automation question

Okay, so I write and post a ton of articles, and it works pretty well for me as part of my overall seo strategy. I use article post robot for most, and manually submit to a couple of higher ranking directories.

The problem I have is that with the sheer number of directories I post to I need a way to create accounts quickly. Article post robot is great for the actual posting, and is easy to add new directories on the major platforms, but what it doesn't have is a quick and automated way to actually sign up for large numbers of directories, verify email and create a pen name (in the case of article dashboard). I prefer to create a new account/pen name for each niche and doing this manually is a royal pain in the a$$, and eats up hours.

So I was hoping someone here knows an easy way to automate this process, either through a simple software application or even recording some sort of macro that I can add a list of urls, and just change the form info, etc and let it run. It would need to be able to log into an email account and follow a verification link, and set a preset pen name for article dashboard sites.

My other option is to just outsource this whole process, but that is just another expense...and this is something that would need tackled several times per week so I would rather do it myself, but the time consumed (and the sheer boredom) is overwhelming.

well, for article sites based on the article dashboard script just download all submitter! there's a thread here on the forum with videos explain how it works!
for article post robor... just... do it by hand or outsource it!

Hmmm...I have all submitter, and I don't particularly like it...but that may just be because I haven't really taken the time to really USE it much.

However, I have a solution which presents yet another obsticle, and even more oppurtunity...

So after playing around with all sorts of *fun* BS, and not having it work properly I found a program called Automation Anywhere. The problem I was having with everything else I was using (such as iMarcros) was that there was not a quick, one form method for changing the data being submitted and submitting it, it was just re-signing up with the same information (no good!)

With automation anywhere I have basically recorded the actions required to sign up using roboform in my toolbar (which that action was not happening with other programs)...now (in theory, I haven't added all the sites yet, just a few to try it out) all I have to do is change my details in roboform, run the action, and let it go.

Next I will create another recording of creating pen names with roboform...now I face the challange of two things: I don't know yet IF I can create an action like this to click confirmation emails...and of course the damn captcha's, which luckily are only present on a few of the sites.

I also plan on applying the same idea to directory submitter, which I will go to directorycritic and add all of the decent directorys to the *semi-automatic* program, make a recording of the semi-automatic submission process, and (again, in theory) I should only have to change the profile and let it run for each, and every site I want.

The downside to this method is it doesn't run in the background, meaning that everytime I "run the program" I can't mess with my computer...so I'm going to get one of my ol' beater machines from the basement and set up a dedicated machine IF I get the bugs worked out.

Than maybe what you can do is to cut down on the amount of directories you are sending to.

But before you actually do that you must decide which directories bring you the most traffic. Once you have found which directories generate the most traffic with you stick with it and drop off those that are not generating any traffic. After all there is no point in sending articles to a directory which is not generating any traffic. Doing this allows you save alot of work.

I think I have it all figured out now...And it has taken some amount of work (and a lot of tweaking), but I think it will be worth it. I actually managed to make iMacro work for THIS part...but I'm actually glad that I got stuck with this same software before, because it forced me to discover 'automation anywhere' which I'm sure will come in handy as it works different than iMacro...and better for some task.

So here is where I stand with the 3 items on my task list:

1) I'm setting up 30 (more to come later) different task with 'automation anywhere', set to run 1 each day for 30 days. Each task will contain everything required to submit to 50 directories (600 total, more later). All I should have to do is compile the data for each site, and add directories as I find them...the rest takes care of itself.

2) I'm setting up my original script to automatically sign up for, confirm, and set up pen names at article sites. Right now I have a list of about 900 article sites that I have signed up for manually (ahhhh....), so I'm in the process of visiting each one, compiling the various URL's required, and sorting them. Now when I'm done I expect to have a list of about 500 compatible directories of a PR2 and above.

This process pulls (in a loop) from a CSV file, so I can actually tweak things (usernames, emails, etc) in minutes and let it run (it's a nice feeling!)

3) I'm also setting up a task to pull from a text file and automatically submit to "premium" article sites as oppose to using Article Post Robot (which I use for everything else) and I'm doing it that way for 3 reasons: First, this way I can easily submit one version of an article to the 5 or so sites that bring me the most traffic, and another to the other hundreds (with APR) without much extra work, and second because as these sites are more desirable, I'm more paranoid about them catching on to APR and blocking it (seems to happen with commercial software like that) and third, simply because APR doesn't support all of the premium sites I want to submit to.

My head is actually swimming with everything I can do here, and how to automate it. At some point I hope to automate every part of your "standard" site setup/launch/seo process so I can concentrate MY time as much as possible on more powerful, and more advance promotion and seo.

This whole "suite" of tools is going to take me a while to fully develop, test, tweak, test, tweak, etc...but when I do expect me to package and share it to the few who will actually make use of it (but I warn you, it's going to be all tool with no fluff, so be prepared for a learning curve)

I tried to use Iopus...just could seem to wrap my mind around it enough for it to work. Would you be interested in sharing your automation software? This looks for user friendly

Of course I'm going to share it when it's ready...duh!

But don't expect it to be like tonight or anything, I still have a buttload to do, and seeing as how I'm super fragin lazy it's gunna be a minute, ya know.

But don't you worry, when I have everything ready, and I have all the bugs worked out, AND I have successfully tested it on more than one site I will share it.

iMacro is actually turning out to be one of my fav programs. I have been playing with it a lot lately, and the possibility's are endless for all of the things you can do when/if I find the time. I highly, highly, highly suggest anyone interested in ACTUALLY getting things done to learn it, it's worth the time. This has REALLY gotten me excited!!

Here's another one of my *brilliant* ideas I have for this monster, hopefully I'll actually get around to building it

-Social bookmarking

Build a macro set to run automatically that will switch ip's and sign up for hundreds of social bookmarking accounts and auto submission accounts (such as onlywire, etc), I still might have to find a way to beat the captcha but it would be worth it I think. It could pull the information from a csv file of random information (names, email, etc) and sign up for each and everyone whenever you want at the touch of a button.

Next have it go to your site(s) on a regular schedule (once a week maybe?) and scrape your sitemap and stick it into a new csv, one url per column. Now in a seperate macro that runs sequentially to the first it could visit each url in the newly created csv file (that was created automatically) and bookmark it with your fav submission site. The beautiful thing about this is all YOU have to do is put together a list of random info for sign-up, provide the url for each sitemap you want bookmarked, and let it run. The idea is that with all of the accounts you created you can have it rotate accounts, so no ONE account has bookmarked more than a few pages from each site, but ALL of your pages get bookmarked several times

What about using it to get ALL of your backlinks indexed faster?

What if someone (or me) could/would make a task to grab your raw logs and basically strip out all of the urls, place them in a file, remove all pre-specified urls (such as your own domain, etc) and than proceed to run every remaining referring url through pinggoat. I don't know if it would help or not, I haven't tried it yet but it is an idea...

I can't recommend enough that everyone here should learn how to use this thing...I can see it completely breaking our reliance on commercially built bullshit like *Bookmarking Demon* which never works and always need updated. It really just takes a little commen sense and a few days to get used to it.