Even at the best of times, one of the most grating things about PayPal is their impossibly sluggish website. It can take minutes (and feel like it’s taking hours) to get from the login page to the detailed view of one specific transaction. This is a problem that Putler, a desktop-based PayPal management app, attempts to solve. And it brings a few other perks along with it.

Overview

Putler Video

Here’s a quick video overview over what Putler is and what it does:

Download Video

Summary of the features:

• Easily and quickly find transactions.
• Detailed overview of sales trends.
• Sales trends by product.
• Sales trends by customer.
• Quickly and easily issue refunds.
• Support for multiple PayPal accounts.
• Support for multiple currencies.
• Easy performance comparison between accounts, products and more.

Using Putler

Putler is an Adobe Air based application, which means that it’s compatible with both Mac and PC. In order to use it, you need a PayPal business account, from which you can set up API access. Putler accesses and downloads PayPal data through the API. From a security standpoint, this is safer than remote access by adding username and password to an application, since only a limited number of actions can be done via API (e.g. it’s not possible to make payments or send money through the API).

The first time you run the program, you can tell it how far back it should go, when fetching historical data. Depending on how much data needs to be downloaded, it can take quite a long time, but you’ll only have to wait once. After that, Putler refreshed the data every five minutes (if you leave it running) or every time you start it up and when it fetches new data, this usually only takes a few seconds. Everything else in Putler is pretty much instant, whether you are checking sales-trends, searching for transactions or issuing a refund. This is a huge improvement over the crawlingly slow PayPal online interface.

Conclusion

For my current business, Putler is nice to have (and I will continue using it), but it’s not absolutely crucial. It saves me some time and it gives me a much better way of measuring and keeping the overview over my business’ success. And of course, it also makes refund processing a lot easier. In other words: it’s nice, but nothing mind blowing.

A few years ago, I was running an e-commerce store and more than half of all the payments were made using PayPal. For that particular business, I had to manually look up PayPal orders far more often than I do now and because of this, Putler would have been absolutely priceless. It would have literally saved me hours upon hours of time (time spent mostly staring at PayPal’s “loading” spinner) and I wish I had known about it, back then (assuming it already existed).

In conclusion: depending on your business model and on how much time you spend managing PayPal payments, Putler can either be a neat little management and tracking tool or a heaven-sent time saver.

If you’re serious about SEO, a tool like this is an invaluable part of your arsenal.

Read on to get the details.

SEO SpyGlass Video

The features and functionality of SEO SpyGlass are best demonstrated in video form. Watch this to see how the tool works:

SEO SpyGlass Limitations

The main problem with SEO SpyGlass is that most of the links it finds are still provided by Yahoo Site Explorer. Yahoo’s backlink reports have been getting increasingly flaky and I’ve seen strong fluctuations in the number of links displayed, with a tendency for it to display fewer links now than it did a few weeks or months ago. Sometimes, you can do a search for the same site twice, just a few hours apart, and get significantly different results.

The point is: Yahoo is not a very good source for a backlink report. It’s still probably the best freely available source, but it has it’s weaknesses.

Having said that, SEO SpyGlass still gets a few extra links from the other search engines it queries and, more importantly, the true power of the tool lies in it’s ability to analyze and filter each of the pages containing the links it found.

SEO SpyGlass Alternatives

Here’s a rundown of some competing products:

WebComp Analyst

WebComp Analyst is like a weaker version of SEO SpyGlass. It uses Yahoo as it’s only source of the link reports and while it can also do a “deep” analysis on all the pages containing the backlinks it finds, it’s output is far more limited than that of SEO SpyGlass. WebComp Analyist only reports on the page PR an anchor text in the deep analysis.

Quite simply, the free version of SEO SpyGlass is more useful than the full version of WebComp.

Link Diagnosis

Link Diagnosis is a free online tool for backlink analysis that works in conjunction with a Firefox plugin. It does an analysis that includes PageRank, anchor text, dofollow/nofollow/missing, outbound links on the same page and a “link strength” indicator, based on their own calculations. It also provides a report for all indexed pages on the domain you analyzed and lets you export all the data easily.

I don’t know where the Link Diagnosis data comes from, but from my tests, it’s clear that they don’t have a very strong source for their backlink searches. Yahoo site explorer usually finds more (although not a lot more) links than Link Diagnosis.

Having said that, the analysis is useful and thorough and it’s quite a good offering, considering that it’s free.

Majestic SEO

Majestic SEO is a very high-end service that provides backlink analysis based on their own crawling of the web. In other words, these guys have their own “search engine” that they use to do backlink analysis. This way, they are not dependant on the lackluster backlink reports Google and Yahoo provide.

Of course, this kind of service also comes at a price and in this particular case the pricing is pretty steep. While the smallest package is quite affordable at $17/month, it also comes with some pretty severe limitations, so even as an “amateur” SEO, you’ll probably be needing the “silver” package for $50/month. And the price goes up exponentially, from there, for higher packages…

The price is justified, of course, but for most people, SEO SpyGlass for free or for a one-time payment of $99 will do just fine.

SEOmoz Pro

SEOmoz Pro is the service provided by SEOmoz. Like Majestic, they also do their own crawling of the web and while I don’t know all the details, if you follow the SEOmoz blog and look at their documentation, you get the impression that these guys are a good bit crazier about what they do than the Majestic SEO crowd.

It also looks like SEOmoz Pro comes with more features and functions than Majestic does.

Conclusion

Backlink analysis is one of the first steps into what I’d consider “advanced SEO” and I recommend it to anyone who’s got the basics of SEO and backlink building more or less figured out. In fact, just looking at various pages and their backlink profiles can be very useful for learning about SEO and getting an idea for why pages rank the way they do.

My number one recommendation for an analysis tool goes to SEO SpyGlass, especially since the free version of it is already very useful. If you want to go deeper into it than that, then my second choice would be SEOmoz Pro, despite the pretty hefty price tag.

Do you know any other tools like this? Any other favourites? Let me know and I’ll take a look at them and maybe include them in the article!

Cheers,

So, what is their membership about and is it worth the price of admission? Read on to find out.

The IM-Advantage Overview:

As an IM-Advantage member, you get access to a lot of material, including tools, resources and info-products. In the words of the creators themselves, you’ll also be on the bleeding edge of development in online marketing, as they alledgedly share all of their new discoveries etc. with the members. I personally doubt that’s entirely true, but I can confirm that you get access to some valuable resources not available outside the membership.

Here’s a list of (almost) everything you get access to in the IM Advantage:

IM-Advantage Tools:

• Bookmark Blueprint (Automated social bookmarking tool)
• Blog Blueprint (High-PR blog network, comparable to Linkvana)
• Link Blueprint (Link-exchange system for all the members)
• Article Blueprint (Low-quality article distribution service)
• Authority Hub Finder (Finds common backlink sources for competing websites)
• Keyword Blueprint (Keyword research tool)
• Offer Evaluator (Evaluate earnings potential for PPC keywords/offers)
• PPC Ad Optimizer (Split-testing setup for PPC campaigns)
• Peel Away Ad Software (Peel-away ad script for your websites)
• Hippojaw (Click tracking and PPC optimization tool)

IM-Advantage Resources:

• Free Hosting
• Keyword Databases (Specified for AdSense, PPC, SEO and more)
• Backlink Database (Huge database of high-PR sites where you can get a link)
• Landing Pages and Site Templates (Including PPV landers, CPA templates, AdSense site templates and more)
• Videos and Articles on Various IM Topics

IM-Advantage Info Products:

• Commission Blueprint 1.0 (Note: This is not the current “2.0″ version of Commission Blueprint)
• Project Archimedes (Site Flipping Course by Ben Shaffer)
• Automated Traffic Blueprints (Traffic Generation Course by Ben Shaffer)
• SEM Business Blueprint (Steve Clayton’s “Offline Marketing” Product)
• Mining Money Online (Beginner IM Course)
• Domain Flipping Theorem (Domain Flipping Course by Zach Booker)
• Get More Buyers (List-Building Course by Michael Rasmussen)
• Unnamed Facebook Marketing Course

As you can clearly see, the “quantity” part of the equation is pretty much covered, so the main question is: Is this stuff any good?

More About the Resources

The resources and info-products in IM-Advantage are generally high-quality stuff. Obviously, I didn’t go through each and every one of the products in detail (I do have other things to do…), but from what I saw, the courses are solid and useful. The site templates are also a very nice addition and can be used 1 to 1 or just serve as inspiration for your own sites and campaigns.

The keyword databases are interesting, but they are selected using questionable criteria. For example, the big SEO keyword list consists of keywords with high broad match search volume and a low number of phrase search results. If you’ve gone through my free keyword research guide, or if you just have any experience and know anything about keyword research, you’ll know that this makes the list next to useless. There are some interesting keywords in there (almost by default, I guess), but it’s not the goldmine of opportunities it’s made out to be.

All in all, though, the resources and info products are nothing to be frowned at.

More About the Tools and Services

At first glance, the collection of tools is nothing short of incredible. Quite a few of them focus on PPC and since I have very limited experience with PPC, I can’t really make a good judgement about how useful or valuable they are. I can say that a click-tracking solution such as Hippojaw can be very valuable, especially when you’re using paid traffic sources.

The link-building tools are all slightly disappointing upon closer inspection. I’m not saying they’re horrible, just that they don’t quite live up to the claims made about them. For example, Bookmark Blueprint only submits to five bookmarking sites. It’s supposed to be expanded and growing, but nothing has happened for several months. Considering that it doesn’t have the most intuitive interface ever and doesn’t have any special twists (e.g. members bookmarking each other’s sites), that makes it the weakest bookmarking tool I know.

Another example: Article Blueprint used to submit to a collection of article directories as well as Steve and Tim’s own network of almost 500 sites. Sounds great, right? Unfortunately, since the last update it no longer submits to the article directories and if you go and find the sites where your articles are submitted in the private network, you’ll find that they are “hidden away” on the sites and have absolutely no on-page optimization going for them. This means that the links you get from the articles could hardly be weaker if they tried. As a concrete example, here’s one of the Article Blueprint articles. For a test-page, I submitted five articles to the network and out of the more than 2.000 links this should produce, only about 160 were picked up by Yahoo. That’s not epically bad, but it’s not great, either, considering these are very low quality links.

Worth the Price?

Maybe you’re wondering why I’m harping on about a few of the tools in the membership when there’s so much more on offer, so let me explain: First, we need to consider the price. If you purchase the membership in the front-end, it will cost you $147 a month. If you get it as an upsell to one of their products (including one of their free ones that you can get here), it will cost you $97 a month. In the former case, it’s one heck of an expensive membership and in the latter case, it’s still not exactly cheap.

The SEO tools in particular are the main element in the membership that really warrant a monthly cost. Sure, there are a lot of resources and products in the membership, but chances are that not all of them are interesting/relevant/useful to you and if you would pick and choose the “good” products and buy them publicly, that would probably cost you a few hundred dollars, as a one-off cost.

Those few hundred dollars will only get you a couple of months worth of the IM-Advantage membership, so there needs to be more there, to justify the price. Unfortunately, updates and new additions are relatively sparse. There’s generally one update per month and while they sometimes throw in another info-product or two, sometimes it’s also just a minor update to a tool or a small resource (in one case it was actually a promotion disguised as a resource).

So, it’s really up to the link-building tools in the IM-Advantage to keep you coming back for more. Are they good enough to do that? Just barely, yes. At the higher, public price, I have to say that IM-Advantage is not worth it. You can easily get in for the lower price, though and at 100 bucks a month, with all the resources and the link-building tools, I’d say it’s still a good deal. Certainly good enough to sign up, grab some valuable resources, give the tools a go and then make an assessment about whether it’s worth it for you or not. The stuff in the IM Advantage is definitely worth money, it’s just that it’s only barely worth as much as they’re asking for, in my opinion (and as you may know, I always have something to nag about).

So, if you’re going to subscribe to the IM-Advantage, make sure you do so at the lowest price possible and to get that price, just click the link below (takes you to an article about Mining Money Online) and sign up through the form at the bottom of the post. You’ll arrive at an upsell-page where you can get IM-Advantage at the lower price:

-> Click Here for the “Back-Door” Lower-Price Access to IM-Advantage <-

So, what’s so special about SERPAssist? Is it just another gimmick or can it truly set itself apart from other link-builders? And is it poweful enough to compete with (or even surpass) SENuke?

Read on to get the full scope.

SERPAssist Overview

SERPAssist is a tool that automates certain aspects of link-building. This is certainly not a novelty. However, the user interface and approach used in SERPAssist are very different from what you may be used to with the typical submitters and automators out there.

You can create complete backlink networks using a simple diagram tool and then send that complete network to SERPAssist to build. To see exactly what I mean, check out this video:

SERPAssist Link-Building Features

As demonstrated in the video, the thing that sets SERPAssist apart from it’s competitors is the unique way in which the link-building is automated. You can map out an entire backlinking campaign using an easy drag-and-drop system and all of the account creation, registration, CAPTCHA solving and submission tasks are done completely automatically. It can take several days for the tasks to get completed, but since there’s no extra work on the part of the user required, that really isn’t much of a concern.

The only real work you need to do is create spun articles to post to the free blogs and embed your backlinks within. Here’s an example of a link-network that can be created with just a few minutes of work, in SERPAssist (assuming you’ve already written your spun content):

There are three types of backlinks you can build to your sites, using this tool:

• In-post links from free blogs (e.g. LiveJournal, tumblr, vox)
• Bookmark links from social bookmarking sites
• Profile links from forum profile pages

Problems…

As impressive as the technology behind all this is, there are some major issues with the software, at the time of this writing.

For example, SERPAssist apparently only submits to four different forums for profile links. That’s not exactly a wealth of link sources. And the profile links don’t show up in the URL reports, so there’s no way to check how long they stay alive. Because of this, the profile links are practically a non-feature, at this point.

Bookmarks all come from only 7 different sites and they also don’t show up in the URL report. In my eyes, this makes the bookmarks more of a neat extra than a full feature of their own. What you’re left with are the free blog posts and those also come with some limitations: On several of the blogging platforms, SERPAssist is unable to submit more than one post, meaning that you’ll have lots of new blogs with just one post and only a few “growing” blogs that have new content added to them as you keep using them to build more links.

Clearly, a blog that gets updated regularly is more valuable as a source of links than lots of single-page blogs…

So, in essence, what you get with SERPAssist is a very sophisticated tool for building link-wheels and link networks using free blogging platforms.

In my opinion, SERPAssist has the potential to become the most powerful and useful link-building tool ever, but it’s definitely not there yet.

Results

I’ve seen good results using SERPAssist in conjunction with other link-building tools and methods. Unfortunately, as long as it’s mixed in with other tools, it’s very hard to tell how much of a ranking increase can be attributed to it.

In a couple of tests I did using SERPAssist on it’s own, to promote a particular page for targeted keywords, I saw only minimal movement in rankings. Since most of the links come from Web2.0 blogs and each link needs to be placed manually on the link-map, it actually takes quite a lot of time to build a good amount of links. More problematic than that: I ran out of space, on one of my tests. There’s no good way of scrolling through or expanding the area of the link-map. On one of my tests, I basically created links until there was no space left on the screen and that still wasn’t enough to get the page in question a significantly higher position in the SERP.

Conclusion

I finally stopped using SERPAssist, because I did not see clear enough results compared to the time I spent setting up links with the system. I can imagine that SERPAssist could work well on low-competition keywords, where a link wheel and a few bookmarks might be enough to get a page one ranking. For higher competition keywords, the links I could get with this system just didn’t have enough pulling power compared to higher quality links or greater volume of links created by other systems.

I still believe that SERPAssist has the potential to become a very powerful link-building tool, but it’s simply not there yet.

Read on and watch the video below to find out just that.

Overview:

SEOPressor installs like any plugin for WordPress does. Once you’ve set it up, it has two funcions: Automation and “Consultation”. Here are those two features in more detail:

SEOPressor for On-Page SEO Automation

For “normal” or manual blogging use, the plugin can automatically add bold, underline, and italic text-decoration to your keyword throghout a post or page (in this case, you specify the target keyword for each individual case). It can also add the keyword to the post or page title and it can add it as an alt-text to any images you include in the post.

If you are familiar with the principles of on-page optimization, you’ll recognize these as some important factors that search engines pay attention to. The text-decoration is one factor that helps search engines determine what keywords to rank your page for, the page title is perhaps the most important on-page SEO factor and image alt-tags can also help keep all of your content relevant to the target keyword.

For auto-blogs, you can also enter one or several keywords and set SEOPressor to automatically text-decorate those keywords as they appear in each new post.

On-the-Fly SEO “Advice”

The second major feature this plugin brings with it is that it keeps track of all on-page factors for any post or page you create or edit and presents you with a “score-card” and suggestions for improving your SEO. Here’s an example of what that looks like:

As you can see, it’s telling me which factors I’m getting right and where there’s still room for improvement. It also keeps track of the keyword density on the page (i.e. how often does the target keyword occur compared to the total number of words) and warns the user if the density is too low or too high.

I particularly like this feature because I’m too lazy to calculate keyword density myself, but I’m aware that it shouldn’t be too high. So, before using SEOPressor, I was always a bit nervous about this factor. Can I repeat the keyword again or do I need to change the sentence around, so that I can use a different word? Is this too much or too little? Now, each time I hit “Save Draft” or “Update”, the scorecard refreshes and I see exactly where I’m standing.

Here’s a video with a quick demonstration of how SEOPressor is used. I also briefly talk about the actual test-results I got with it, so make sure you watch this:

Complaining

Of course, no review on IM Impact would be complete without me complaining about something, so here goes:

1) There are one or two suggestions that SEOPressor makes, that I don’t agree with. For one, it advocates “Page Rank Hoarding”, by adding a “nofollow” tag to your external links. I don’t agree with this for several reasons, not the least of which is that it’s bascially “unethical”. You want others to link to you with dofollow links, right? So, don’t attach nofollows to your links. I’ll explain more about why I’m against PR hoarding in a separate article.

2) Many WordPress themes automatically place your post title in H1 tags. SEOPressor will still tell you that you don’t have your keyword in an H1 tag and that you should add one, in this case. Not tragic, but not optimal, either.

3) At $97, the price for this plugin is too high. The plugin is useful and well made, but it doesn’t feel like it’s worth 100 bucks. For my own products, I really believe in over-delivering and offer more than what the customer expects for the price they paid. With SEOPressor, I feel it’s the other way around and it feels like you over-paid for what you’re getting.

SEOPressor: Conclusion

Overall, SEOPressor does what it’s supposed to do: It helps you with on-page optimization which in turn helps with getting your pages ranked. On-page SEO is an important factor, but it alone will not get your pages ranked in the top spots for any keywords worth pursuing. It will, however, make your journey to the top quicker.

In my opinion, whether you should purchase SEOPressor or not comes down to your budget: If $97 is a large investment for you, then I can’t recommend getting it.

If you use WordPress on a regular basis and have several sites out there that are already generating good revenue, then SEOPressor could be a good investment. It’s a very neat tool and it’s just nice to have the ongoing feedback while you create or edit posts. Use it on sites that are already making you money and you’ll make your investment back in no time.

Get SEOPressor Here

Have you used this plugin? Do you have any further questions or comments regarding SEOPressor? Let me know in the comments!

Cheers,

Overview

*This is part of the big reason you should get this plugin right now.

The other part is that all the profits made from selling this plugin during the limited time it’s being offered for just $9.70 (regular price: $47) are being donated to asthma research. So, not only is this a great deal, it’s also for a good cause!

Videos

I made two different videos about the WPSyndicator plugin. The first one is basically a sales-video for the plugin that I made to straight-up promote it (by the way: affiliates don’t get a cut on this. ALL the profits go to charity). While I don’t usually post anything with a sales-angle here, the video can still help you understand exactly what this tool does:

The second video is simply a demonstration of how to install the plugin, how to syndicate a post and I also show you the results on a few of the sites, so you can see what exactly the Syndicator sends out:

Conclusion

The plugin does what it says on the box: It syndicates your posts, creating backlinks automatically. It does take a little time to set it up with all of the different accounts, but once that’s done, it really is a one-click solution. Bottom line: It’s probably the easiest way I’ve ever seen, for buidling a handful of backlinks and giving a small “SEO boost” to each one of your posts.

The low price and charity donations will end in the third week of July, so get in on this right now and help a good cause: Get The Plugin Here.

Cheers,

As you may already know, I personally like to use WordPress for building all kinds of marketing sites. From blog-style sites to squeeze-pages or sales-pages, with the right themes and plugins, WP can be the ideal platform for any kind of website.

In today’s review, I take a look at a new plugin called WP Split Test and as the name implies, this tool helps you set up and track split tests on your WordPress websites.

Overview

WP Split Test is a WordPress plugin which lets easily set up split-tests for posts and pages on a WordPress site. For more information on the point of all this, please check out my Split Testing Basics post.

–

Installation and Setup

WP Split Test installs like any other WordPress Plugin and I had no difficulties activating it. Once the plugin is activated, you’ll find a new options tab in your WordPress admin panel, from where you can set up your A/B-tests.

You can set up as many different campaigns as you like and for each campaign, you can create up to four different pages. The pages are created in a simple editor, just like the one used for creating normal WP post. If you prefer, you can compose your pages in an HTML editor and copy-paste them into the WP Split Test editor.

In other words, you have complete freedom in creating your pages. There are absolutely no restrictions imposed by the plugin. Whether you want to test small changes like different titles or different order-button colours or make completely different pages (video sales page vs. text sales page, for example), you can do it using WP Split Test.

Once you’ve created your pages, you simply grab a small code snippet and insert that into a new WordPress post. You don’t need to add anything else but that code snippet to the post. Once it’s published, the plugin will rotate the different pages for each visit to the post.

Check out this video to see the plugin in action, plus a demonstration of the setup process:

–

Tracking

Of course, just rotating page variations is only part of the equation for effective split-testing. You also need to be able to track conversion-rates so that you can determine which version of a page is the most profitable one. WP Split Test does click-tracking for your campaigns and interestingly, it tracks clicks within your page contents and also (separately) tracks clicks to your sidebar, navbar and footer contents. For your main page content, you can determine conversion rates simply by checking out the clicks you get to your affiliate link, order button or sign-up button.

Changes can be made on the fly, so if you see that one of your pages is a clear winner, you can give it more weight, deactivate all the other pages or make another minor change within seconds, from the plugin’s admin panel.

–

Overall Rating

WP Split Test is a very solid plugin. It couldn’t be easier to install and set up, it rotates pages very cleanly (I like the fact that the URL doesn’t change) and it has no negative impact on page loading times, as far as I can tell.

In my previous post about split-testing, I’ve already expressed how important testing and tracking is for any kind of online money-making venture. You absolutely must do split-testing if you are serious about your online business and if WordPress happens to be your preferred CMS, then WP Split Test is the ideal solution for you.

This is for you, if:

• You like to use WordPress for your sales-pages/squeeze-pages/landing-pages
• You have monetized WordPress blogs or blog-style landing pages
• You are looking for a simple, easy-to-use split-testing solution

This is not for you, if:

• You already have a split-testing solution in place that you are satisfied with

Click the banner below to grab your copy of WP Split Test right now!

The Best Spinner is a new product by Jonathan Leger and in this review we’re going to find out whether it can live up to it’s name whether it’s just another piece of junkware you should steer clear of. Read on to get the details.

The Best Spinner Overview

The Best Spinner is yet another article spinning tool. It’s certainly not the only one of it’s kind, but it does have some interesting features that make it stand out of the crowd. Let’s go right ahead and look at it’s main, unique selling point:

–

User Generated Database

When you load a text into the Best Spinner, you can select individual words and get a list of suggestions for synonyms you can replace these words with. Creating the spinning syntax is just a matter of clicking on all the synonyms you want to include.

Other article spinning programs have had similar features and it usually spells disaster for the readability of the spun texts and articles these programs produce. Just replacing individual words with synonyms is a guaranteed method for butchering an article. So, how does the Best Spinner attempt to solve this problem?

First of all, the database of alternatives is human-generated and human-prioritized. For any given word, the best Spinner will suggest words that other Best Spinner users have chosen as replacements in the past. And the more often a word has been chosen by users in the past, the higher up in the list it appears.

Secondly, the Best Spinner does not only offer alternatives for individual words, but also for phrases. Again, these alternatives are human-generated. It rarely offers alternatives for phrases of more than two or three words, but still: This is already a great step forward in the realm of semi-automated article spinning.

Finally, the Best Spinner is not only about having alternatives inserted automatically (otherwise the database would never grow), it’s also made sure that inserting new alternatives for words, phrases or entire paragraphs is as easy and convenient as possible.

Check out this short video to see the system in action:

More Features in The Best Spinner

Apart from the basic spinning functionality, the Best Spinner has quite a few more tricks up it’s sleeve.

• Nested Spinning
  TBS fully supports unlimited nested spinning (spinning within spinning). This is a very important feature since nested spinning is perhaps the best way to increase uniqueness of an article while keeping it readable. When it’s used correctly, nested spinning can help you create hundreds of unique articles from just one spun article.
  –
• Replace All
  For any word or phrase you are re-writing, you can tell the Best Spinner to apply the same variations to all the occurrences of that same word or phrase throughout the entire text.
  –
• Favourites
  You can save variations for particular words as your favourites and have them replaced in new texts at the click of a button.
  –
• Different Spin Syntax Formats
  TBS supports three different spin code styles that you can export your texts to, depending on which distribution software you want to use them with. This saves a lot of time for anyone submitting to several different blog networks and/or using several different submitters.
  –
• Auto Spin
  TBS features something of an auto-spinning option by allowing you to have all available words replaced with the favourite variations from everyone in the database. This makes sure that only the most relevant and frequently used synonyms are chosen.
  The results produced by this are remarkably readable for auto-spun content and certainly better than the results I’ve seen from any other spinning software. Having said that, the resulting “unique articles” are still not something I’d want to put my name on.
  –
• Post to Blog
  You can have your text posted to as many WordPress blogs (of your own) as you like. This way, you can create something like your own little article network.
  –
• Sentence-by-Sentence Spinning Mode
  A recent update to the Best Spinner included a new mode, specifically for spinning entire sentences. This method of spinning is very useful and one I personally recommend, since it creates far more readable and less “spun-looking” articles than word-for-word spinning.
  –
• Rewrite Mode
  This mode is interesting for everyone using PLR, since this material often needs to be rewritten, at least in part. In rewrite mode, you can use the convenient selection and writing modes in TBS, but it won’t insert spin-syntax. Instead it will simply replace the original text with the new variations.

It is also worth noting that the Best Spinner is being continually updated with new features bug fixes etc. It’s always good to know that a product is being continually worked on and improved.

In my view the Best Spinner is not primarily and article marketing tool, but more of a link-building (through article marketing) aid. The power of having many spun articles lies in the fact that you can submit semi-unique content to many different places and get lots of backlinks that way.

The Best Spinner: Conclusion

There’s no doubt: The Best Spinner lives up to it’s name. It’s simply the best article spinning tool I’ve ever come across.

It’s very easy to use and it makes article spinning a hundred times more convenient and faster than if you were doing it manually.
That doesn’t mean it’s a magical money-maker, however. Article spinning isn’t something that will make you rich over night. It’s simply something that can be put to good use for SEO purposes and that can be a good component in your overall marketing strategy.

But this is one of the things I really like about the Best Spinner: It doesn’t claim to be a miracle cure for everything. It claims to be an awesome article spinning tool and it delivers.

It’s so straight-forward, that the next part here might seem overly simplistic:

This is for you, if:

• You are doing any kind of article spinning as part of your marketing.

This is not for you, if:

• Article spinning is not part of your strategy.

Definitely give TBS a try, especially since right now, a trial for only $7 is available.

Click here to start your trial of the Best Spinner!

(Yes, that’s an affiliate link.)

If you’re on a few Internet marketing mailing lists, you’ve no doubt received plenty of messages endorsing twittollower, a new twitter automation service. twittollower is not unique in what it does: Programs like Hummingbird, tweetadder and many, many more have been around for quite a long time already. But twittollower is unique in the way it’s being marketed and it’s at the same time amusing and fascinating.

Let’s have a look at what twitter automation does in general and what sets twittollower apart. Oh, and in case you’re already rolling your eyes because you can’t take another endorsement for this service: Don’t worry, this is definitely not an endorsement.

Twitter Automation in General

Okay, let’s have a quick look at the basics: For marketing purposes, what you want to achieve on twitter is to get as many people as possible following you, you want those people to be interested in what you tweet about (and more importantly, what you sell) and you want them to be responsive (i.e. tweet back when you ask a question and click on links when you tweet them).

The problem is that you can’t make people follow you on twitter. All you can do is send tweets and follow other people.

Sometimes, when you follow someone, they will follow you back. Not always, but following people and hoping for re-follows is basically the best shot you have at growing your follower count from within twitter.

Since there are certain limits to how many people you can follow and you probably don’t want to spend all day tending to your twitter account(s), this is where the automation comes in.

–

Hummingbird, tweet adder and twittollower

I have picked out two more twitter automation systems out of dozens, maybe hundreds that are available. The reason is simply that these two are, as far as I can tell, the most popular and best-established systems among the pack.

Hummingbird and tweet adder are very similar. Both are software programs that you download and run from your desktop. They connect to your twitter account (or multiple accounts) through the twitter API. Both of them let you search for people in your market in various ways (keyword search in member profiles, tweets etc.), you can set them to automatically follow a certain amount of people each day, according to certain criteria, you can tell them to un-follow people who are not following you back and to follow people who follow you, but you aren’t following yet.

You can also use them to schedule tweets and send automatic direct messages to people who follow you. Those aren’t all the features these two programs offer, but you get the idea.

Now, here’s the really interesting thing:

tweet adder costs $55 if you want to use it for just one account, $74 if you want to use if for five accounts and $188 if you want to use it with an unlimited amount of accounts.

Hummingbird costs $97 and lets you use unlimited accounts.

twittollower, on the other hand, costs $97 per month, for just one account.

And as far as I know, this was the introductory price and it’s about to increase.

–

twittollower = Magic

How can twittollower possibly survive against established competition that is available at a fraction of the cost? After all, even the most expensive option, the unlimited tweet adder service, costs less than twittollower by the third month you’re using it.

Surprisingly though, twittollower is doing quite well (at least, as far as I can tell).

The reason for this is simple and you’ll see it if you go and have a look at the sales-video. Now, the sales-video might change once they increase the price, but currently, it’s a pretty long video that you can’t navigate through (if you try, it always skips back to the beginning of the video) and it features Tahir Shah trying his best to use hypnotic suggestions and your typical “NLP-talk” throughout the video (yes, he’s definitely trying too hard).

It also doesn’t feature any explanations of what twittollower actually does.

The video goes to great lengths to tell you about how incredibly powerful twitter is and how it’s going to make you millions and how twittollower does everything on autopilot and how it will “get people to follow you” etc. But it never tells you what really goes on in the background. It doesn’t list any features.

And that’s where the magic lies.

With something like tweet adder, you clearly see that it’s a program and it requires user-input and then it goes and does certain things. In fact, it gives you a lot of control over the things it does, so it’s almost entirely transparent.

twittollower, on the other hand, just tells you that it will make your twitter following grow at an amazing rate and that you’ll make tons of money from those followers and that they should be charging $900 a month for it (they really do say that in the video).

In other words: A “common” twitter automation system is a useful tool, while twittollower will magically fulfil your dreams all by itself.
I think it’s clear to see which one of those options is more enticing.

For all we know, when you sign up with twittollower, someone creates a tweet adder or Hummingbird account for you and does the basic setup. We’ll never know and that’s why we’re willing to pay much, much more for twittollower than for those other tools.

–

What Else is New?

If you’ve seen a fair amount of IM product launches, this won’t be news to you. Practically every get-rich-quick system has a sales-pitch that is heavy on hopes and dreams and promises of money and very thin on factual information.

At the end of the day, this kind of promotion just gets more sales and allows for higher prices.

On the one hand, you can look at your own sales-processes and ask yourself if you’re applying this method as well. On the other hand, you can ask yourself if you want to be part of the dream-sellers or not.

As for twitter automation: It’s something I’ll probably take a stab at, sometime. You’ll get a nice round of reviews out of it, of course. For now, though, I have other priorities.

Have you tried any twitter automation system? What’s been your experience? Or what do you think of this whole twittering and dream-selling business in general? I’d love to hear your thoughts down in the comments!

Cheers,

While I’m generally not a big fan of article spinning, I still make use of the technique here and there and I’m still going to be testing article marketing and rewriting software. Enter the CRewriter. This is an online application that you can use to make the article spinning process a bit simpler. Best of all, this tool is completely free to use.

Below, you’ll find a video showing the CRewriter in action and some more details about what it does and where you can find it.

Video

Check out this video to see how to use the CRewriter:

–

Summary/Conclusion

The CRewriter is a very neat tool that basically inserts the spinning syntax (curly brackets and pipes) for you. You still have to do the actual rewriting yourself and that’s a good thing, because it means no one is going to create horribly unreadable garbage like most automatic spinners produce.

Most importantly, CRewriter lets you enter alternatives for entire sentences or any amount of text you like and it supports nested spinning. If you are serious about rewriting complete articles, you’ll get the best results by starting out with spinning large sections of text and then spinning sentences and words within those variations. This will result in the best kind of unique articles, if you can keep the overview over what you’ve spun and how the variations come together.

If it could handle larger portions of text without slowing down, this would be a flawless little tool. As it is, it’s still amazing value considering that it’s free to use.

What are your experiences with article spinning? Do you know and/or use tools like the one above or do you know a better one, perhaps? I’d love to hear your take on this!

Cheers,