Thinking of starting a blog that will serve as a news aggregator website?
That’s awesome!
If you follow the lead of successful news aggregator websites like The Drudge Report, you’re on your way to fame and fortune, too.
At one point, that site welcomed 58 million visitors in a month!
However, are you up for the challenge of running one?
Can you publish content on your blog multiple times each day?
Can you scoop up a pool of news content from high-quality sources?
If you’re leaning towards “NO” to both questions, it doesn’t mean that you have to pull the plug on the idea.
You just need a helping hand.
And it’s a good thing a plugin like WP RSS Aggregator can come to your rescue.
Instead of getting people to write and publish the content for you, the plugin will pull out content from established sources.
It curates relevant posts about your niche and helps you build an authority hub about the topic!
Sounds good? Good. Because this post is a step-by-step guide on how to create a news aggregator website that publishes content automatically using this plugin.
Step 1 – Install WP RSS Aggregator
1. Install WP RSS Aggregator – Feed to Post and WP RSS Aggregator – Full Text RSS Feeds.
Start by installing WP RSS Aggregator.
For your news aggregator site to work properly, you need to install the two add-ons mentioned above.
WP RSS Aggregator – Feed to Post lets you collect feed items from RSS feeds like articles from news websites and WordPress posts.
Meanwhile, WP RSS Aggregator – Full Text RSS Feeds imports featured images for sources that do not provide them within the feeds.
2. Activate the plugin by entering the license keys to both add-ons
Enter the license keys for both WP RSS Aggregator add-ons so you will receive updates and support.
If you do not enter the license keys, the WP RSS Aggregator – Full Text RSS Feeds add-on will not work at all.
3. Review the general settings
Go to your dashboard and choose the general settings.
There, focus on two items.
First, focus on the line that says “Limit feed items by age.”
It’s recommended to set it to 2 months. Apply this setting to all sources.
Next, focus on the line that says “Feed processing interval.”
It refers to the number of times you want the plugin to fetch posts.
You can set it however you want.
4. Set categories
Return to your dashboard and this time, choose Post>Categories.
Specify a category for each source as a way of organizing all incoming content.
5. Use filters
Once again, return to your dashboard and choose Appearance>Editor.
There, load functions.php to apply filters.
Doing so lets you link directly to original sources
6. Specify sources
Return to your dashboard and choose RSS Aggregator>Feed Sources.
There, add the RSS feeds of the sources for your blog’s content.
The types of RSS feeds you can include here should be related to your niche. For example, if you want to run a local news site, then you need to find blogs or websites that report news within the area.
Add as many as you can, but make sure that all of them produce quality content.
Step 2 – Add plugins
Install plugins to allow WP RSS Aggregator to work seamlessly.
Some plugins you need to install are:
- Ninja Forms – to encourage feedback from visitors. Create customized forms and embed them on relevant pages to bridge the gap between you and the reader.
- Jetpack – to monitor site statistics, publish latest posts directly to your social media sites, include sharing button on each post, host images on a different server to increase site speed, and a lot more!. Read this post to learn more about its features.
- Yoast SEO – to optimize your blog using the best on-page practices. Also helps you create an XML sitemap.
- BackupBuddy – to perform backups and restore your media library. Run this on a regular basis to have the latest post stored safety. Use the backup on your blog if something wrong happens to it.
Step 3 – Be ready to launch
Then, get your blog out there. After seeing your hard work, tell people about it.
Start driving traffic to it with the intention of generating leads.
You can use Facebook for this. After all, it’s responsible for driving 27% of traffic to most news websites.
You can also use other forms of public exposure such as leaving a link to it on relevant blogs.
What’s the difference between a news aggregator and a scraper site?
Now, I know what you’re thinking:
I’m taking existing content and publishing it on my blog! Isn’t that illegal?
By using this plugin, you run the risk of making your blog like a scraper site. What it does is take the RSS feeds of a blog, publishes its content, and pretend they wrote it. You don’t want to be doing this because it paints your blog in a bad light. There are ways that you can use the content of other in ethical ways.
So to answer the original question:
It’s not illegal as long as you attribute the post back to where you got it. WP RSS Aggregator lets you create a section at the bottom of each post to inform readers where it was initially published.
From an SEO perspective, however, Google won’t index your blog due to duplicate pages. Therefore, if you want to generate organic traffic from your news aggregator site, you still need to create unique content.
Another way to use content generated by the plugin from RSS feeds is to use the posts as talking points for creating a brand new article.
Conclusion
WP RSS Aggregator is a godsend for publishers. You can now create news aggregator websites that publish content automatically with just a few clicks of a button and at a fraction of a cost!
Another reason to be grateful for this plugin is its ability to produce a decent passive income from your site! You can profit from them via Google Adsense and other forms of monetization techniques.
However, it doesn’t help you earn money automatically!
Building a blog still requires your time, patience, and a lot of elbow grease.
Play around with the plugin and find the best news sources that publish content in your niche. Check out your traffic and see posts that generate the most traction. Use the information to optimize your site and find better sources to publish using the plugin.
As impressive as WP RSS Aggregator plugin is, the brunt of the work will come from how you interpret data and create a site that attracts lots of traffic and best caters to your audience.