It is more important than ever to make use of all the different web 2.0 tools out there to help drive traffic to your blog. Some time back, I talked about how you can exploit Facebook to get more RSS subscribers, but by far the most common way to get an instant spike in traffic is getting Dugg. Or Stumbled. Or Reddit…ed.
There are two major hurdles that you’ll need to overcome when it comes to social bookmarking sites like Digg. First, it can be time consuming submitting your story to all of these different sources. Second, it can be difficult to get it voted up onto the front page for optimal exposure (especially if you get banned and then put on auto-bury). Thankfully, Web 2 Submitter addresses both of these issues. And I’m pretty sure they’re going to experience the John Chow Effect from ordering this ReviewMe review.
Web 2.0 Submission Made Easy
So, what is the Web 2.0 Submitter? In a nutshell, it helps to reduce all the copying and pasting you’re going to need to do in order to submit stories to places like Netscape, Plime, and Shoutwire. You’ll still need to visit each individual site in order to get past their spam measures, but this simple software streamlines the process by filling in most of the fields for you. You provide the basic information once and then it only takes a couple of clicks to submit to each of the bookmarking sites.
I could walk you through the entire process, but why would I re-invent the wheel when there’s a free video available that walks you through how to submit a post using Web 2 Submitter. Careful, the video is on auto-play.
The long sales letter turned me off a little. That page is the only one that visitors can view on the Web 2 Submitter website. The aforementioned video shows you what you’d get, though, if you were to buy the $47 software.
Save Your Time and Money
The system requirements for this program are very easy to satisfy. You’ll need Windows XP (there’s no mention of support for Vista), .NET Framework 2.0, and Internet Explorer 7. This is actually quite critical, because when I ran the software the first time around, I didn’t realize that I only had IE6 (I usually use Firefox). The automated login process didn’t work correctly for whatever reason, but after upgrading to IE7, things went swimmingly. Depending on your Internet settings, you will only need to log into each of the web 2.0 social bookmarking sites once.
This program is supposed to save you a minimum of seven hours per week. In my own test, I attempted to submit one of my posts manually to five different sites: Digg, StumbleUpon, Reddit, Netscape, and Shoutwire. Not including the time it took to login, this took me a total of six minutes. The next day, I submitted a different story to the same five sites, except I used Web2Submitter and it took three minutes. Web2Submiiter offers 19 web 2.0 sites to submit your story to, with more on the way. Updates are free.
The user interface is very straight-forward and it also gives you the ability to archive stories, in case you want to submit it to other sites later. The pull-down menus for the different categories at each site are also quite useful.
I Digg You, You Digg Me
So, that portion satisfies the first hurdle that I mentioned in the introduction, but what about getting people to vote your story up? That’s where the “exclusive” Web 2.0 Buzz Group comes into play. When you buy this software, you also gain access to a group that basically trades Diggs, Stumbles, and so on. According to the sales page, “most customers have stated that access to the buzz group is worth more than the software.”
It Pays to Go Web 2.0
All in all, I’d say that despite the shady-looking long copy sales letter, Web 2.0 Submitter is a solid product that will shave precious seconds and minutes off your daily social bookmarking day. Be wary, though, because too much self promotion on these sites can oftentimes lead to getting banned. In this way, I’m not exactly sure how you can save seven hours a week, unless you own a bunch of sites, but it’ll save you a few minutes and the “Buzz Group” seems pretty handy.
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{ 56 comments }
I was wondering when Idea like this will come up since it is hard to manage all these systems.
I got it, Used it, found it great. But there are only 8 services available for the moment. I hope they will add more. They say so on the sales page so I’m not worry.
If you want to see my daily progression:
BlogaDollar.com
Greetings from France John.
My results with web2submitter? Just google “have your own product” or “hyopod”(R) and you’ll see. I’m all other the place.
Looks to be a huge time saver.
The only problem I have, even though there is no way around it, is the username/password thing. I hate putting my login info into anything other than login boxes when I’m logging in. Even if the chances of being haxxed are slim or none, I’d hate to be haxxed.
Say NO to haxx0rz!
Thanks for the review John. For $47 bucks this seems worth it if you’ve got a few sites. It would make an interesting post to see how trading diggs, stumbles, etc works.
This looks like a great tool for bloggers who really want to move their blogs forward (and make more money). Anything that can automate part of your 4 hours per week must really be a great investment!
Er…not to burst your bubble, but there’s a site called SocialPoster.com that covers about 40 of the main social bookmarking sites, and it’s free.
I’ve been using it for about a month now, and it really streamlines the process.
i would definitely NOT pay 50$ for this service… are you kidding?
Yeah, $50 is pretty steep considering there are others out there that will do the basically the same thing for free.
Why not simply use Onlywire.com which is free and offers 20 services ?
thanks for inform…..
Will try the Only wire.com
I use http://socialposter.com that is a fast and easy way to submit a post to several social sites without dangerous tricks..
luigibio
–
http://www.cappellate.com
#1 How does the advertiser feel about you not even including direct links in the review? You provide a link to a php page on john chow dot com rather than to the site. This gives them no Google juice.
#2 I looked at their “testimonials” and I have to say that the numbers they were showing as a “huge spike in traffic” look like my daily numbers!
If you write good and interesting content they will come.
$47? I’m not sure it’s such a great investment. You can do the same thing for free.
this is a great tool. I am sure it could save people lots of time. Thanks
Definitely look good! I’ll give it a try!
Always nice to come across something that can save some time! Thanks for this…
They just saved a lot of us a huge amount of time.
I agree, nix the spammy looking sales page!
glad to see there are many others who wouldnt pay for this either lol…
if anything they should be giving out a free trial or something to hook you
awesome post… it explains a great deal about how people do the “scratch my back i’ll scratch yours”
Thanks for the help John. I was weary of stepping into these social bookmarking networks because of the massive amount of time it takes. But to no suprise you told me about something before I even had to look for it.
Wow that looks great. I kinda hate how you need to enter the username and pass for it to work tho
47$, that too with a crapy sales page…
Not impressive at all…
Guy do you want a website designed??
have you ever visited http://www.johnhow.com ? try it out
http://make-money-online-articles.blogspot.com
i even couldn’t earn 1$ yet for 2 months of waiting.. still 0.34$
by the way, i think this program supports the spam and increase the rubbish data in net but we’ll bring money to you.. not to me
do you think that my blog name is too long? i had thought that google would index it nicer if i had used keywords. any ideas?
It’s amazing to me how many people don’t know what the difference between social bookmarking and social news sites are.
Onlywire does not submit your posts to Digg or any other social news site. There is a big difference between social bookmarking and social news posting.
If all W2S did was what Onlywire does – heck yeah this would be a rip off and a stupid product to release.
Get to know the people behind the product and you’ll see real fast that we’re not that dumb and we’ve been around a long time giving people a lot of free, killer, actionable info to increase traffic.
I would give it a look but if it needs XP then it wont work on my Mac
Also a free one at http://www.onlywire.com.
It doesn’t have as much features as the one you posted, but it is free.
“Takes me 15 to run down 18 social sites, and because I do them 1 at a time, the submissions are higher quality and I have no change of being banned.”
W2s does the same thing – it’s not spam software. It does exactly what you explained you do, just makes it easier and faster for you.
You submission with the software or without it would be identical in every way.
Like Martin said, just use OnlyWire. All this software does is provide a new interface and then it even uses OnlyWire. Why add the middle man?
(Note: I’ve written a couple articles about this on my blog already.)
Having used Onlywire there is no way I would pay $47 for this. As for exchanging Diggs, Stumbles, etc check out forums such as DigitalPoint – there’s enough willing participants there to keep you going all day long.
I’d rather pay for a post or link on a site like Kumiko’s or even better a PR 4-5 site at least that’s only $50, maybe $100, and will bring some good traffic with it as well.
Yeah, it doesnt really seem worth $47 to me either, but I understand how people might think its worth it.
how would one rate the chance to get banned for using this software? I think submitting part is OK but the rest?
I tried self submission a while back, and it felt nice to get a few extra hundred hits, but I felt so dirty inside
.
This might be a little off the subject, but how do you post screenshots like John did on this post. Some are small, large, or even a portion of the screen. Does anyone know what program you need to do this or can it be done without one? I am having problems finding information on this. If anyone could help out that would be great.
On your keyboard, there’s a button that says “print screen”, press that and it takes a snapshot of your desktop. Open up an image editing program (MS Paint works fine) and paste (CTRL+V) the snapshot. Voila! Edit as you see fit.
On a side note, this was a review by me, not by John.
Its reallly time saving,but is this allowed with the TOS of those social bookmarking sites.
Is the buzzgroup integrated with the software, or is it something separate that you get access to as a benefit of paying for the software (like a forum or something)?
It’s separate.
Paying for a service like this is not needed, and trading Digg/Reddit/Stumbles is a HIGHLY dangerous practice that will get you banned if they detect it. Stick to producing good content and hoping that the community actually likes it.
To save time simply drag the “digg this” and similar links from other services to your Firefox toolbar (I keep them in a social folder) and once you publish your article just go down the list. I use a common description, tag and title for each that I copy+paste from notepad.
Takes me 15 to run down 18 social sites, and because I do them 1 at a time, the submissions are higher quality and I have no change of being banned.
Use the FF password manager to auto fill your password and you’ll cut your time even further.
Sounds like a good deal except that it cost $47
They really should get a new sales page, every time I see those type of pages I think “crap!”
haha I think the exact same thing lol. then again time is money.
Yuck! I just looked at their homepage. It’s pure cliche: tesimonials, customer reviews, a stupidly long scroll to the bottom, and then the price. I hate sites like that, it looks so tacky.
Well for me this is a must have tool and I got it the day it came out. It’s saved me time – lots of it – and as we all know time is money. How much are you going to throw away hand posting to these sites? For me it’s a no brainer and $47 is cheap for what it does.
Harry
Harry, no offense but unless you work for W2S, you’ve got a slew of free options out there – I mentioned socialposter.com earlier – a fantastic free product that almost certainly negates the need to spend money on a product that does virtually the same thing.
Even better than that is this: http://www.socialzombies.com
I’m happy with it.
It works for me, I’m happy
I have tried many of these in my new site, but for some reason Im having a very hard time with it!
Yeah, Social Poster is the better choice. It’s free.
And “trading” submissions is kind of slimy, don’t you think?
-bill / bweaver.net
Yeah, Social Poster is the better choice. It’s free.
And “trading” submissions is kind of slimy, don’t you think?
-bill / bweaver.net
I actually like this program. I also find that the ability to have others in a group review my posts and decide if they would like to Digg, StumbleUpon, etc. a very powerful extra.
I think the price is worth it…
Lon Naylor
The group we set up agrees to read each others news before anyone else’s. That’s all it is and there is no pressure on anyone to vote for things they don’t like.
It’s perfectly logical for people to get in groups and be social – duh – that’s the whole definition of web 2.0.
Digg and others aren’t the only ones who can set up networks and groups. You are perfectly within your rights to join a group that agrees to check out each others posts in the social sites and vote for them if they like them.
It violates no terms of service whatsoever and it is not gaming the system.
Oprah has her book club and that radically affects book sales when she picks a book for her millions of fans to read. Is that gaming the New York Times best seller list when the book goes crazy in sales?
Is it artificial inflation of the importance of one book title over another?
Or is it free market?
Lastly, in our group everyone is urged to be a part of these communities in a way that most other people never come close. Individuals game these systems just by submitting and walking away – making no contribution whatsoever to the group.
Our group improves the discussion and links to these services because we LIKE them and want them to survive.
We have no desire to spam and ruin a system that sends us so much traffic.
And the Buzz Group is not spamming or gaming the system.
When you have millions of viewers, a tiny group of a couple hundred cannot game anything anyway. If a story gets 15-20 votes from our group, how much do you think that truly affects the service?
All it does is bump – just like Oprah does with books she recommends. The people still have to decide if there is value there and the story still goes nowhere if it doesn’t make the cut in front of the bulk of the members of these sites.
Mmm…47 Bucks????
who the hell paying for it?
i really would like to know those people who buying this shit stuff
It seems like this will be worth it.. if it will save you time. If you have to spend more time messing with it, forget it! The last thing I need is something else to mess with.
I can endorse this tool. I use it. Even more valuable is the Buzz group…think about it.
Bill U
Addiction Recovery