What Mike's trying to say is that
he didn't make as much as he thought he would with
his autoblogs.
Obviously from his experiences, he was either using custom scripts he built, or stuff he bought. Autoblogging software has advanced quite a bit and has made it incredibly easy to setup and not have to worry about duplicate content or where you get your sources from.
All it does is automate the posting of content from sources you provide it with RSS, Yahoo Answers, Youtube, etc. You still need to know how to optimize your sites with SEO or you won't get the rankings or make money.
As with anything, it's how well you understand the limitations and can see ways to make your sites work with
your marketing style. If you use the default templates (for the posting, not the site theme) and follow the same methods as everyone else, then yes, you'll be lucky to make $5/day.
Now, if you get creative and create some truly unique and random templates, test what converts the best, then scale that - you can make good money without investing that much time other than setting up the blogs.
Autoblogging plugins for WP are pretty inexpensive, so it honestly wouldn't be that hard for you to put up a site on a $5/month hosting account and play around with it. If you like it, then work from there.
I personally use
WPROBOT, you can download the demo and play with it or buy the full version and get a discount using the code
WARRIORROBOT or some other code you can Google.
Again, this stuff is way too easy to test - so there is no reason for you to not try it out.