If you’re not already familiar, an autoresponder is simply a pre-scheduled series of emails that get sent out to a new subscriber on automatic after they subscribe to your list.

For many months, I was using an autoresponder sequence. I still am a supporter of the idea, however I’m currently in the process of re-evaluating the idea. That said, there is certainly an issue with an autoresponder when you’re engaging in a structured marketing campaign.

When you do a product launch (which I just got done with), you are going to be emailing your list with pre-launch and launch emails. If you are running a pre-scheduled sequence at the same time, the messages conflict. From a subscriber’s viewpoint, your message during pre-launch is literally all over the place.

The solution is to turn off your autoresponder sequence, at least temporarily.

The problem is… Aweber has no way to place a sequence on pause. It seems like an easy enough thing to do, so perhaps I can talk them into adding that feature at some point.

In the meantime, here is a sneaky little work-around for putting an Aweber autoresponder sequence on pause:

1. Take a screenshot of the current ordering and timing of your AR sequence. You will use this later to put everything back, if you wish to do so.
2. Go into each message in your sequence and set the interval to 999. Note that the “0” message (the welcome message) needs to stay in place, so you might just need to re-word it to make it fit into your new campaign.
3. Do your launch.
4. If/when you decide to put everything back, then consult the screenshot you took in #1 above and reset all the intervals to what you had before. Delivery will resume from where it left off with all subscribers.

Hope that helps somebody.

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In short, a merchant account allows you to process your own credit cards. So, you might ask, “Why bother? I can do that easily with those other services.” Yes, that is true. Here’s my view, however…

• Paypal. It is easy, sure. However, you are leaving your funds to their whim. Look around online and you will find horror stories of frozen accounts. I am happy to report that I’ve never had a problem with Paypal, but I’ve also had the same account for years. So, I have a history. If I had opened a Paypal account and then just began processing a lot of sales through it, Paypal is going to red flag your account. You’re using THEIR merchant account and they sometimes react quickly to protect it. Plus, running recurring billing through Paypal comes with some really annoying issues.
• Clickbank. You pay $50 to get your own product set up on Clickbank. Then, they take, on average, close to 8% of your gross. Then, you’re going to have the issues of Clickbank affiliates “buying” your product as their own affiliate and basically giving themselves a discount. Then you have the fact that Clickbank places automatic caps on your prices (until you have a longer history with them). Clickbank is convenient in many ways, but I like more control.
• E-Junkie. I’m going to be honest, I’ve not used E-Junkie. But, it is a third-party sales processor, so it is what it is.

When you have your own merchant account, you are in complete control. You set the terms. You set your own prices. You’re not going to have a frozen account as long as you abide by the rules (which are easy).

To get a merchant account, I’m going to recommend PowerPay.

I ran my Blog Masters Club launch through PowerPay and they have been awesome to work with. PowerPay understands the way product launches work. They understand marketing. They understand, with a launch, that an account can go from zero to processing a LOT of money, very quickly. And PowerPay won’t freak out about it.

The thing I like about PowerPay is that they’re human. During the whole launch, I could pick up the phone and get ahold of my account rep (Marvin) in less than a minute. When I left a voice mail for him, he always returned my calls promptly. He replied to me via email equally as fast.

That’s HUGE. Having a merchant account provider that I can talk to on the phone is SO much better than dealing with some bank where I have to go through a sea of prompts and robot voices to speak to somebody.

I also had one little issue arise regarding the use of upsells. I can talk more about this in a later post, but they got it worked out for me. The key thing to note, though, is that 1ShoppingCart and PowerPay jumped in and figured it out for me – and all from a single tweet that I put out on Twitter. This means – they listen. And that’s huge.

I’ve had a merchant account for years before Powerpay. PowerPay is my second merchant account, so I now have two of them. With my first one, the account has been sold off at least twice. It is now operating under a different company name. I have no idea who I would call if I needed to deal with them. With Powerpay, I’ve got Marvin on my speed-dial on my cell phone.

You can’t run a successful business if you don’t have a partner to work with when it comes to processing transactions. So, I wanted to make a point to single out Powerpay. I’m quite happy with them and I’m sure you will be, too, when you get your own merchant account.

So, let me ask you this… what has been YOUR experience with different payment systems? Any success stories? Horror stories?

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This last week, I was reminded of Google Voice. I was reading the revised edition of the 4-Hour Work Week and he mentioned Grand Central. Since that was written, Grand Central has been terminated and it is now Google Voice.

Essentially, you can get a phone number for free from Google. Here is why I dig the service so much:

• Custom voice mail greetings depending on who is calling.
• Selectively allow some people through to your actual phone while only taking messages from everybody else.
• Block calls from spammers or other annoying people.
• Voice mails managed in a Gmail-like interface.
• Voice mails transcribed to written text so you can read it (not perfect, but pretty good)

So, the beauty of it should be clear: This can be a public phone number and you don’t have to worry about your phone ringing off the hook. You have control over the incoming calls.

Another cool thing about the service is that you can use vanity phone numbers (numbers with words in them). This is great for branding. However, this depends on availability of the number you want. You might need to use a different area code to get it.

They also have a call widget you can place on your blog. You can choose to have those calls from your readers actually ring your phone or simply go to voice mail.

I’m actually changing my main business phone over to a Google number and will be canceling Vonage shortly. Sure, Google isn’t an out-going phone (you can do that for a fee if you want), but I will just use my cell phone for conversations. Besides, honestly, I prefer to deal with most of my communications via email anyway (it is much faster and more efficient), so I prefer to have a phone number just go straight to voice mail.

You can check out Google Voice. I believe they are still on an invitation basis, but I bet if you tweet about an invite code, somebody will hook you up.

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What I’ve tossed together here is just a list of resources and services that you might want to check out for various demands of an online business. They are not in any particular order, nor are they all-inclusive. They just happen to be stuff I’ve come across or personally used myself (where noted).

If you find anything useful, rock on. So, here we go…

Stock Photos

• Istockphoto.com – These are the guys I use. Good quality, cheap prices.
• Photos.com
• Stock.Xchng
• FotoSearch
• Getty Images

Shopping Cart Systems

• 1ShoppingCart – For now, I’m using these guys.
• Infusiosoft
• Ultracart
• Nanacast
• QuickPayPro
• E-Junkie
• Clickbank – Not really a shopping cart, but popular option for selling info products.

Programming/Design Help

• Elance.com
• Rent A Coder
• ODesk
• Guru.com
• 99Designs.com – Have lots of designers competing for you.
• Killer Covers

Teleseminars / Webinars

• GotoWebinar – Best option out there for webinars.
• Instant Teleseminar
• VoiceText
• Free Conference Call
• Instant Conference

Analytics / Testing

• Google Analytics
• GetClicky – I like these guys because their reports are more intuitive than Google’s.
• CrazyEgg – Heat map testing.
• ClickTale- Blows CrazyEgg away in what it can do.
• Web-Stat
• Woopra

Email / Autoresponders

• Aweber – My obvious recommendation.
• GetResponse
• MailChimp
• NetAtlantic
• IContact
• Constant Contact

Book/Document/Gear Printing

• Vistaprint
• Lulu.com – Good for self publishing, but I wouldn’t sell your stuff through them. They take too much money.
• Printmedia Books
• PrintingForLess
• Cafepress – Prints shirts and other gear.
• Xlibris
• iUniverse
• ArborBooks
• 99Dogs – Prints promotional items
• CustomInk
• Zazzle – Similar to Cafepress.

Order Fulfillment

• Corporate Disk – Highly recommended.
• Speaker Fulfillment Services
• Kunaki – Completely automated CD/DVD printing and fulfillment. Cheap, too.

Hosting / Domains

• HostGator
• Dotster
• Rackspace
• Pair Networks – My web host. Been with them for years.
• MediaTemple
• GoDaddy – For domains, obviously.

Misc Tools

• MindMeister – Online mind mapping.
• Stock Music
• Favicon Generator
• Icon Archive – More icons than you can shake a stick at.
• Email Obfuscator
• Color Scheme Designer
• You Send It – Send big, large files via email.
• Copyscape – Guard against plagiarism.
• 99 Copywriters – Have copywriters competing for your business.
• TubeMogul – For uploading videos to multiple sites at once.
• Heyspread – A TubeMogul alternative.
• FileTaxes.com – Online filing of various tax forms. Convenient.
• Pandora – Online music for free. I use it all the time.
• SurveyMonkey.com – These are the guys I use for all my online surveys.

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I wouldn’t say that my evaluations are over, however I will discuss where I am now for the benefit of you guys. Plus, perhaps by writing this post, I’ll have some others with good experience with any of these carts chime in.

Why Hosted?

Certainly, there are a lot of decent cart solutions out there which I could host locally. In fact, I already own a license to X-Cart.

I’m at a point in my business, however, where I would rather pay somebody to deal with stuff for me than have to worry about it myself. For this reason, hosted solutions work best for me.

Plus, most shopping cart solutions which are self-hosted seem to be your classic catalog-style carts. This isn’t what I need. I tend to sell via sales pages, not catalogs.

Scoping Out Options

There are a lot of different solutions out there. There are equally as many opinions. It makes evaluating all the options pretty frustrating.

All of this is a move away from Clickbank, too. The last 2 products I’ve launched, I ran them through Clickbank. The problem is that Clickbank exerts too much control over me (price caps for one). Plus, they take an average of 8% of every order. I have had a merchant account for years. I use it already for my other website. For my 2010 plans, I need something far more robust than Clickbank – something I have control over.

The features I need most are:

• Ability to integrate with Aweber
• Ability to integrate with the software I wish to use. (Amember, Wishlist Member, etc.)
• Ability to do upsells, downsells, 1-click
• Built in affiliate program

The ones I looked closest at were:

• 1ShoppingCart
• InfusionSoft
• Ultracart
• Nanacast

Let me discuss my view on each of these…

1ShoppingCart

1ShoppingCart (often abbreviated 1SC) looks to be a good all-around system. The Pro account integrates email, affiliates, ecommerce all into a single package.

The ecommerce system seems pretty robust. The affiliate system, too, seems to be good. I read about some issues in the past with regard to the affiliate system, but all indications are that it seems to be pretty solid now. Their email system is pretty basic when compared to Aweber. Plus, their delivery rates are not up to Aweber. So, I’m really not all that interested in their email, however I can integrate it with Aweber (sorta).

One of the things I like about 1SC is the tremendous amount of social proof around it. A LOT of people use 1SC, which means I have a large pool of experience to draw from when I need it. This was a problem with some of the other carts.

Some of the biggest limitations I’ve found so far:

• I can only specify one set of out-going emails for the entire cart. This means that notification emails of new orders are sent to certain email addresses. The problem is that it is this feature which is used to integrate with Aweber. The drawback is that all of my customers would need to be added to a single list in Aweber. That’s a problem seeing as I have different products to different markets.
• No support for recurring payments via Paypal. I find this an oddity. Seems to me a simple Paypal IPN would get the job done here, but perhaps there’s something I don’t know.
• There doesn’t appear to be any way to stack continuity programs as upsell offers.

On the plus side, it integrates with almost everything (seeing as 1SC is pretty popular).

InfusionSoft

I have not set up an account with Infusion. I have seen some fairly big players use Infusion. Plus, their company understands marketing pretty well.

Infusion is expensive. The account I would need runs $299/month. Now, I’m willing to pay that if the software rocks my world, but in reading reviews of Infusion, I find as many people complaining about it as I see who like it. In fact, it almost seems as if more people complain about it. A few have even recommended using 1SC integrated with something like Office Auto Pilot as an alternative to Infusion.

This could be due to it’s complexity. Either way, it wasn’t enough of a convincer to sign up. Perhaps some day I will change my mind.

Ultracart

Ultracart looks to be fantastic. It does pretty much everything 1ShoppingCart does and then some. It is also cheaper.

The problem with Ultracart (At least for me) was the lack of social proof and community around it. Not as many systems out there integrate with Ultracart out of the box. It isn’t bad, but 1SC has more social proof around it.

Also, when I asked some of my contacts who’ve used it about it, their reaction is best summed up as “powerful, but complicated”.

I also know that Ultracart does not integrate with Wishlist Member, something I do plan to use soon.

Nanacast

Nanacast, for me, is a bit of an enigma. It looks powerful as hell, but there is almost zero social proof surrounding it. On top of that, their website and sales page is simply atrocious. It has the appearance of being a small, 2-man show and that isn’t exactly a confidence booster.

On top of that, the lack of social proof means that Nanacast doesn’t really integrate with ANYTHING (in terms of membership sites). They do have their own Wordpress plug-in to integrate with Wordpress, but it doesn’t seem to integrate with anything else. Nanacast works best as an island where you host your content with them. This makes me nervous as I don’t want to be that dependent on any one company, much less one with such a seemingly small footprint.

If Amember integrated with Nanacast, I’d be sold. At least then, I could keep my content on my own server in my own control. Nanacast does have APIs, but then I’d have to hire my own programmer to integrate. Seriously, an Amember/Nanacast out-of-box integration would ROCK.

Aside from those issues, though, Nanacast looks VERY powerful. The different pricing strategies it supports are awesome and a definite leg up over the likes of 1SC. The only problem I have, again, is that it looks as if I’d be overly dependent on Nanacast for content delivery for a membership site (which happens to be what most of my products are now).

So, What Am I Doing?

For now, I have signed up with 1SC. Their system isn’t perfect, but it seems to be the best all-around option out there right now.

I’m not married to 1SC, though, and would be open to looking at other solutions if they look like they’d fill my needs.

If you have experience with any of these systems, I’d really love to hear from you.

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If you have never heard of split testing, then now is the time to learn what it is and how it works. I’m not going to make you an expert in this post. This post is meant to serve as a primer and we’ll get into specifics later on.

A/B Split Testing

Essentially, split testing is simply testing one version of a page up against another version. You are comparing which of the versions performs better (i.e. more sales, more opt-ins, etc). Once you get a winner, then the top-performing page becomes your lead. You then repeat the process again. With continual split testing, you are constantly improving the conversion rate of your page.

This form of split testing is simple called A/B split testing. The name comes from the simple fact that you have two different pages, Page A and Page B, and you’re simply comparing the results of each. Obviously, when going A/B split testing, the results are most meaningful if the two pages aren’t completely different. After all, you want to know WHY one particular page converts better than the other. For this reason, you don’t want to change too many things at once. Perhaps just change your headline, a graphic, etc. By doing this, when results are showing that one page out-performs the other, you know why. If the two versions are COMPLETELY different, then there is a number of different things that could be affecting the results and you have no way to act upon the test results.

Multivariate Split Testing

The other type of split-testing (and more complicated) is called multivariate split testing. This is a split test where you are altering more than two elements in the same test (more than just pages A and B). Whereas A/B split tests just test one page against another, a multi-variable test can test any number of combinations. For example, you could test a number of different headlines, different images, different open paragraphs – whatever.

It works by dynamically inserting different test blocks into your landing page. For example, you would have your different headlines set up in your split testing system. In your landing page HTML, you would have some code which will dynamically pull in different headlines. Your testing system would then test all headlines and see which one performs better. If you are simultaneously testing other page elements (such as image placement), then the system will rotate these as well. Over time, the system will determine which combination of page elements converts best.

Multi-variable testing is more complex, but there is software to do it for you. Also, the more things you’re testing at once, the longer it will take to get meaningful test results. So, while you can load it up with all kinds of things, it is best to still limit your test elements.

Testing Software?

If you run a test for split testing software, you’ll get a lot of different options. However, for most people, I recommend you just use Google Website Optimizer. It is a service of Google and it is FREE. How cool is that?

Showing you how to use Website Optimizer is a subject for another post, however Google has done a pretty good job of dumbing it down. By going through the wizard they have set up, you can set up a split test on your site pretty easily.

Split Testing On a Blog?

Split tests are usually done on opt-in pages and sales pages. You don’t see too many people doing it on blogs. But, there isn’t any reason why you can’t. A few technical issues will need to be worked out, but it will work.

The thing to keep in mind, though, is that blogs are not always conducive to conversions. Blogs are great for publicity and building relationships with your audience. But, when it comes time for a sale, the blog can be a distraction. Ideally, pages designed to convert a reader into some goal of your’s should be simple and not cluttered up with a complex sidebar, banners, or anything like that. You want to force your readers to make a choice on whatever it is you got on offer.

If you keep that in mind, split testing gets a lot simpler. Trying to run split tests on an offer when your reader has a myriad of outbound links on your offer page is going to seem pretty fruitless.

So, more on this later! For now, this is a quick introduction to split testing. And I recommend you start playing around with Google Website Optimizer. It is a handy tool. Bookmark it. Any serious internet entrepreneur WILL use it eventually.

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As I said, though, in my original article, I am willing to be wrong. It is in that light that I want to give a fair shake to Traffic Geyser. Now, as I write this post, I am about to go on vacation. So, I don’t have time to give full attention to this matter quite yet. I will, however, give a full response from Traffic Geyser when I return.

Yes, Mike Koenigs from Traffic Geyser contacted me privately in response to my post. He gave me a very well-written response and, I must say, I was very impressed. Here is a small snippet from Mike:

One is that you suggest our user base is “probably internet marketers”.

That is simply not true. We have thousands of customers worldwide – in virtually every business imaginable.

They’re not spammers.

They’re small businesses, big businesses and everything in between.

They’re people like you and me who are doing their best to get noticed and survive in a challenging economy where it’s increasingly difficult to get noticed.

They’re work at home moms and dads, big international companies, celebrities and more.

They’re distributing all sorts of content. And believe it or not, it’s not just a bunch of spam.

Please don’t take it from this snippet that Mike was being argumentative with me. Most definitely not! But, he was certainly refuting a claim I made on this site.

So, time is short here. I wanted to put this out there so that my readers are aware that there is another side to my argument and I’d like to allow Mike to make that argument here on David Risley dot com.

No, I am not making a switch to Traffic Geyser right now. I am very happy with TubeMogul.

However, I want to provide a fair shake and not give unfair criticism without a chance to respond in full. So, Mike, I appreciate your reply. We’ll be in touch when I get back, and I will provide more insight into Traffic Geyser at that time.

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In my recent research into Traffic Geyser and TubeMogul, I’ve learned a little bit about the inside of how these video sites work. I even had a phone conversation with TubeMogul which more or less backed up the thought I was already having.

Now, Traffic Geyser works with crappy video sites. Why? I am pretty sure it is because of the kinds of videos which are pushed through Traffic Geyser. When you look at how they are positioned, it is pretty obvious that the user base of Traffic Geyser is going to be primarily internet marketers. These guys usually do videos for one reason – to sell something. How is that video going to be interpreted by the site who is hosting it? It is going to be looked at as SPAM.

Since Traffic Geyser is probably mostly pushing marketing videos, then, most of the quality video sites probably do not want to work with Geyser. They know that if they accept incoming videos from the Traffic Geyser system, odds are it is a marketing video.

TubeMogul’s free accounts work with some of the primary video sites right away. However, there are several other video sites which you will need to actually APPLY to TubeMogul for in order to be able to access. Why? Because TubeMogul wants to be sure you’re not pushing spammy videos to these other sites.

All of these video sites have terms of service (TOS). In the TOS, many of these sites forbid the use of marketing-related videos. For example, the TOS for Vimeo says the following:

You may access the VIMEO Site and use the Services for personal, non-commercial purposes.

Looking at that, is it any wonder sites like Vimeo don’t work with Traffic Geyser? This is the reason why.

There is a Black List

People who engage in email marketing already know that there are black lists. Email addresses and domains who are known to engage in spamming will eventually find themselves on a black list. The black lists are looked at by many ISPs and that is why many spam sources will get outright cut off at the ISP level.

Well, there is a black list of video spammers, too. The big boys in the world of online video talk to each other and they share email addresses commonly used to log in and upload spammy videos.

There is an effort underway to curb this practice of video spam. Marketers are heavily catching on to the power of online video. When they do a video, they want it to blanket the Internet and get in as many different places as they can. There is a counter-effort, though, from the sites who spend the money to host these videos to keep the spammers out. After all, video demands a lot of bandwidth and they want only the quality videos to show up (unless you’re Youtube, I guess).

Don’t Be in Bad Company

It is true in social media. It is true in blogging. The prominent marketers know it, too. If you provide VALUE, it works. If you do spam in any of these mediums, you’re shunned. Well, it isn’t any different with video.

You don’t want to put yourself into this company, either. Talking about internet marketing, affiliate marketing and other similar topics does put you into the same niche as a spammer potentially. On this very blog, I talk about how to make money on the Internet. This is a spam-heavy niche on the Internet and the last thing I want to do is be bundled up with spammers. But, I create a LOT of value and I do it freely.

When it comes to my videos, my Flip Tips are meant to be helpful to bloggers. Very rarely will you see me use a video to promote a product. Why? Because if I did that too much, I’d put myself into the same company as the other video spammers.

So, stay on the up and up. Provide real value in your videos. Videos can be used to market products, but it has to be good, solid, useful content. These video sites aren’t in the business of hosting commercials for free.

Something to think about.

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TubeMogul is a free service – up to a point. Traffic Geyser has unlimited uploads, however the sites that they work with are pretty lame. TubeMogul works with the best video sites out there, but they provide 150 launches with their free account. This means that for every video upload to another video site, you take up one of your TubeMogul “credits”. After 150 launches, you’re done. After that, you’re basically a business user and that means you’ll need to start using the premium business accounts.

The premium TubeMogul accounts are NOT free. In fact, they’re not even cheap. They start out at around $500/month and this will give you another 500 uploads available for the month.

I was uploading my Flip Tips to 15 different video sites using TubeMogul. I don’t do videos on the weekends, so on the high end I would be doing videos 25 times per month. 25 videos x 15 sites equals 375 uploads.

Now, most of you are probably not doing videos every day. However, if you do a lot of video, you need to start using TubeMogul strategically to stay under the 150 upload cap otherwise you’re going to have to go premium.

Use The Video Sites That Actually Matter

You have to ask: Why do you even bother uploading your videos to multiple sites?

The obvious answer is (1) more eyeballs and (2) SEO benefits.

It would make sense, then, to keep the end goal in mind and use the video sites that actually matter. Obviously, Youtube is the big cheese. From there, Yahoo, Myspace, Metacafe, Google, Viddler, DailyMotion and Vimeo are probably the most important. Howcast and 5min are good if your videos are tightly how-to related. But, sites like Crackle, Imeem and Break are very niche oriented and don’t really have a lot of eyeballs.

So, put your eggs into the baskets that give you the most return. If we concentrate just on the ones I said are most important, that would cut down my 375 uploads per month down to 200. If I cut another 2 sites out of the mix, I could get down to the 150 cap and still push out 25 videos per month.

Whatever you do, never fail to upload to Youtube. They are the big guys. From there, you might experiment to see where your videos get the most views. Then, use TubeMogul to upload to those sites and skip out on the rest of them. Also, keep in mind that uploading a how-to video to a site which is mostly entertainment related isn’t going to give you nearly as much SEO value than uploading to a video site which is exclusively tutorials.

Think Before You Upload

TubeMogul is still the best game in town, but just keep in mind that there are caps placed on the free accounts. TubeMogul is a business just like everybody else and their money is made on the high-volume accounts. Paying attention to the sites you upload your videos to will provide you all the benefits you’re looking for without necessarily needing to pay to do it.

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WARNING: I’m about to just call it like I see it. I am willing to be wrong, so if somebody has an alternative viewpoint, please post a comment on this post.

I have been a long time user of TubeMogul. It is free and it works with about 24 different video sites. It also has analytics capability to compile your viewership numbers from different sites and compile them and allow tracking individually. They do have premium options available as well.

Then, there’s Traffic Geyser. Now, this option is not free. You can get a 30-day free trial, after which you’re going to be charged $97/month to use it. That certainly isn’t cheap. However, when mingling with internet marketers, you hear Traffic Geyser talked about quite a bit. Even in my own mastermind group, Traffic Geyser came heavily recommended. So, I thought I’d give it a try with the 30 day trial.

I was unimpressed with Traffic Geyser after checking it out. Here’s why…

Traffic Geyser Seems Overrated

The overriding point to Traffic Geyser is uploading videos to multiple sites at once. When I go to enter profile information into my account, I count 23 video sites available. This is less than TubeMogul. Not only is it less than TubeMogul, but the sites that Geyser works with are, in a word, PATHETIC when compared to TubeMogul.

Some of the major video sites that Traffic Geyser doesn’t seem to support are:

• Blip.tv
• Break
• Crackle
• Howcast
• Metacafe
• Yahoo
• Vimeo
• Viddler

In lieu of some of these fairly major video sites, Geyser provides upload to sites like:

• Adhysteria
• GUBA
• Kewego
• Sharkle
• Youare.tv
• Spike

I don’t mean to be overly critical, but some of the sites that Geyser works with are just not that important. Yet they leave out several of the pretty important ones like Vimeo and Viddler. Now, one theory as to why is that these sites might be more picky about video content. Even with TubeMogul, you have to apply for upload access to certain video sites to make sure your content is relevant. With a bunch of internet marketers using Traffic Geyser, its probably fairly certain that a lot of the video content that goes through it isn’t relevant or how-to related. This may be the reason why Geyser cannot work with these sites.

Now, Geyser does have the ability to strip the audio out of a video and turn it into a podcast. It will then upload your audio to several podcasting sites. Geyser also have some tools for easier video submission as well as creating videos using slides.

I gotta be honest, though. I fail to see how this is worth $97/month. In fact, I fail to see how this is worth using at all if you have any ability to make videos on your own.

Undeserved Popularity?

I love affiliate marketing as much as the next person, but it just might be possible that Traffic Geyser has gotten overblown because all these internet marketers are making commissions through referral. Look at this headline from their sales page:

They use a headline which will cater specifically to marketers (“prints money”) and they use the name of Frank Kern, a guy who most definitely is well known in internet marketing circles.

I was so unimpressed with Traffic Geyser that I was left thinking that this thing is artificially talked up by people in the business because they’re all getting paid to refer people to it.

Am I just being a cynical bastard? Probably. A more likely answer might be that they haven’t actually tried TubeMogul.

Stick with TubeMogul

I’m willing to be wrong. I’m willing for somebody to tell me what is so great about Traffic Geyser when compared to a free AND powerful option like TubeMogul. I’d love nothing more than to promote Traffic Geyser to my readers and perhaps make some commissions in the process. But, I just can’t justifiably promote something to you guys if I think it isn’t worth the money.

If you know how to make videos, use Tubemogul to upload it to the video sites that matter. You still have full control of your keywords, and you can still submit your videos to social media. In other words, you can do everything that matters with TubeMogul and do it without spending a dime.

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