With my last post about Link Laundering Sites we got to go a bit old school. It was a lot of fun, but this time I feel like stepping it up a notch and going a bit more new wave. This time focusing on the money sites, which you can probably guess is my favorite type of site.
The trick to a good money site is its ability to convert, draw traffic, and get indexed. Hmmm… I could of swore I just missed one….Oh yeah! and be automated. This is where Madlib Sites come to the rescue.
What Are Madlib Sites?
Madlib Sites are basically the perfect combination of selling a product or offer through through standard SEO using a prewritten madlib and a big frickin’ database. You are probably already familiar with what a madlib is. Its a game kids play where you get asked to name a series of objects off the top of your head. For instance, say a girls name(okay Sally), now say a noun(okay Rock). Then you get a story with a bunch of blanks like *girlsname* jumped over a large *noun*. Then you insert your choices into the blanks where appropriate. So you end up with something like, “Sally jumped over a large rock.” In the SEO world this is typically known as a content rewriter. However rewriting is not what we’re going to be using this technique for. We’re going to use it to sell the users on a targeted product or offer. When done in mass this equates to some serious niche coverage and I’ll explain how.
Lets Get Started
1) First we’ll need to pick a broad niche. Lets go with dating. Dating is a nice CPA type offer that tends to convert well if you can throw it in the face of the right type of lonely people. I’d say that fits just about 90% of the people using Google at this moment so lets go for them.
2) Next we’re going to pick some offers. There’s a million and a half blogs talking about how to pick CPA offers so I’m going skip all that rubbish and just go for a good ol’ Singlesnet affiliate offer and possibly an old FriendFinder banner or two.

Haha. You probably had no idea Oregon was farming such damn fine honeys did ya?
3) Now we just need to get our hands on a good database. You can find plenty of large databases for sale at public forums like Sitepoint. For this example I’m going to grab a good regional database. A regional database usually contains a bunch of regional information such as city, zip, county, population, local restaurants, gas stations, schools, and other census and GPS information.
4) Next we’ll throw up a site with the general niche as the primary keyword. The main page will give a nice description of the site and how to find local dating. It will then give a directory of all the states. Inside each states subpage will be links to even more subpages of the cities and counties. This is best done through ModRewrite and pulling from the database in an ORDER BY. For instance if the database is organized like:
State County City
Then we would have the subpages ORDER BY STATE, then each county subpage would be organized WHERE STATE = $state and so on and so forth for the individual cities. For those of you who don’t live in the United States that basically means we now have one big ass site with thousands of landing pages for each individual city and county.
5) Here comes the fun part, creating our madlib. Using as little of your own words as possible write an entire page about dating in *cityname*. The trick here is to really make it sell your dating offers. Also be sure to use as much of the database content as possible so the pages don’t look like duplicate content. Since I love (pun) this step so much I’m going to write a short example to get started.
-begin madlib page-
You look lonely. There now little fella don’t be lonely there are plenty of singles in *cityname*. I realize its tough to meet people in the *countyname* area, but luckily I found *datingsitelink*. I met an awesome *guysname* that worked at *gasstation*. He impregnated me and we moved to Europe where he’s in mergers and aquisitions for a large company. Since then I have recommended all my friends join a good dating site like *datingsitelink*. Here’s a few of my girlfriends who are still living in *city* that joined *datingsitelink*. All three were my best friends growing up and going to *localhighschool*.

The best advice I can give for scoring big points white dating in *cityname* is to pick a nice romantic restaurant. I’d recommend you check out *restaurant1* or possibly *restaurant2*.
-End madlib page-
That was fun wasn’t it! Hehe. Just remember that there is a perfect balance you must find. So feel free to play around with your madlibs before going live with it. Use as much of the database as possible in order to escape duplicate content penalties, yet at the same time using enough of your own words to really sell the product thoroughly. Also don’t forget to plaster the margins with banners and advertisements for the offers but not enough to distract them heavily from the text because its the text that’s going to drive the conversion through.
6) Next we’ll need to write out the individual pages script for each city and county using the madlib. For you noncoders, don’t worry about hiring a coder to do this, its so incredibly simple. Learn a tiny bit of php or perl (like some echo or print functions) and a few SELECT and sorting commands in MYSQL and you should have it up with hardly any effort.
So now you got yourself a clean 40,000+ page lean mean selling machine. Now you just got to use your Link Laundering Sites to generate some heaving deep linking to your landing pages to help them get indexed and ranking. From this point on its all about SEO volume. It’s also good to notice the huge variants in the niches, offers, and available databases that can be used using the Madlib Site technique. Although not alone, regional is a great example because regional is so expansive and yet contains VERY targeted traffic. The volume also follows suite. There are a lot of golden niches that can be found when you combine a large niche with a large targeted database. You may be shocked what what you find. Not convinced? Do a little keyword research on “online dating Louisville”.
Those of you that are still wondering how people are managing to make to make thousands a day online and consistantly through the fads I hope you are starting to come to an understanding
Haha, this is awesome
Great idea, definitly going to try this one. If anyone has a free database, please share!
Very nice!
That’s going to be my next project.. I’ll report back how it goes
Sweet! If you need a script to rotate the AFF images with sexier ones I posted one a few weeks back along with a zip file containing all the images.
I’d like to see a few posts on how you tackle Indexing & Promotion Eli, aside from Link Laundering
Stu
Eli, searching for “online dating Louisville” I don’t come across any madlib-like sites. Are you just refering to the search term getting a ton of searches?
yeah i was refering to the keyword research. Big search volume with barely any competition.
I do it like this.
(Hey {name} | hi! {name} | dear {name})
(My name is |They call me | I have been known to go by ){myname}. (I like | I enjoy) (long walks |cuddling |square dancing). (if you are interested | if I make you horny | if you want to touch my hiney) (click here! | go here)
and it just replaces {xxx} with the tokens and picks one of the pipe seperated options.
http://nonsense.sourceforge.net/
works the same way…………………
Off topic.
I’m pretty lax about getting spammed. I’m not one of those people who gets pissed when I see a billboard on the side of the freeway. Its not until someone decides to go a bit overboard and try to be destructive that I make an attempt to curb it.
On that note: Wanna see something funny?
http://board.x-fox.net/index.php/board,6.0.html
I guess they love your blog over at board.x-fox.net
you iz the mutha friggin man dude!
I just found this website for databases:
http://www.contentforsale.org
Anyone got something else?
Great find! I’m going to buy a couple for my next few batches.
check out odditysoftware, they have hundreds of DB’s…
Nice one eli!
Yeah you can find all sorts of databases on the web, I’d checkout http://usgs.com for more data as well.
Oops, try http://www.usgs.gov/ I’m guessing that some old guy in ratty boxers has the .com
I can’t believe you are sharing all of this info for free. The so called SEO “gurus” are so full of shit and keep feeding people the same old shit on how to make money online, while keeping the real secrets to themselves.
Do you post here in this paid forum?
http://www.seoblackhat.com/forum/
(Not link spam)
The stuff you post about can well warrant a pay forum for sure. If you are posting this stuff free I can only imagine what you’d post in a paid forum. Man keep up this good work. it’s forced me to look at making online money in a completely new manner.
thanks,
nope i don’t post on any paid forums.
Good luck to you though.
Would a madlib site like this mainly consist of a couple of php files that call from the mysql database? If so and the nothing is too static about the site…will the way the site gets indexed and ranked be affected? Sorry if these questions are too elementary, I’m just getting started learning all of this.
yes. The php files will call the database information. Then you will need to use modrewrite to make the pages appear static. The information shouldn’t change dynamically so in a sense the site will be 100% static. This shouldn’t affect indexing.
Search engine Cloaker does a pretty good job of making sites just like this. It doesnt run off a database though
Ok now. Whose trying this out?
After I submit this comment, and after I thank Eli for a kickass post!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I will be getting to work!!!!!!!!!!
Does someone know of a PHP implementation that interprets stuff like
?
**
stuff like this:
(Hey {name} | hi! {name} | dear {name})
(My name is |They call me | I have been known to go by ){myname}.
(it didn’t post this)
Great post eli, I must admit your blue hat thinking is precisely the way in which SEO guru’s have been making a killing. They say 10% of the sites make 90% of the money, and it is simply due to secrets like these. Keep up the quality posts, I enjoy the read
I’d like to see what one of these sites look like.
Any links of good ones?
I’m like a crack fiend on this site. I visit 20 times a day praying that ELi has made a new post.
ps. I too want to see one of these site in action also.
Damnit Eli, everytime I get done implementing a single one of your ideas you throw a new project at me. I quit my damn job so I wouldn’t have people giving me projects anymore
. Thanks again for all the great ideas I honestly have a bookmarks folder just for things you’ve said that I’ve yet to implement/mean to in the future. That being said, where do you recommend I go to learn PHP? Any favorite books/resources you recommend for a beginner in that area?
Hey, eli, The grammar is a bit off bit off.
blah just another thing to try out this week, most of the things i’ve tried from your blog in the past have actually worked.
I need a madlib dating site built.
Contact me if you can do it.
I’m going to have to recommend that you don’t take my examples as suggestions. Thats a good way to gain a ton of competitors quick. Try something else that you think would work. Feel free to get creative with it. Sometimes the best way is to look at what offers there are to promote. For instance if you like the regional database idea you could stick with that and promote hotels.com as an example.
If you like the dating example you could use some sort of babybook names database instead of the regional. You could draw quite a few links and word of mouth traffic from an article on why ____ make the best people to date. Have each article be a unique madlib using the concatination methods mentioned in the comments above.
What would be a good regional database? Haven’t been able to find anything useful yet.
Try this:
zipcode database
How about this?
http://www.cfdynamics.com/cfdynamics/zipbase/index.cfm
btw Eli, I’ve been getting a kick out of your blog, great creative approaches - it’s been getting me thinking.
I guess it’d have to be converted to mysql if you used that.
Either way, great idea Eli
What would be a good regional database? Haven’t been able to find anything useful yet.
Yeah Ive been having some issues sourcing a regional database like the one Eli describes.
BTW, I have a data base of over 300,000 pad files to start your link laundering/madlib site……email me for more info.
I also have a big database how do i do?
Is there some script for sale where we would just change the text and templates so it is unique?
Wow, now this article was written for me. I bet all the guys want to move to Oregon now, you put the girls on the map there. I am loving the MadLib and like you said this can be used for Baby Names. Wow, I think when I go to the doc and he asks why I have big bags under my eyes I can say “bluehat”. keep it up you are awesome
First, LOVE the madlibs idea - so deceptively simple. In the article you mention to use as few of your own words as possible so Google won’t penalize the site for duplicate content… and to make the story engage the reader better.
If you took it to the next level, how would Google’s index react? My idea is: build a story that has perhaps 5 paragraphs. Then write about 20 related stories with 5 paragraphs each. My page would them randomly grab 5 paragraphs from random stories, essentially generating a possible 3,200,000 story combinations (20^5).
What sort of penalties, or problems, crop up in a scenario like that?
Thanks for this site by the way, getting the creative juices flowing!
FYI here is an example of this kind of website:
http://www.drivereducationonline.us/
Great post as always!
For those who aren’t that technically inclined, you might find a product called “4W Webmerge” handy for generating pages from various data sources - works great for just these type of projects - allowing you to crank out thousands of pages locally on your machine using a very simple template system (just include simple tag references to the desired data in a build template, set a few options and press a button and you’re off.)
Makes for a pretty hefty upload after the fact since it’s not generated server side, but if it’s not something you plan on updating much worth looking in to.
Hey nice script.
Eli, I had this idea of generating pages from databases already but I just did not have any knowledge on how to do it.
Hi ,
anyone provide any assistance with step 6.. the simple bit
Have small db with car names id like to experiment with
Grear article!
Wow, this looks like a good idea! Are there any success stories out there? I’d like to here some before I try doing this =)
I guess the line between good content and spam will always be moving and at the end of the day be drawn by big brother … Google.
Looking to buy a database of US Colleges/universities. Anyone know where I can get one?
Thanx, in advance.
Is there anyway to create a site like this if you don’t understand php? or would I have to hire somebody?
Thanks
If you make a dating site do you have a picture of a different girl on every page of this 40,000 page site?
Most of the dating programs have some sort of geo-targeted photos you can put on your pages of real people in the particular area. The better ones have pictures of totally random good looking people that no poor sap who finds your site will ever meet. But it gets them to sign up, anyway.
Going to try this out soon… Need a db first…. Maybe I can scrape results from SERPS for each state? Hrmm..
oh crap… i wrote my comment.. and this thing told me i didn’t pass math.. now i have to write it all over again! and i wrote this code here.. hrrr
so anyway, i wrote a little function to generate random strings….
it works like that:
the 1st parameter is a string that can contain this:
(rand 1|rand 2) - will take “rand 1″ or “rand 2″
[rand 1/rand 2] - the same. used for random inside another random
{variable} - change to whatever you tells it to change to (look at the 2nd parameter)
the 2nd parameter is an array, the key is the “variable” inside the “{variable}”, and the value is the string taht it need to change to.
example:
‘eXeCuTe’,
‘name’=>’John’,
)
);
echo “Text : $text\n”;
?>
btw, i’m sorry about my english… i know my english sucks…
if it doesn’t work for you - execut3@gmail.com
this blog is great, i love you. i’m going to read everything and try it all! you can be selling this stuff for a lot of $$.. and you giving it for free. you have no idea how much i appreciate you for that
good day, Nadav
oh, this thing has strip_tags… damn it :\
well, delete the previous comment…
–from here, it’s the previous comment, with “.?php” instead of what it should be–
oh crap… i wrote my comment.. and this thing told me i didn’t pass math.. now i have to write it all over again! and i wrote this code here.. hrrr
so anyway, i wrote a little function to generate random strings….
.?php
function get_rand($str,$l) {
$arr=explode($l, $str);
return $arr[array_rand($arr)];
}
function parse_rand($str,$arr=array()) {
$str=preg_replace(’/\[(.*?)\]/e’, ‘get_rand(”$1″,”/”)’, $str);
$str=preg_replace(’/\((.*?)\)/e’, ‘get_rand(”$1″,”|”)’, $str);
$str=preg_replace(’/\{(.*?)}/e’, ‘$arr[\’$1\’]', $str);
return $str;
}
?>
it works like that:
the 1st parameter is a string that can contain this:
(rand 1|rand 2) - will take “rand 1″ or “rand 2″
[rand 1/rand 2] - the same. used for random inside another random
{variable} - change to whatever you tells it to change to (look at the 2nd parameter)
the 2nd parameter is an array, the key is the “variable” inside the “{variable}”, and the value is the string taht it need to change to.
example:
.?php
$text=parse_rand(
‘(Hey|hi!|dear) {name}, (My name is|They call me|I have been known to go by) {myname}. I (like|enjoy) (long walks|cuddling|square dancing). (if you are interested|if I make you horny|if you want to touch my hiney) (click here!|go here). and just for the test: (a [1/2/3] b|c [4/5/6] d)’,
array(
‘myname’=>’eXeCuTe’,
‘name’=>’John’,
)
);
echo “Text : $text\n”;
?>
btw, i’m sorry about my english… i know my english sucks…
if it doesn’t work for you - execut3@gmail.com
this blog is great, i love you. i’m going to read everything and try it all! you can be selling this stuff for a lot of $$.. and you giving it for free. you have no idea how much i appreciate you for that
good day, Nadav
I came back to this post after trying work on a new project, just wanted to thank execute up above for his last comment as well… helped me out.
I love your site! I keep checking back every day for new posts (sad or what)! I have tried to use your example for a madlib site and have built 3 of them (different niches). I am struggling to get more than 20 pages indexed at the moment although it’s only been a few weeks since the sites went live. The cool thing that I have also done is used dynamic meta tags for each page and used mod rewrite & .htaccess to create static .html pages. All thanks to your blog! If anyone wants to check out the sites to get an idea here is one: -
http://dating-services.bigwebsearch.net/usa/
Exellent post yet again!
hey ppl ;p
Eli,
Is there an easy way to integrate databases with HTML templates to make these db sites? I’m a non-programmer, so this is the biggest stumbling block that I have.
For non programmers i suggest to start learning php, the easyest way to start is to use some framework, like Codeigniter or something like that…
thanks for another great article Eli.
it looks like i will have to learn php to get results like this.
Hi, Eli,
thanks for your article!
It’s very interesting, - i will do right now!