Review: Brad Callen's Free Directory Submitter
Today I'm reviewing a free product of interest to all AdSense publishers, Brad Callen's Directory Submitter. Download it now while you read this review. (Only runs on Windows, though.)
Background
Brad Callen is an Internet marketer best known for his SEO Elite and Keyword Elite products, both staples for serious online marketers. You've heard me wax about Keyword Elite before in particular, including my free course on how to make money with Keyword Elite. Both SEO Elite and Keyword Elite are fairly pricey products, but they're good quality products and Brad gives great support to his customers. I recommend both.
Directory Submitter Standard Edition
One proven way to get traffic to your sites is to get them listed in authoritative directories. Directories are just websites that list and categorize other websites. That's how Yahoo! got its start — it was a big web directory to begin with. There are two benefits to being listed in directories:
- you get found by humans browsing for sites on specific topics; and
- you get extra search engine juice from the directory links.
The problem is that getting listed in directories is a tedious process. First, you have to find the directories in question. Second, you have to create an account for the directory. Third, you have to submit the details about your site. And you have to track it all. That's why products like Directory Submitter get written, to do away with some (but not all) of the drudgery.
Directory Submitter comes in two editions: Standard and Gold. The Standard edition is completely free and lets you submit sites to 350 different directories. The Gold edition costs $47 (which is cheap compared to Brad's other products) and lets you submit to over 1700 directories. All directories currently listed in either edition are free directories that do not require reciprocal links, which is a big plus. And the directory list is current and maintained by Brad Callen's staff.
Although I've upgraded to the Gold edition, this review is going to use screenshots from the Basic edition.
How Directory Submitter Works
Directory Submitter is very easy to use. Downloading and installing it only takes a few minutes, but you have to supply a valid email address as part of the process. (Again, this software only works with Microsoft Windows — Vista support is included, BTW.)
When you start the software, you're prompted to create a project. Each project represents a different site that you want to submit to the directories. There are three pages of information to fill out for each project. The first is basic information about the submitter (you):
Next, you provide information about the website, including different title variations (used to create the links in the directories), descriptions, and keywords:
That's all the setup you need to do. Spend some time thinking up good titles, descriptions and keywords, though. The titles you use will become the anchor text of the links back to your site, and of course the description should be something that will appeal to the humans reading the listings and make them want to visit your site.
Once your project is setup, it's time to submit your site. This is a semi-automated process. You start by clicking on one of the directories in the list, which brings you to the site submission page for the directory:
As you can see, most of the fields are filled out automatically for you based on the information in your project profile. You still have to manually choose a good category for your site and most of the directories require you to prove your humanity by filling in a “captcha” field. Still, most of the work is already done and when you fill out the other parts of the form you just hit the submit button and you're done with that site. You then move on to the next suitable directory in the list. Directory Submitter tracks when you last submitted a project to a given site, which makes it easy to know what got submitted where.
That's all there is to the product. Like I said, it's not a completely automated solution, but it's a timesaver. Submitting to 350 (or 1700!) directories will still take some time, so you'll want to do things in small clusters, maybe 10 to 20 submissions a day.
Make Money Selling Submission Services
I sometimes get asked what's the quickest way to get make money online. AdSense is not quick. Even selling affiliate products isn't quick money, though it's quicker than AdSense. The quickest way to get money is to provide a service for others and be paid for it via PayPal. So here's an easy money-making opportunity for those of you with time on your hands: setup a directory submission service using Directory Submitter. Offer to submit someone's site information for $10 or $20. You can post offers like this in various forums. All they do is supply the information about their site. You then do the work of visiting all the sites and submitting that information — work that's made a lot simpler with this software. You don't even have to use the Gold edition, you could get started with the Standard edition and then upgrade later when you've made a bit of cash and perhaps even offer a premium service to customers.
Just an idea…
Conclusion
I like this software. It's free, it works, it's simple, it looks good. Definitely recommended: download Directory Submitter now.
Sponsored Link: AdWords180 is a great book about cheap AdWords advertising. I can even get you a $30 discount — just send me mail for the details.
Eric Giguere is the author of Uncommon AdSense and the award-nominated (that just means it lost!) blog Make Easy Money with Google and AdSense.
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4 Responses to “Review: Brad Callen's Free Directory Submitter”
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[…] too long ago, I did a review of Brad Callen’s free directory submitter software — great software you should download now. Brad’s now come out with a free […]
Eric,
First I want to thank you for providing an outstanding resource with this blog!
Second, regarding this article submitter…I downloaded it but now I’m hesitant about using it because of duplicate content. If I submit an article to all these directories, won’t Google ding me?
Thanks again for all your help
Duplicate content is only an issue if you’re looking to get YOUR pages into the top spots for a given keyword. If you’re looking for links back to your site then don’t worry about duplicate content. It all depends what you want!
check this out amazing