Friday, May 9, 2014

BlogSpot - Explored by iMacro method

BlogSpot has always been favorite choice of bloggers; new or experienced, all bloggers somehow create their blogs through BlogSpot. Its usage and features are obvious however let me just go through some facts for new comers.

It's a free blogging solution with lots of features, you add gadgets like LABEL, Video, Images, external links, Scripts and with easily available customized themes, make it look like a fully operating complex website without having to know any computer language; since its product of Google, all of the blogs are crawled quickly and even with few articles, you can receive some traffic on daily basis – I remember making a blog two months ago with just 5 articles, since then more than 60 people have seen my blog!

This article is all about how to make a speedy blog and start earning through ads or Google adsense!

Making a blog is piece of cake however you need to pick a themes, an idea or lets just say, let be a category of interest that you find yourself able to write or can arrange content related with it. For me, I was in little rush so I started searching for any kind of content that can easily be utilized without further modification, while search I came against a list of buyers with their buying requirements so I created a blog named ‘B2B GlobalImporters” and started posting these articles using iMacro script however soon after posting few posts I came across CAPTCHA (Oh I just hate re-CAPTCHA), anyways, that wasn't useful so I started searching for alternatives and fortunately, I came across with even more simpler approach for bulk posting and it was bit strange for me to know that a huge amount of bloggers weren't aware of this thing – BlogSpot allow adding POSTS through EMAIL, there is an option under setting where you set a secret email id (something like youremail.secretword@blogspot.com) and whenever you send email to that particular ID, all email were treated like BLOG POSTS, there is daily limit of 30 however it was worthy.

Aggressive posting creates negative impact, make your users feel like that some auto-posting scripts are working behind it and search engines even don’t like it much. Anyhow, here is what I did:
  • Compiled the list in a proper format
  • Started sending 30 emails daily using MAIL MERGE technique (Google it if this term is new for you)
  • Created an script which would read posts from DRAFTS folder, separate labels along with other fields and do little modification and post it – 5 to 10 article daily posting was just enough for me!
    • Script was required to post labels because email post only allows subject and body of the post, for rest of the supporting fields you will have to post them manually or by using scripts. My email post included data in XML type format like:
      • <subject>Subject line</subject>
      • <body>this is body of the post</body>
      • <label>this field will be used as label</label>
Here are few snaps showing working of iMacro Script:

Content forwarded through MAIL MERGER:


Content after modification and posting through iMacro Script:


Script is available for free however it may not be useful in your case since you don’t have same data as I do and I've designed it to post data in a HTML format which you might not like; IDEA is there, it’s worthy and can get you extra dollars in future, you can start your own blog after reading my article – if you need my assistance in accomplishing any similar project, I be there for you just for 10$.

Comment for any questions that you have in your mind!

Tuesday, May 6, 2014

How to get away from v8.8.1 build issues

What’s up with iMacro these days?

I know it’s annoying watching your favorite tool malfunctioning, being stuck with tasks that were easily performed and now you are middle of contacting the creators to fix the bug. Guessed it yet?

OK for those who didn’t get it, I am briefing about the recent bug with iMacro, making all of my previous scripts go crazy. It’s mandatory to keep up with the browser upgrade, as functions change with a new build and classes change as functions grows – Firefox has recently upgraded to v29 where iMacro is still at 8.8.1 version, it’s been more than two months since the last update and functions are getting buggy with each new upgrade of Firefox.

Personally, I put everything in a .CSV file and make my scripts to read it and do whatever they are meant for; besides few smaller bugs with iMacro plug-in, one of the biggest problems with current build is that it doesn’t allow access any input file (.CSV in my case) – all of my previous scripts aren’t working as they use to and now it’s showing some fancy exception with the .JS codes. Annoying!

So, what’s up with that; it has bugs and previous scripts aren’t working – what next?

Hmm interesting question! Here is what I did to resolve this problem meanwhile iMacro developers are sleeping. Wait, for those who are thinking why I don’t use Chrome for making scripts? Well, I don’t like iMacro interface at Chrome and I’ll have to tweak all of my scripts a bit in order to make them work in Chrome, I don’t have time to that. Anyhow, good thing with Firefox is that, it has two versions/builds updating in parallel – first one is the normal version and other is the portable version. If you are smart enough, you might have already guessed what I am about to suggest for resolving the problem? OK, don’t use your brain, relax; go download the portable version and disable auto-update feature once it’s installed, for me Portable Firefox v24 is working best even the standard version seems to react abnormal.

Oh one more thing, I’ve reported this bug at IOPUS forums as well and amazingly, it was already reported by dozens of people – felt good watching others using the tool that I love to you on regular basis!

I have tried multiple methods for requesting the developers to update current version; if you guys come across my article, do whatever you can do to remind the sleeping fellows :)