forum submission software

hello.
I'm testing the market for a forum submission program I'm developing. It supports different forum software (10 of the major bb software providers, starting with vBulletin and phpBB) so there's virtually an unlimited number of forums you can use it with.
What it can be used for is making announcements or if you just want to post a message to an entire list of forums and see the feedback.
There is a very easy system of configuring the program and choosing what forum/section to send to.

Everything is designed so the user can leave the program do the job instead of spending precious time with the posting.

Please let me know if you would be interested in such a program (I only want to know if it has commercial value) and if so how much would you spend on such a program?

If you are interested in seeing a demo or giving a test to the program, please let me know and I'll send this to you.

Thank you,
Paul

 

Good luck with that idea. I think you'll find a lot of people up in arms with a tool like that. The last thing a webmaster wants is more spam for their forums.

 

I'm pretty dissapointed of the general ideea that people get: the majority sees first the negative aspects, not the positive ones.
While this software can do bad in the bad hands, it can help legitmate users and save a lot of time for them.
Of couse, if you're only member on a couple of forums this won't come as a great help but as the list grows it can come in handy.
For now I'm trying to see if there are people in this situation.
Paul

 

The purpose of posting in forums SHOULDN'T be for backlinks. Granted, it does make it more worthwhile though. I don't think anyone would openly support another forum spamming program.

 

Isn't posting the same thing on a bunch of different places called spam? Using your program, even for so called "good things" is still spamming.

Definition of a forum: A public meeting or presentation involving a discussion usually among experts and often including audience participation.

Kinda hard to converse with a bot isn't it? (present company excluded yfs1)

 

let me just give you an example:

when I posted my main question, about the program, I did it on multiple forums to gather as much feedback as I could. From those initial posts, only a few got answers.
Now for the question: wouldn't it be easier if I just use a program like the one described and get an email for the posts that were answered? Is this spam? I don't think so. It's a legit question.

Paul

 

Here is another example: I am a member logged into multiple forums when I come across a post on each with the exact same title and the exact same content. Is this spam, Yup.

 

I would like to see a demo...

 

what do you think of this ideea: webmaster can opt to disallow the program to post on their forums. Having something similar to meta robots NOINDEX, NOFOLLOW on your site to stop the program from posting. Of course, the meta robots is an example, something else should be used in this case. Or maybe have a noautopost.html file in the root directory of the forum..
Looking forward to see your reply.
Paul

 

I personally think the idea is a good one, because I use multiple forums (30+) to find answers to tough questions. Actually, there is already software which does this. The problem with these type of programs is that the program itself is not illegal or unethical, but the majority of those who use it have illegitimate or unethical intent. Using this software to create backlinks is considered link spamming, which is a growing issue on the web. Also, some sites can ban you and close your account for using auto-submission software. The same link spamming technology is made available to work with commenting on blogs.....it's pure SPAM! So the reality is you may have a geniune idea, but in the long run it does more harm than good.

 

I have observed that anything that is related to "submission" + "software" is synonymous to SPAM over the long haul. It might be a very practical tool at first, agreed, but i think there's gonna be massive abuse of this tool.

 

There's no doubt that most users would use this to spam forums. Well, whether we all like it or not, there are people who are happy to pay for such tools. People who are spammy don't generally like to pay for anything, especially software, but I'd say anything under a hundred bucks would be a successful price point. Though first I'd research the competition and see what those go for, and compare features, etc. Pricing software is something of a black art.

 

My thoughts are:

If you have a message that you really want to get out there and is that important...

And you cannot take the 10 seconds it takes to go to each forum and post it yourself, maybe the message isn't that important afterall.

 

Your pricing is what will keep most of the abusers at bay. Like a knife, it can obviously be abused, but it's a good idea just the same.

Just be sure you take very clear and obvious steps to assist webmasters in preventing abuse, your earlier suggestion was good. The best way (assuming this app is a desktop binary and not a web app written in php or the like) is to use a BIG FAT CAPITALIZED *CONSISTENT* AGENT STRING etc that can't be suppressed with each request except by way of reverse engineering.. Between a fair price point, and the agent string, you should keep it clear of most spammers. Obviously webmasters can filter by agent string, so you're being responsible and empowering them too.

Anything that saves me time is a good idea - good luck with it.

Cheers,

JL

 

hello
thank you all for the ideeas and support. I think this would be the best options indeed, have an User-Agent string to make it clear the request is made by an automated program.

And yet another thing: I'm new to the online selling. Does anyone have any advices? Where to start, payment processors to use, advertising, site content (do 'letter' sites that focus on a single piece of software give best results?)
Thank you again.
Paul

 

Guess soon we are going to see these Turing tests, image-word verification thingies for posting in forums as well

 

hello.
A demo version is available right now. grab it from http://balder.prohosting.com/drracoon/ForumSubmitter.zip
You will be required to activate it, that only means to give me a mail/message and I'll send the details along with some hints on how to efficiently use it. In any case, you will be guided by the app so you should have no trouble at all.

And although the demo only supports phpBB and Hyperboards, you'll pretty much see the power of the program.

The first release version is almost done and only has to be tested some more. It has support for 10 forum software (including vBulletin). Free updates will also be available to registered users - and as registered users you will also be able to make sugesstions as what software support you want to be included.

Note for webmasters:
The application uses a explicit User-Agent header to identify itself: ForumSubmitter . If you don't want to receive submissions, you can do this using this info.

Thank you all for support
Paul

 

We told him the same thing on vB Webmaster.

http://www.vbwebmaster.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1225

 

that probable not a bad idea, you would only need it for people starting a thread. If you had automated spamming the middle of threads it would be clear your post was spam. Maybe you could allow trusted people to not do ther verification, i.e. anyone who had done over 100 posts.

Personal I think it does have some uses, I often post the same thread into multiple different forums so I can get more feedback. This would be a quite generic use for this tool however, the spam woudl just be horrible.