So I bought Article Demon quite a few months back now, for around $127. So far, I have used it a whopping 0 times. Initially when I got it, I also acquired a huge list of article directories for it. So excitedly, I loaded them up, started creating accounts and was all ready to get started blasting off my articles. Unfortunately I didn’t get much farther than that because the whole system was just so complicated. So I closed the program, and I haven’t opened it since, until today.

Diane Sontag is the author of Bookmarking Coach. I first bought Bookmarking Coach probably close to a year ago – maybe more. Anyway what it is, is a PDF guide showing you exactly how to optimize your setttings with Bookmarking Demon. The information is presented in an easy to read way, that personally had me up and running within an hour. If I had not bought this guide originally, I probably wouldn’t even be using BMD at all right now, but it’s actually quite the contrary – I’ve used it for thousands and thousands of bookmarks since, and with great success. So first and foremost, I can’t recommend Bookmarking Coach enough, as it has made my life a LOT easier.

Anyway, as soon as Article Coach came out I started bugging Diane about writing a guide for Article Demon, and sure enough, last week her Article Demon Tutorial was finally released. I’ve been eagerly waiting to get my hands on this, as I’ve had Article Demon sitting on my desktop collecting dust for the past several months. Finally this morning I got to crack into it.

The problem with Article Demon is there are so many nuances to setting up accounts, pen names, spinning articles, submitting articles, etc, that it makes it challenging and even overwhelming  to try to figure out where to start. I’m personally the type of person who has a hard time following instructions – maybe its a “man” thing, I don’t know – but for whatever reason I just have a real hard time with it. So I find it nearly impossible to sit through the video tutorials that come with Article Demon in the first place – in my opinion they are extremely boring and start off with information so basic that it’s hard for me to even follow. So the great thing, for me, is that I can follow the Article Coach tutorial (the format is much easier to follow and the screenshots make it really easy to reference), then go back and watch any videos I need to supplement the additional information – allowing me to skip over a lot of the fluff videos. I don’t necessarily suggest everyone do it this way, but it works for me.

So the first important step is creating accounts. Diane offers some great Article Demon tips that will help you optimize the account creation process. In fact, right away, I learned several things I wouldn’t have even thought of about the account creation process – it is a lot different than BMD or SENuke or other sort-of similar software programs, and needs to be done correctly in order for you to reap the best results. So right away I picked up some invaluable information.

There is also some great info on turning failed account creations into live accounts – in fact this portion of the guide is very detailed and shows screenshots of different directories that will help you along in the process of getting thee accounts activated – and with a program like this, every account matters.

Pen names and processing bonus directories – these are both important features in the guide. First pen names – this is something that you absolutely need to understand before you can use this tool. If not, you might end up wasting a lot of time. As far as the bonus directories, you will get a walkthrough on setting up the additonal bonus directories that come included  when you buy the software, and also learn how to add your own additional directories. This was extremely helpful to me!

Once you’ve added your directories, set up accounts, created pen names, etc, you will be ready to start blasting off articles. Diane shows you how to optimize your performance settings with the help of detailed screenshots. These settings will help ensure that you are going to be running as efficiently as possible and getting the maximum number of successful submissions. Best part – all you need to do is follow the screenshots, and it only takes a minute or two to completely optimize all your settings.

As far as submitting the article goes, there are a ton of things you will need to know in order to maximize the amount of successful submissions you have on each one. Diane covers them all. You’ll learn about optimizing your title, how long your article should be, how unique it should be, and how to use your keywords/anchor text. Additionally, she has a ton of information on optimizing your resource box. Overall, this is the kind of stuff you NEED to get right, and she has already done all the work for us in terms of figuring out exactly what works best.

Last but not least, there is a ton of information on using the scheduler. Now I tried using the BMD scheduler a while back on my own, and could not for the life of me figureit out. I haven’t tried this portion of the tutorial in her guide yet, but I am definitely planning to do so. In fact, I am going to be getting a dedicated machine soon that I plan to put Article Demon on so I can schedule this stuff to run automatically. I know this Article Demon help will be extremely valuable to me when I am ready to get started with that.

So in conclusion, I sincerely recommend Article Coach, and Bookmarking Coach as well. Believe me, I wouldn’t have spent the time to write a review this long if it wasn’t something I truly use myself and fully recommend. Edwinsoft has very powerful products – IF you know how to use them. If you are thinking about buying either BMD or Article Demon, I recommend you visit Diane’s site – http://bookmarkingcoach.com/.  There, she has links that will get you $50 off of BMD and a staggering $70 off of Article Demon. So definitely stop there first and cash in on those discounts – then you can use the money you saved to pick up the coaching manuals.

Also – it is important to mention that these manuals are constantly updated. As versions of BMD/AD are updated with new/different features, and as directories change things on their end to try to weed out spam, Diane is also constantly testing and updating settings to make sure we’re all using the best configuration possible to achieve the maximum number of successful submissions. As soon as the manual is updated, I get a new copy emailed to me. It doesn’t get any easier than that.

One more thing I will add – she also has a weekly proxy service for around $7. I have been a subscriber as long as I have owned BMD. I get 50 tested proxies emailed to me every Sunday ready to go right into BMD and AD. Even though I have Scrapebox, and could probably harvest my own proxies, I like the amount of time I can save by using this service, and I know the proxies are GREEN and ready to go.

So be sure to check out Article-Coach.com if you have or are thinking about getting Article Demon.

Popularity: 2% [?]

So I had a chance to try out the Headway theme for WordPress. It’s actually something I’ve wanted to do for quite a while now. I have a VA who used it a lot in a previous job, so I decided to get a copy, and I’m glad I did.

Basically Headway is a completely customizable WordPress theme. It can be very basic, or extremely detailed, depending on how you want to customize it. My VA has been able to do some really cool designs with it, and that is only at a modest skill level.

One of the coolest things about Headway is the visual editor. Here’s a real basic idea of some of the features ( I couldn’t do a screenshot of my own admin interface because of the way the visual editor works):

Anyway, so you can see that with the visual editor you can basically control all aspects of the design, without having to do any coding at all. And for people like me who like to get dirty with the code, you can also turn the visual editor off.

So I decided to try this theme out on a site of mine that badly needed a makeover. I literally downloaded it, installed it, activated it and played around with the settings for about 5 minutes, and the result was a custom wordpress theme that looked about 100 times better than the previous theme I had been using.

Best part of all, I didn’t have to waste any time reading any instructions or anything. The interface is actually really intuitive, so if you’re like me and you’ve worked with a million different WordPress themes already, you will have no problem picking this up. For example, I always like to remove the post meta information from my niche sites – that would be the date, author, etc. Usually right below the post title. In most cases I actually have to go into the code and mess around with a couple different files in order to completely remove the post meta info – which is very important, by the way. With Headway, I was able to remove it with 2 simple clicks. Not only that, I didn’t even have to read any instructions or anything to figure out where to go to do so. I basically just went to the place in the configuration where I thought the setting would be, and sure enough it was right there.

So overall I’m really loving this theme so far. I just used it for a really simple site to test it out, but I have some plans to do bigger and better things with it, and my VA has been able to produce some really cool stuff already. I would say that this is definitely a great option for a beginner who doesn’t want to even think about code, as the visual editor is one of the best custom visual editors I’ve seen for a WordPress theme, and it’s super easy to get up and running. If you’re more advanced or looking for 1 theme that would be flexible enough to use for multiple sites, then this is also a great option. I can tell there is clearly going to be a learning curve if you want to do some of the crazy cool stuff that’s possible with this theme, but just like anything else, it will be worth the effort you put in to it. You can take a look at the Headway site to see some really cool examples of live sites done with Headway that you would never even think were wordpress sites.

So overall Headway gets my full recommendation – if you’re on the fence, hopefully this will put you over!

Check out Headway at headwaythemes.com

Popularity: 1% [?]