I think most people just leech off of other sites' RSS. It's a waste of time, as those sites don't make money, and Google will eventually find & crack down on it anyway.
I have to agree, it may ok to use some rss feeds but why does anyone want to throw up a site that they don't put their own work into it? just to say they have a site? I recommend you atleast use a mix of feeds and your own content if you want to have any benefits and moneymaking opportunities...but that just my two cents
Depends on what you mean by "Automated". I automate as many features as possible on my sites. For example you can use Cron Jobs to back up your databases according to a schedule. You can automate Directory listings to the point where you only have to approve or deny the listing. You can automate comments. And on and on. With a good CMS and Module Plug ins you can create powerful sites. If you are talking about SCRAPING and just grabbing other peoples content to create sites based on templates those days are pretty much (thankfully) behind us. While I still see an occasional site that is ranking using these methods, for the most part the search engines have filtered them out.
People use CMS and some plugin to make automated websites/blogs. I attempt to make one for myself, not to be spammer, but to keep the news for myself, using WordPress and WP-o-Matic. Unfortunately enough this plugin is still buggy and seem not taking it real automatic. I'm having difficult time manually fetching the RSS posts. You don't really trust me saying it's not spammy, right? Have a look here, it's not full posts, it's only excerpts: http://cntt.binh.name (sorry it's not even in English)
Home made cheese is always better than bulk manufactured cheese. So does content. You want to write your own content rather than just "borrowing" others content.
- Set up a RSSM - Grab RSS Feeds then place them through it or you can set up your own rss feed filter (Replace words with similar words) That usally helps alot