Postrunner is the guest blogging system which has been part of the Keyword Academy for several years. Now however its being re-launched as a Postrunner V2.
What’s New With Postrunner V2?
Well the core of Postrunner is the same as I described in my Postrunner review over a year ago. However Postrunner V2 is a complete re-write of the existing functionality – so it works robustly, plus a host of new features. The whole user interface has been greatly improved – its nice and smooth to use compared to the old one. The key functional changes are:
site owners can determine how long an article they want and how many links they allow. No more standard 300 word posts with two links! If you want 1000 words with one link – you specify that at Postrunner will ensure that is all you get.
site owners can add a long blurb introducing their site and saying what you will and will not accept – you can link out to a requirements page so you provide potential contributors detailed instructions
there is now an author score – this is determined by owners who score your articles. Site owners can restrict access to their sites by requiring a minimum author score. If you don’t have high enough score you can’t post to those sites.
on the flip side those selecting a site to publish on will now see the site’s Page Rank and, more importantly in my view, the percentage of posts ignored by the site, i.e. returned within 7 days.
sites can be ranked up to 5 stars by article writers.
Postrunner is positioning itself as an introduction service between site owners and those that wish to promote their own sites. Postrunner sites are all owner by individuals, not the people who are running Postrunner. This is guest blogging, not manufactured backlinks.
The aim is to get many more, quality sites into the system. You may have noticed, having a few quality links to your site will trump thousands of trashy low quality links any day of the week. Although some, including me, will see it as a Build My Rank alternative, but really this is about legitimate guest blogging.
Will Google like it? Who the heck knows – but I have NEVER seen or heard of a site being penalised for accepting guest posts, or using them for promotion.
Coffee anyone? Nelson, New Zealand
Pricing Information:
Indicated pricing for Postrunner v2 for new subscribers is:
free for promotion of one site;
up to 10 sites: $30 per month;
up to 25 sites: $50 per month;
up to 50 sites : $75 per month;
un-limited sites: $199 per month;
Note you submit as many articles on any plan – but you are limited to how many sites you can promote.
But if you are amember of Keyword Academy WHEN Postrunner V2 is LAUNCHED you will be grand-fathered in and allowed promotion of unlimited domains.
When Will Postrunner V2 Launch?
Postrunner is now live for all members of TKA
So what I am trying to say – its a really, really good time to join Keyword Academy – take advantage of the free 30 days look, check out Postrunner V2 – and if you decide to use Postrunner you end up paying $33/month for unlimited domains. Plus you get the other tools and information available for TKA members too.
If your response to my title was WTF is Postrunner – then check out my earlier post. If you are a member of The Keyword Academy you will know that Postrunner is system used with TKA in order to create keyword anchored links for your sites.
I’ve compared to BuildMyRank to Postrunner – and Mark is now trying to differentiate Postrunner from BuildMyRank and similar schemes.
His argument is that Postrunner needs to evolve:
needs “better quality” sites in Postrunner.
the reason more “quality” sites aren’t in Postrunner is because of the “quality” of the articles being sent to them.
his proposed solution is an author scoring system which will reward the writers (or buyers) of superior articles.
The Argument About “Quality” Articles
As soon as the thread started in the forum the predictable grammar Nazi’s (Nazis’? Nazis’s ??) were out in force. Too many trailing commas – FAIL. Use of nonstandard spellings FAIL. To be fair to Mark, in the seminar he specifically mentioned that he wasn’t concerned about grammar and spelling problems, he was more worried about the articles being relevant and having a point.
Its all looking like this will be seen, by many, most of whom haven’t hit the $10/month income level yet, in the community, as an opportunity to FAIL all of those authors who use too many commas in a sentence…
I have two sites in Postrunner at the moment – one is a niche, passion quality site, the other one is a general site full of trashy Postrunner articles, which I just put back in during the webinar yesterday – inside 12 hours I have received over 7 articles.
These cars aren't Quality - but tourists now pay a premium to hire them in Berlin!
What I Look For When I Get Postrunner Articles on My Quality Postrunner Site
I put my Independent Travel site into Postrunner – basically to get content when I couldn’t be arsed writing, and to see what keywords people were trying to rank for in the travel niche – a niche that is my passion but pays me very, very poorly. Now it gets about 2/3 posts a week – which is a nice number. I reject at least a third of those. So this is how to get your well-written, gramatically perfect article declined from my site.
The site linked out to – only consists of a “hello world” post (seriously its happened).
If the site linked to is a general postrunner site, or similar article directory – this is a new automatic DECLINE I picked up from Build My Rank.
The 2 anchored links are in the the last words in the article – normally on separate lines -I don’t know who the hell is teaching this – its certainly not TKA – but please stop it – it looks stupid and its a loser for SEO duh!
The two links are to the exact same page on the site being promoted (less of this seems to be happening these days).
Write about all-inclusive vacations – like duh! The site’s main keyword is not a secret! If you have glanced at the front-page you know I, and my readers, are not interested in all-inclusive vacations!
Write about timeshares – timeshares are IMHO (and its my site so my opinion rules) – an investment scam – not a holiday option. (Note to Mark – I would explain this to the timeshare peddlers if I could have a longer site requirements description).
Hmm note how I haven’t actually read the article yet -all I looked for was the links and followed them. If I have to actually rate the article for the author score you are adding work for no good purpose here…
Now the following points – won’t get you automatically declined – but a number of them together will:
The article is 301 words with 2 outbound links (doesn’t apply if there is only one link).
Site still has the default header image from the default WordPress theme.
If the site is selling a product but has only Adsense I am likely to reject the article.
If the site is using one of Court’s old SEO themes that have been done to death and are probably on G’s watch list.
The title and sometimes the entire article is only loosely related to the anchored text of the links. Let’s get real here people – I want to rank your article – its good for you, its good for me! After all I thought you WANTED an authorative link! So don’t give me an article about packing tips and then link to fashion bags for ladies! This is probably the hardest judgement call sometimes I will get an excellent article – but with a bland generic title – frankly I rewrite the title – so we can both benefit.
I rarely reject for grammar and/or spelling – sometimes I lightly edit. If its embarrassingly bad language which is hard to read I will reject – but I do it very rarely. Any automated grammar and spelling check would fail many of the perfectly good posts on the site – because some are written by native Englishmen, in fluent English, some in fluent American, some in fluent English written by non-native speakers – all of the English is acceptable – and the quality can be great – but no automated system will ever deal with the complexity and depth that is English – certainly not Google.
What I Look For On My General Postrunner Site
Within 10 hours of reinstating this site into Postrunner during yesterday’s webinar, I had 8 articles! Hand on heart I do NOT read every article. I scan – if its appears to make some sense, is not badly spun and relates to the anchored text I’ll take it.
I do however check every link – and reject any article whose site fails the first 4 points above! In other words – what the article links to is FAR more important to me than whether the nouns and adjectives are in agreement. I also reject any site promoting anything to do with owning or using firearms.
I will probably move this site to some other category – its starting to make money and I will focus on the niches that its ranking for.
Which is the Quality Site of These Two.
Well if you want passion and love and age – then midlifetravel.com is it – its my original site – its started off as an html site developed in Dreamweaver in 2007. Its been up in several forms over the years. It ranks #1 for my original keywords “travel over 30s” – unfortunately no one actually searches for the term LOL. Its a PR0. I keep it, I love it, I post to it and I link to it. However this is a hobby site not a real money making venture. Most of the content on it was written by me, a genuine expert, and has no outbound links.
The site that accepts practicably everything? Is just over a year old, has had very little link building to it (by me). Well its a PR2 and in the last month (when I published nothing new on it) made about $1/day – its on its way. I’ll start building out the content for which its already ranking for and adding more posts without outbound links on similar topics. In other words I will make it legitimate! Will I go back and fix the grammar and spelling -nope!
Still reading – you must be bored …
I have gotten a little fond of amplify. I started using it – because Griz did but I’ve found a use for it. I use it to share the stuff I find genuinely interesting (or funny) in the weird and evolving world of making an online income – if you already follow this blog on Facebook (like in the footer) you will get my amplified updates – but otherwise follow Lis Sowerbutts on amplify directly. It also allows me to tweet without ever going anywhere near twitter – all good!
