If you run any kind of online business and you're looking for contacts, traffic etc., you could do worse than join any of the seemingly hundreds of Social Networking sites that are springing up.
There's a new one around that is a little like Facebook, but has a definite slant towards online business - there's even a page where you can post about online opportunities.
It's called ZenZuu. (Who knows how these people think these names up!)
It's definitely in its infancy at the moment, so it's not as active as Facebook. However, ZenZuu share their advertising revenue with its members, so it's worth getting in at the beginning.
You can sign up here.
Tuesday, August 26, 2008
Friday, August 22, 2008
Fast Content producer - A Review
The sales page for Fast Content Producer announces itself with this headline "Discover How to Build Hundreds of Content Rich, Dynamically Changing, Keyword Covered Web Pages in Mere Minutes ..."
The sales page doesn't give any screen-shots or links to examples of generated pages, so I must admit that I was somewhat skeptical about its claims.
I got myself a copy, and after playing with it for a while, here's what I found.
First of all, I noticed that there was neither any online help nor manual, so I assumed it must be so easy to use that it doesn't need any.
The sales page says that there are 4 simple steps to producing content, and I guess these relate to the 4 tabs on the program's main form.
The first thing to do in step 1 is giving your project a name, which was easy enough. The next was to select a content file (or files). It appears to recognise plain text, Word and RTF formats, so that should be simple enough. But what should it contain? If it's going to generate hundreds of content-rich pages, I'd like to know how it's going to use the content, and how much content I need to provide.
Next, select a template. You can View the available templates and samples of their use in your browser. Not exactly earth-shattering design to the templates, but I'm sure it's possible to make new ones. If only there was a manual to tell you how.
Oh wait! There's a button labelled "Purchase Templates". I guess their other templates are so good, they couldn't give them away. Let's see...
Well that's a disappointment. It opens up Google in my browser.
Ok. Onwards...
Having selected the output location of the generated files, I now enter how many words or characters to include in each page. So I'm assuming my content file has to be so big that it can fill "hundreds of pages" and I'm now telling it the cutoff point for each page.
That's Step 1 completed.
Step 2 is about RSS feeds. You add them to the list, and it rotates them around the pages. Oh, so maybe this is where the real, dynamic content comes from.
Then enter an affiliate ad code (such as Google AdSense). This will be inserted in the ad spot within the template.
Step 3 lets you add a sign-up form and links and navigation menus. At the moment, I can't see how you can add a navigation menu to pages that the program hasn't generated yet. Maybe it means to external pages.
There's a form builder. Not obvious what to enter in each field if you're a bit of a novice - and let's face it - most people who use this type of software are probably not experts.
The HTML editor is not bad though - it does a preview as you type.
Finally, you can add keywords which it will replace with anchor text and affiliate links.
Step 4 - Build you pages.
Enter a headline and sub-heading and specify the page naming convention. All the generated pages are in HTML. Pity. I'm a great fan of PHP - especially when it comes to dynamic content creation.
Build the pages...
The Progress Bar (or is it a list?) doesn't do anything.
Ok it built me 6 pages from my short article. Let's view the results...
Well I guess you have to be more familiar with the structure of the templates to get nice looking pages.
The text from my content file has been split between the pages, cutting off at the number of words I specified, and there are Prev/Next lilnks to follow it through.
The signup form I designed appears on every page. That's a bit of overkill I think.
The top half of each page has my single column of advertisements in it. I guess that's just a bad choice of template.
Thankfully, you can just go back and choose a different template and regenerate the pages.
Summary
Personally, I wouldn't pay the $37 I've seen this program being offered for. It doesn't produce good enough pages without a lot of effort, and there's no way to control what appears on each page - it's simply a continual stream of text that is split over the pages.
I doubt whether a visitor to the site would stay long unless you had some really interesting content. On the other hand, some people just want a program that churns out pages of text, complete with adverts, to get themselves into the search engines and maybe earn them a bit of cash from the AdSense ads.
However you use it - don't just fill them with random text - those search engines are getting smart.
A Final Note
I acquired this software with the source code. As a programmer, I could improve it beyond recognition, including the provision of help and much better previews.
Don't hold your breath - I have too many projects on the go already. But you never know...
The sales page doesn't give any screen-shots or links to examples of generated pages, so I must admit that I was somewhat skeptical about its claims.
I got myself a copy, and after playing with it for a while, here's what I found.
First of all, I noticed that there was neither any online help nor manual, so I assumed it must be so easy to use that it doesn't need any.
The sales page says that there are 4 simple steps to producing content, and I guess these relate to the 4 tabs on the program's main form.
The first thing to do in step 1 is giving your project a name, which was easy enough. The next was to select a content file (or files). It appears to recognise plain text, Word and RTF formats, so that should be simple enough. But what should it contain? If it's going to generate hundreds of content-rich pages, I'd like to know how it's going to use the content, and how much content I need to provide.
Next, select a template. You can View the available templates and samples of their use in your browser. Not exactly earth-shattering design to the templates, but I'm sure it's possible to make new ones. If only there was a manual to tell you how.
Oh wait! There's a button labelled "Purchase Templates". I guess their other templates are so good, they couldn't give them away. Let's see...
Well that's a disappointment. It opens up Google in my browser.
Ok. Onwards...
Having selected the output location of the generated files, I now enter how many words or characters to include in each page. So I'm assuming my content file has to be so big that it can fill "hundreds of pages" and I'm now telling it the cutoff point for each page.
That's Step 1 completed.
Step 2 is about RSS feeds. You add them to the list, and it rotates them around the pages. Oh, so maybe this is where the real, dynamic content comes from.
Then enter an affiliate ad code (such as Google AdSense). This will be inserted in the ad spot within the template.
Step 3 lets you add a sign-up form and links and navigation menus. At the moment, I can't see how you can add a navigation menu to pages that the program hasn't generated yet. Maybe it means to external pages.
There's a form builder. Not obvious what to enter in each field if you're a bit of a novice - and let's face it - most people who use this type of software are probably not experts.
The HTML editor is not bad though - it does a preview as you type.
Finally, you can add keywords which it will replace with anchor text and affiliate links.
Step 4 - Build you pages.
Enter a headline and sub-heading and specify the page naming convention. All the generated pages are in HTML. Pity. I'm a great fan of PHP - especially when it comes to dynamic content creation.
Build the pages...
The Progress Bar (or is it a list?) doesn't do anything.
Ok it built me 6 pages from my short article. Let's view the results...
Well I guess you have to be more familiar with the structure of the templates to get nice looking pages.
The text from my content file has been split between the pages, cutting off at the number of words I specified, and there are Prev/Next lilnks to follow it through.
The signup form I designed appears on every page. That's a bit of overkill I think.
The top half of each page has my single column of advertisements in it. I guess that's just a bad choice of template.
Thankfully, you can just go back and choose a different template and regenerate the pages.
Summary
Personally, I wouldn't pay the $37 I've seen this program being offered for. It doesn't produce good enough pages without a lot of effort, and there's no way to control what appears on each page - it's simply a continual stream of text that is split over the pages.
I doubt whether a visitor to the site would stay long unless you had some really interesting content. On the other hand, some people just want a program that churns out pages of text, complete with adverts, to get themselves into the search engines and maybe earn them a bit of cash from the AdSense ads.
However you use it - don't just fill them with random text - those search engines are getting smart.
A Final Note
I acquired this software with the source code. As a programmer, I could improve it beyond recognition, including the provision of help and much better previews.
Don't hold your breath - I have too many projects on the go already. But you never know...
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