Thanks for this thread.
I just wanted to add my penny's worth here. First, I'm not much of an autoblogger, I generally write my own content or else I personally rewrite other people's content. I wanted to expand this year, hence I got hold of ABB 3 in the hope that I might find some good automation tips. And I have done.
One way in which I have used scrapers and automators in the past is to do my research for me. So I run a scraper, pass it through my own formatting and rewrite it to make it original. It's faster than writing from the ground up but still too slow. I tried WP Robot but just can't get on with it. I find the interface totally uninuitive, the settings a bit of a mystery and the results mostly disappointing. But the killer for me is the lack of proper moderation. Last time I tried WP Robot it was still using tokens which meant there was no way of editing or rewriting content before it hit my blog. That alone rules it out for me, but the interface etc are the final nails. Don't get me wrong, I want it to work for me - it could save me hours - but I want to be able to edit.
So I'm hanging out here, reading up on some other stuff . I just got Web Traffic Genius through one of Mike's emails and I am very pleased with it. Then I see this thing called 'Blogsense' which I'd never heard of before. I've been around the forums a few years now so it surprised me that I hadn't heard of it. So I do a search and find a few other mentions here and there but not much to go on. I visit the site and there is a bunch of features, but again, not enough to make me want to dedicate time and funds to. What has really interested me is the claim that it can do a similar job to WP Robot, but it also allows editing content prior to posting. That's my 'golden chalice'.
I see the coupon on this site, but it's still $95 I wasn't planning on spending, so I finally figure I'd 'trial' it at $10 (the monthly price) and get some hands on experience - if it really can compete with WP Robot.
One 'complaint' that comes up often with Blogsense is that it is 'geeky' and not very user friendly. So when I downloaded the file and unzipped it, and read the very short installation instructions I got worried. I assumed it would be one of those products with minimal documentation and a lot of room for error. But I followed the instructions and was pleased to find that it all installed perfectly first time and without any hint of a glitch. I didn't even have to set up a cron!
And, to be honest, it has been like that throughout. I much prefer the interface to WP Robot. For me, it makes sense and is very intuitive. No messing around in the WP admin, is perfect. I was worried about documentation and the multiple videos but if you watch them, they are quite clear. And they are only multiple because they are done with Jing and that only allows short movies - which, in my view, is preferable to achingly long ones, anyway!
And within the first few instructional vids I watched, I saw how to moderate and edit content. Perfect. But not only that, how to mash up, spin, edit, and a ton more. This is a fantastic tool. And I don't understand the accusations of geekiness or complicated usage. It all seems fairly straight forward to me, especially when compared to WP Robot, which leaves you totally blind most of the time.
So from my point of view when it comes to WP Robot vs Blogsense, then Blogsense wins hands down. With that said, I might now consider WP Robot if I can 'manage' it via Blogsense. If I had to choose between the two it would certainly be (in fact it is) Blogsense, but maybe next month I will purchase WP Robot to work alongside it.
It may be that the reason I find it a bit simpler than others is that I have tried and tested and tried again just about every web scraper out there. And a few that are way out there. And Blogsense feels more like a scraper than WP Robot does. Maybe it's an interface thing. Maybe it's some other perception of mine which has no basis in reality, but this is a tool I can use, will use, am using. And at $10 a month, or with the reduction on this forum for $95 (or something) this is also a great price.
And just so you know, I don't know any of these guys, this is just me, excited, because I finally got the automation tool I was looking for. Thanks to Hudson, and thanks to Mike for the forum on which I found it.
By the way, Web Traffic Genius is awesome too!
