Is it just me, or do most sponsor feeds totally suck?

[Chimera]

Originally Posted by Bill

Using a blog as an editing tool to make unique rss feeds for other blogs is a very good idea, Chimera. I'll have to try that.

Those tools you mention look kinda good too. I'm always a little nervous about buying untested scripts from a source without a lot of good reputation, but, they're not that expensive, I might give them a try.

I'm also looking at existing rss editors like rssbuilder to see if they can do the job equally well.

Making one's own rss feeds has got to be considered a wave of the future. Relying on sponsor output as anything but source material just isn't sustainable. (Too much duplication)

You will notice I did not spam an affiliate code with the information I gave. I did this so that you could take what I said more or less as an attempt to help as opposed to making a buck. I adore Blog Organizer, and if I did more splogs I would probably adore Gallery Scraper. Both scripts are very cheap and well worth it if you blog a lot. The author also provides some excellent support for Blog Organizer.
If you can ignore my eternal warfare with the infernal comma , I can usually write decent text for my blogs. All the sponsors have to do is give me some content!

[Bill]

Originally Posted by Chimera

I adore Blog Organizer

I did notice that you didn't try to profit from the reference, Chimera, and I appreciated it significantly.

What do you like about Blog Organizer?

Having bought plenty of scripts and software over the years, I'm pretty skeptical of the claims made for a script on a sellers page...

[walrus]

Originally Posted by Bill

I did notice that you didn't try to profit from the reference, Chimera, and I appreciated it significantly.

What do you like about Blog Organizer?

Having bought plenty of scripts and software over the years, I'm pretty skeptical of the claims made for a script on a sellers page...

I own a copy of BO and am mostly satisfied with it.

The blog portion of it isn't anywhere near as flexible as WP. There are a couple WP plugins that I feel are a must and BO doesn't do an adequate job addressing those...yet.

But I do use it as a post schedular for some of my blogs and find it very handy for that and, as has been said, kaktus has a good reputation with some folks around here.

For what I use it for...is it worth the purchase. I would say so.

[Chimera]

Originally Posted by Bill

I did notice that you didn't try to profit from the reference, Chimera, and I appreciated it significantly.

What do you like about Blog Organizer?

Having bought plenty of scripts and software over the years, I'm pretty skeptical of the claims made for a script on a sellers page...

Yeah, what Walrus said. The templates are ugly and not really flexible BUT if you run a few splogs you can use it to import the feeds and bounce them right over to your maintenance free wordpress blogs.
Bill, when I read that sales page I felt exactly the same way you did. It looked like something produced by one of the get rich quick net companies. I actually had it recommended to me by a couple of people I trust before I purchased it. I must admit the learning curve is a tad steep (at least for me). To get the best use from it takes some time. However for the small price I can run my few splogs with only occasional real posts from me.
I still don't believe it is the answer to all your money worries and that you won't make 1000s of dollars a month except by hard work and knowing what you are doing. No software will do that. However, it is a very handy tool for a busy blogger. Gallery Scraper was nice, but you must realize also that for those 1000 galleries they scrape the majority have no text, and are the same template and all too often the same content or way too similar to use. So you have to import a lot to get a few. However it too has it's uses and I feel was worth the investment.

[Bill]

I figured out it was kaktusan after poking around the site for a while, I've seen his posts before. That does make it more trustable, but first person users comments are way more trustable. ;-}

What's the rocket pinger do? It's concept sounds a bit iffy to me... in the sense that it should be mostly superfluous, depending, I suppose, on your attitude about how much pinging one should do.

[walrus]

Originally Posted by Bill

I figured out it was kaktusan after poking around the site for a while, I've seen his posts before. That does make it more trustable, but first person users comments are way more trustable. ;-}

What's the rocket pinger do? It's concept sounds a bit iffy to me... in the sense that it should be mostly superfluous, depending, I suppose, on your attitude about how much pinging one should do.

I believe that rocket pinger really has outlasted it's time for usefulness. Not that long ago, pinging was really an issue, especially if you were trying to run multiple sites. Most blog scripts didn't do it automatically so you had to do it manually and really ping-o-matic was your only choice for adult. There were others but they all mostly banned adult. Also, back then, ping-o-matic was really suffering through some growing pains.

Rocket Pinger was the first script that I know of that addressed the issue. Like I said though, I think it is pretty much an un-needed tool in todays environment.

[Bill]

Originally Posted by Chimera

Gallery Scraper was nice, but you must realize also that for those 1000 galleries they scrape the majority have no text

What do you mean by "scrape"?

Most sponsors have tools to let you download delimited lists of galleries, usually with a description available, and sometimes with a thumbnail available too.

What would be ideal is a tool that took a list like that, img src'ed the thumbnail, used a short description for the title, and a long description for the body - can Gallery Scraper do that?