and start earning online. But doesn’t he see that many of these people can’t earn because they aren’t prepared to do the hard things necessary to build a decent business? They are lazy and perhaps they shouldn’t be helped at all – harsh? Maybe they should just be told to go and get a menial job that requires zero ambition and will be more suited to their perspective on work – unreasonable?

Some of us are trying to build business that will be around in five and ten years from now. Some of us aren’t quick-in, quick-buck, rapid exit and leave the mess merchants and some of us are realistic about the game we are in and know we’ll have to graft to succeed. And what’s wrong with that?

The creators of Auto Content Cash justify their new product by claiming Google loves duplicate content and that, in fact, Google itself is built on duplicate content! Oh please… how thin is that? It’s like saying it’s okay to plagiarise an entire book because you saw its title listed in the index of another publication.

What they mean to say is there are methods available to fool Google into treating the content as unique, such as mixing it up a bit, adding a few links, re-spinning, modifying the title. Google is a robot in the end and a robot is programmed to follow rules and react based on those rules. Once the rules can be deduced the system can be gamed. This doesn’t for a second imply Google loves the outcome.

At best the philosophy behind this product is aimed at people who want some spare pocket money and don’t really care how they get it. The sort of people who have no regard for their reputation online because they know they’ll never be around in one spot long enough to be called out for producing junk and muddying the water for the rest of us.

Don’t get me wrong, automation has its place. There are sites and directories out there that are based on collating the content of the Internet into various formats that can provide a value to the end user. Places such as Digg where social buzz is quantified, article directories where I’ll look if I want content inspiration, Twitter which is a sea of noise like everyday life. Automating submission to these places is in line with the nature of the sites. Some might argue otherwise but let’s not pretend Twitter is a valuable index of knowledge, it’s a disorganised jumble by design so auto-tweeting your unique content blog posts is about flagging value, not killing the model.

But these are not the places I go to if I want to find the most relevant and authoritative resource for quality information. For this I rely on the search engines. If these search engines end up filled with micro spam sites (which is exactly what these adsense sites are) then I have been robbed of the value a tool like Google once provided. So whilst Auto Content Cash is great value for lazy Internet marketers it comes at a cost that is being extracted from you and I and all the other serious marketers who are producing the very content that is stolen and then used against us.

Auto Content Cash itself sounds like a re-hash of WordPress plugin content thieving tools such as Caffeinated Content and WPRobot. To be fair it also comes with a lot of quality content that will be useful for non-spammers, such as SEO tutorials and information on outsourcing and site flipping. And the price is super low, cheaper than buying either of the previously mentioned WordPress tools.

Brian also makes mention of a plugin that quickly allows a WordPress configuration to be cloned and this alone is probably worth the asking price. I’d be interested in seeing it as I’m half-way through writing something similar.

But it’s the automation, spam and forget nature of this product that is its primary selling point. The road to hell is lined with good intentions. I’ve dealt with Alex and Brian in the past and believe they genuinely care about their customers and want to see their students succeed. I just think they’ve got it very wrong this time and are setting people up with a method that, eventually, Google will defeat. At least I hope so because that will open up the way for those who apply a bit more care and consideration in their business and are building for the long haul rather than the fast dollar.

Auto Content Cash then? A massive thumbs down. This isn’t the way you’ll be successful long term.

But if you don’t give a damn about your industry and have zero standards then go ahead, the price is right and the tools on offer will certainly allow you to keep your fat ass on the couch whilst you watch TV, stuff doughnuts and skim profit off the back of others. You could say it’s a steal all round. Certainly a no-brainer!

Too honest?

Auto Content Cash

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