I appreciate the input guys. You all know a bit more than me just trying to find a happy upper level.

Of course it depends on the person but I could write 20 good blog posts in the time I write one FS. I love to write but I'm a bit dyslexic so without the help of a text editor like word, I'd miss a bunch of spelling errors.

My thought is to write a few of my own blog posts supplemented with a few feeds that I may slightly edit. do this on a handful of blogs and set up a few splogs jut to learn and play with.

Well Bust My Bubble
I'm trying to just use Sponsor feeds and am coming up short, so I am going to fire up and learn Gallery Scrapper today.
my theory on duplicate content is. "I've wasted to much time worrying about it and need to spit some splogs out to see what the results are for myself"
Result so far on the network of splogs I've decided to concentrate on
I got BA on November 23ld
Uniques for Nov. 26
Uniques for Dec. 4113
Uniques for Jan. 5463
Google listings are growing steadily, 7,090
I'm in the neighborhood of .015 per Unique so far
I honestly don't think I will know if I've wasted my time for a couple more months

I think feed sploggers are eventually going to need to start thinking in terms of traffic trades. (ok, I post this because I think that now is about as good a time as any to approach the subject.)

I'm not talking the TGP style of forced hits and skimmed trades.

I'm talking simply giving up the top spots on your blog for the sole purpose of generating more traffic.

I know all the arguments against it...or at least I think I do....but feel free to try to set a fire to my ass and explain to me why sploggers are afraid of traffic trades.

As far as what I'm working on, building feed splogs is a part of the game and I will enjoy every SE hit I steal but I'm not going to rely on the SE's for my traffic...at least not directly to the splogs!.

Also, I wont even try to estimate my success (if any) for a good long time.

I hope I have not been to negative, don't mean to.

I know what it's like to put so much time and effort into something that is questionable and it drops. I put so much into SEO and while it was good, it didn't last, because of course the tactics were questionable. Not black hat or anything.

Guess I've come to realize, or believe, good unique content seems to win.

Hey, it seems to be working for you T Pat. Can't argue with your numbers..:)

I don't find your posts negative at all ronnie, actually I find it sound advice, I agree good unique content rules.
I religiously attend "On The Bench" and relying on Search Engine traffic is one of Mr Mary Lou's favorite rants and I've had good listings just evaporate more times than I care to think about, but I'm going to give this sploging thing a good shot :D

I have a linking strategy in mind but I'm not ready to let the cat out of the bag yet.

I'ld like to hear more of what you have in mind Walrus, are you talking about using some kind of script to make sure the traffic trades are equal?

Exactly. Same here and reason why I tend to be too vocal sometimes.

Hate to see all the time, work and money go up in smoke and your often left with little to do anything with.

I wonder also about commenting. We know building a community is a good thing, could build traffic and trust.

I regard to the commenting, Im just afriad that the spammers and spending hours a day sifting through approved comments etc.

I've got a script called click count which would do that so that's a possibility or simply use LO or BO to setup a top list type of thing.

I know LO allows you to sort by incoming uniques so you could allow people to sign-up and then only display the top 10, top 20 or what-ever.

I haven't thought it through all the way to determine which might be the best way trading strategy but I do think it's time to think seriously about it. I probably should start a new post.

WP has Askimet which does a pretty good job of filtering comment spam. Some does get through but I would say I spend less than 5 minutes a day on a blog that gets 6k uniques deleting un-approved spam.

5 minutes isnt bad Walrus. For myself I may play it safe and keep comments off for the beginning..and then maybe open it up...have to play it by 'ear'

Crazy little question. I want to put a area along my right side bar to show off sponsor buttons 120x60 size..I will be using maybe 6-10 (at the most)..this may have been answered before but how does one go about doing so in WP?

Thanks

Just locate the area in the sidebare where you want the buttons and code them in just like html

I know what you mean. When I started blogging, my MT blogs got slammed big time, ended up turning it all off. As Walrus mentioned, Askimet does a pretty good job. I know since I started using Wordpress, it's been very little spam. You can always make them sign up to comment also.