Attention: Boost Your Profits By Tapping Into An Unlimited Source Of Quality Links And Targeted Traffic From Two Popular Web 2.0 Sites…

Wow, that’s enticing. I’m frothing at the mouth to get a few links from a whole two popular sites!

I’m talking about Social Media Inspector if you haven’t seen it yet. It’s a new software release from Jeff Alderson that promises to get you a bunch of quality links from the latest Web 2.0 craze.

Well, if you still think Web 2.0 social media is the latest and greatest thing, then maybe this useless software is for you! But if you have any sense, you’ll see right through the sales pitch.

Let me save you some money…

First, what’s the point?

The whole premise behind this software is that Squidoo and HubPages are two hot sites with great ranking power in Google, and building pages there will get you #1 rankings instantly. (Well, that’s not even close to being true anymore, but that’s besides the point…)

Now building a good page does take time, so a [supposedly] better idea is to bypass the page building all together and take advantage of those who have already built quality pages on Squidoo and HubPages. To do that, simply leave a comment on one of the pages and you’ll get an authority backlink in minutes. (Also completely false, but it’s a sales pitch so I wouldn’t expect any less.)

Then what does the software do?

Simply, the software finds these quality Squidoo lenses and Hubs. You put in a keyword and the software finds the highest ranking pages at Squidoo and/or HubPages.

Then you can just browse to those pages and leave a comment for link building purposes.

And I think that’s all it does. (At least they’re not over-promising the features!)

If I understand correctly, the software doesn’t do much of anything, but what it does do is help you spam?

Pretty much.

Even worse than the sparse feature list is the fact that the entire strategy behind this linkbuilding method is worthless.

See, getting a Lens or Hub to rank #1 in Google is just as hard as building a site yourself and getting it to #1. Want the #1 spot for car insurance? Ha, good luck. Want the #1 spot for carlottaspurinsurance? Well, you can get that easily with any sort of web page.

Going further, comments on said pages are moderated, so your comments might not appear at all. If they are the least bit spammy, they’ll be deleted. Also, in most cases, you must be a Squidoo or HubPages member to leave a comment (in which case the comment just links back to your own Squidoo page.)

Again, this linkbuilding strategy is completely and utterly pointless.

But what if I really do want these links?

If your heart is set on these links, then we’ll get some. However, we’re going to skip Social Media Inspector and instead use a free alternative.

Instead of wasting $47 on software that doesn’t really do anything, I use a free alternative, known to a select few as Google. Yeah, it’s one of those closely guarded secrets.

Step 1: Go to Google and type in site:squidoo.com keyword.

The Social Media Inspector sales page uses golf as an example, so that’s what I’ll use: site:squidoo.com golf.

And in a fraction of a second, I get a list of results. You might think, “they’re not listed in the order or PageRank like Social Media Inspector gives you.”

To that I say, “who cares?” They are ranked in order of importance by Google itself. Considering you’re trying to build links to increase Google traffic, I think their ranking is a pretty good indicator of page quality!

Here we go… In about 5 seconds, I found four PR3 pages.

http://www.squidoo.com/golfexercisebook
http://www.squidoo.com/thecellophanebridge
http://www.squidoo.com/Golflessonacademy
http://www.squidoo.com/golfgiftsideas

Step 2: HubPages is the same way.

Use this search: site:hubpages.com/hub/ golf

And I find another three pages.

http://hubpages.com/hub/The_Perfect_Golf_Swing
http://hubpages.com/hub/The_Cross_Hand_Golf_Swing
http://hubpages.com/hub/Fixing-Golf-Slice

They’re all PR1, but that’s not so bad.

So that was about 30 seconds if you went slow. Even if Social Media Inspector cuts the time in half, is 15 seconds worth it?

Step 3: Leave your comments and hope for links

Wow, you’re right, Social Media Inspector is useless.

Yep, I just saved you $47

So what’s up with this Jeff Alderson character?

I’m not sure. This Social Media Inspector crap seems like a bad joke.

I’m not trying to knock Jeff Alderson or his software, because I actually have some of his other stuff and have been pleased with it, along with his customer support.

But I think that this particular piece of software is just taking advantage of people who are trying to blindly jump into the social media trend (when instead it should be providing a lot of value and time savings.) Seriously, take a little lesson in social media before buying something like this.

So I won’t be buying this one, that’s for damn sure.

However, sometimes no matter how much I make fun of something, you think I’m wrong. And that’s OK, you’re entitled to your opinion. So if you have some weird desire to buy this software, click here and go to www.socialmediainspector.com.

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Sphinn, if you didn’t know, is the Digg-like website all about SEO and affiliate marketing stories. It’s a great refuge from Digg, where all the users love to bury anything that looks like SEO stuff. So there’s no need to game Digg when you can spam Sphinn legitimately and reach your perfect target market!

I noticed the easiest way to do it is to use this Wordpress plugin, the SphinnIt button.

That adds a nice Sphinn button to each post and it updates if your story is already on Sphinn. It’s at the bottom of each post here on Internet Marketing Sucks, so feel free to sphinn my stories to test out the button.

The button is nice, but how good is Sphinn? Is it really worth it?

It depends. I’ve had some stories on there that got a few sphinns. Never made it to the home page though…

Even so, it has sent me a few visitors. And Sphinn visitors seem to stay an average of 1:20. Not bad, especially because it was 97% new visitors. However, most referrals were better, and even StumbleUpon users (over the same time period) stuck around an average of 1:35.

Hell, Digg users stayed an average of 3:32! Digg beating Sphinn was a real surprise in that regard, but Digg barely sends me any traffic at all, so Sphinn still wins in the end.

Let’s see if anything changes if one of my stories makes it to the front page… (hint hint *cough* vote for me *cough*)

P.S. Did I mention that every time I visit Sphinn, I get sucked into reading every single story on their home page? It’s not that they’re any good, just that the titles really suck you in.

P.P.S. Did I mention anything about that blue Sphinn button at the end of each post? It just says “click me” doesn’t it??

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I’ve mentioned a few things about social bookmarking before, from putting buttons on your blog to some social bookmark submission software, but never written specifically about a service called OnlyWire.

I would go as far as to say that OnlyWire is the best social bookmarking site there is, and get this - it does not store your bookmarks and it doesn’t let you socialize!

But it does something even better…

It allows you to submit your bookmarks to 19 real social bookmarking websites with just one click. (Well I guess it’s two clicks because you have to confirm the submission, but that’s a lot faster than submitting to sites individually!)

It works like this:

1. You sign-up at OnlyWire.com
2. You fill out your profile with login details for your various accounts for the other social bookmarking sites.
3. Drag the OnlyWire submission button onto your bookmarks toolbar.
4. Then just start using the OnlyWire button instead of individual buttons.

Like magic - your bookmarking becomes 19 times faster!

That one click will submit the page to Backflip, Bibsonomy, Blinklist, Blogmemes, Blue Dot, de.lirio.us, del.icio.us, Diigo, Furl, Jots, LinkRoll, LookLater, ma.gnolia, Markaboo, Rawsugar, Shadows, Simpy, Spurl, and Wink.

At each submission, you can pick out the title and tags, and you can choose which services you’d like to use (just in case you don’t want the bookmark listed on every single account.)

Like I said, it’s fast and easy and great. The only complaint I’ve heard is that it’s not natural to have your site bookmarked at all these sites under the same title (i.e. anchor text.) I don’t really see a problem with that though, because the title field defaults to the page title of the web page, and I imagine that most people just use that default title. So it actually would be natural to have a lot of social bookmarks under the same anchor text.

But if you don’t like it, whatever. It works for me

[This post originally appeared at InternetMarketingSucks.com]

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Catchy title, huh? Everyone wants to possibly save time and increase traffic

What we’re looking at is a new piece of software called Web2Submitter, and it helps automate the process of submitting your web pages to social bookmarking services. It’s common knowledge to most webmasters that they can get traffic by submitting their sites to these sites like Digg, Del.icio.us, and Reddit.

I didn’t think it took very long to do so, but maybe it takes a long time for some people, and that’s why this software came out. I can only poke fun at it in a few ways, as it might be a handy tool for some people. And unfortunately, the sales page doesn’t make totally outrageous claims that you’ll get rich overnight by using this software!

However, I picked out a few good tidbits from the sales page audio!

The first one was that this software is “not a spam tool.” It’s not a spam tool just like Microsoft Outlook, Mozilla Thunderbird, or another email client is not a spam tool. Unfortunately, unscrupulous people can easily use it to spam! This might not be the worst form of spamming, but it’s a nuisance. It will just lead to more spam on all the bookmarking sites, like I mentioned when I wrote about the crap that is submitted on StumbleUpon.

Next they say that “not many internet marketers are using these methods.” I beg to differ! Almost every blog i read these days has rows upon rows of social bookmarking buttons. There are Wordpress plugins that do this easily, along with a “Digg This” plugin for Digg submissions. All you have to do is click those buttons for easy submission to each bookmarking site. Or better yet, just let your readers submit for you!

I don’t have much else to complain about though. I guess the good thing is, it’s not some get rich quick scheme. It could be used legitimately, like one of those semi-automated tools for article submission. So it might save you some time. If that’s worth $47, then go for it.

It doesn’t make any real claims other than saving time and getting some links to your site. It’s assuming you’re taking the long way to submit your sites to these Web 2.0 places by logging-in and all that. I just use the buttons that i already have on my websites, so for me, it wouldn’t save that much time. I don’t spend 7-8 hours per week doing this already, but if you do, you have two options:

1) add the buttons to your site and submit via those (or just wait for your visitors to do it for you, which is what i prefer to do - and it takes no time on my part!)

2) buy this software and try it out; hopefully it saves you time.

If it sounds like the tool for you, here’s the link: Web2Submitter

If not, no big deal. I’m happy I read the sales letter because I learned about Only Wire, a free social bookmark submission service. It submits your page to 19 social bookmarking sites at once, saving you plenty of time.

Note: The Web2submitter link is an affiliate link. Why? Because I figured it’s possible to use this without spamming, and it’s only a time-saving software tool to help automate something you should do anyway. I don’t use this personally, so I don’t know if it’s any good or not, so it’s not actually a recommendation to purchase. But, the sales page gives you a demo so it’s no secret what you’re getting. And if you’re not satisfied, you can ask for a refund. If they don’t give you one, go straight to ClickBank and they’ll get the refund for you. And c’mon, I’d like to make a little extra spending money for myself! Wouldn’t you do the same thing?

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