After "making the right choices" and "taking action", I'd say automation is next thing on the Most Important IM Stuff List.

If our skills, talents, IQ, effort are all equal, then the person that does it faster and more efficiently will win.

There's all sorts of automation options, from pre-made expensive software programs, bots, macros you can use in text editors or web browsers, etc.

This thread will deal with things that you "design" yourself, as opposed to pre-made software.

Making your own bots and macros is a trade-off:

Good: You have contol over how the program functions and can fit it to meet your specific needs.

Bad: You have to design it yourself, which requires varying degrees of skill.

I'll make a few posts about some of the tools I use and hope you can add to the thread...

LAST EDITED ON Sep-15-10 AT 07:06 PM (PST)
 
 

(Free) Essential FireFox Automation Plugins
(From Think Links!)

Note: This post is important. I will be posting lists of places to get links. It will be up to you to automate as much of it as you can.

Essential FireFox Plugins

We are going to do some serious automation. Now's not the time to get lazy. A hour or so spent getting this ready will payoff 10x during your linking campaigns.

If you want to be lazy and still get things done, this is the start. I won't give you a longer "pep speach"...It's up to you.

To get some motivation, read my descriptions and you should see the value.

Firefox Browser
http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/upgrade.html
- If you don't have it, download the Firefox browser here. You don't have to switch full time to FF. Just make this your "linking browser".

FREE Plugins - The following plugins are required to get the most out of Think Links. After you've installed FF, start it up, then come to this page using FF. Next, just follow the links and you'll be given a link to automatically install the plug ins. After installing them, you'll likely need to restart FF.

SEOQuake
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/search?q=seoquake&cat=all
- Offers a lot of SEO features. But for our purpose, we're just interested in one: PageRank. SEOQ will show you the PR of each link in the Google results.

If you are searching for .edu blogs, you can see the PR of each listing in the Google search results.

TIP: For our purposes, shut off every other function of SEOQ. This will speed things up greatly, as well as reduce your queries to Google. Note that using SEO Quake ofter requires multiple queries to Google. If you have Google return 100 results, SEOQ will need to contact Google for each of those results to get the PR.

If Google does "ban" you, it's only temporary. Try again in 24 hours. So use SEQ sparingly.

NoDoFollow
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/5687
- When turned on, shows you which links are "follow" and which are "nofollow". Follow links are highlighted in blue and nofollow in red. As you research your linking resources, be sure to check that all of your links are what you think they are.

You can turn this off and on by "right click", then check/uncheck "NoDoFollow".

Selection Links
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/8644
- If you click and drag your mouse over multiple links, this plugin will open each link in a different tab in your Firefox browser.

Here's how you'll use it...I may give you a list of links, or you may find a bunch of links in the Google results. Just click and drag, and each page will open in a new browser tab. Now that all these pages are loaded, you can quickly move from one site to the next.

AutoFill Forms
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/4775
- This plugin will do a lot of the "typing" for us and is the most complicated of the plugins. Spend 30 minutes really getting to know it, it will be a real time (and finger) saver.

Here's an example of how powerful this is in combo with Selected Links. In parts of Think Links, I give you lists of links pointing to sites that use the same software. Even though these are totally different sites and on differnt IPs, you join them using pretty much the same info.

You click/drag over 10-15 of these links. Your Selection Links plugin will open each in a different tab.

Next, you fill in all the details on the first page and save this as a "profile" in AutoFILL Forms. (More detail below)

When you're done with the first tab, you click on the second tab and BAM! All the info is filled out for you automatically. Check to make sure everything is correct, make a minor mod and click on Tab 3 and BAM! Your info is filled out for you again.

Now I don't suggest you simply create profiles. Some of these resources have some very powerful features you will want use. However, the time saved is still the same. Once a profile for that type of site is filled out, and you visit the sign up page, your info will be filled out for you...More often than not, you will only have to hit "submit".

If AutoFILL Forms does miss something, type it in and copy it to your Spartan Multi Clip...Chances are, you will need to use it again somewhere.

AutoFILL Forms does take some time to get used to, but as you can see it is very powerful for our purposes, and will save far more time in the long run that it takes to learn.

Click Profiles=>Advanced deselect: Automatically select best matching profile

Ghost Control Macro Recorder

http://www.ghost-control.com/download.html

Ghost Control is a very cool macro recorder...

Good: Simple, very easy to use, especially as far as macro recorders go.

Bad: Very simple. Not a lot of features.

It has a free trial that lets you record 30 jobs, then $35, and worth it.

Ghost Control also has a "job editor" where you can delete stuff or speed up the entire macro.

It also lets you save your macros as exe files, so you can easily use them over and over.

Ghost Control is simple and it records your mouse positions, movements, clicks, etc., unlike something like Ubot which will read the code.

This means that your .exe's may or may not work on another PC and may even fail on your PC if you change something like the position of a browser window.

But because it's so easy to use, any time you find yourself even THINKING something may be repetitive, just start recording and if you have to do it again, just run your macro.

It's also perfect to use with my Firefox and the "Open Selected Links" plugin technique I posted above.

Here's an example:

I have Scrapebox and a ton of footprints that we can use to find places to create "Angela's link" packets by the ton.

I'll post lists of these links here. Use Open Selection Links to open 10-15 of these links in different FF browser windows.

Since the links will all share a similar footprint, the combo of Auto-Fill Forms, RoboForm (if you have it) in addition to Ghost Control is a very powerful collection.

I really suggest Ghost Control for anyone looking for a simple but effective way to automate basic repetitive tasks.

Ubot Studio

http://ubotstudio.com/features-benefits.aspx

Ubot Studio $250 but you can find $50 off coupons. There's no freeware/trail version.

Ubot is a little different than the other popular macro builders Imacros and Winautomation. Ubot is designed for web related stuff, like filling forms, etc. The other two are better at automating Windows stuff.

It's powerful and can do a lot of stuff, but it also has a lot of drawbacks. The main one being, despite the sales pages saying it's easy, you really need an understanding of programming to use it.

The people that do the best with it seem to be folks that can already program in another language, but use Ubot to build some simple bots quickly.

People like me that know HTML well and read a chapter about programming get stuck. I have 7-8 very cool bots on my hard drive I'd like to share, except they are only 90% done. I just can't figure out how to do the remaining 10%.

I get "stuck" pretty often and have to spend an hour or more figuring out how to do something that takes a minute if you knew how to do it.

Having said that, I would buy it again. It can be frustrating at time with my skill level, but if your primary use is for your own stuff, and you learn the basics, it can be very powerful as it lets you build a bot for just about any type of site.

If you do get Ubot, don't go in thinking you'll master it all. Instead, learn the basics like form filling, captcha solving, scraping and mixed with other programs and automation tools, can be a very potent mix filling it where other programs leave off.

And...Both Ubot and Ghost Control work well with your Tuelz...

LAST EDITED ON Sep-16-10 AT 01:56 PM (PST)
 

Misc. Automation Tips

For link building and account creation, there's two basic strategies:
Deep or wide.

Deep - Creating a bunch of stuff with the same footprint, such as making 100 Twitter accounts.

The automation for "deep" is pretty easy. You can use Ghost Control to make a Twitter account creator in about a minute. You can even add proxies if you want to spend another 1/2 to figure it out.

The problem is when you try to create a lot of accounts at the same site, like Twitter. In this case you'll also need a lot of email accounts of the type that you can also automate email verification link clicking.

Wide - This is creating one account a multiple sites, such as social bookmarking sites. You only need one email address, but each site is a little different so automating it becomes harder.

Deep and Wide - This would be making 100 accounts at different sites that all use VBulletin.

In this case, you only need one email address AND automation is pretty easy, at least account creation is.

But...I have a theory. If you and I can use Scrapebox to find fingerprints we can use to get links, I'll bet a coke that Google can too.

I'm not saying 1000 profile links all from VB forums is bad. I'm just GUESSING that 1000 links all with a common fingerprint will have less value than 1000 links that don't share any common fingerprints.

This is discussed in something called "Hilltop", which I've talked about for years and years and I finally saw it mentioned, although not by name.

Hilltop is a concept Google is known to be very fond of, and it's the relationship of links or "affiliation". It means if Google can tell if pages are owned by the same person when one page links to another page, that link won't count as much as a "non-affiliated" link.

Makes sense. And the concept of Hilltop is actually fairly well known with the most hard core SEOers.

I believe "affiliation" could also mean "footprints". If all your links come from pages that say "powered by wordpress" and "leave a comment", your links may not have the same value as they would if they didn't share common text stings that should be well-known to Google.

If you agree, what you need to do then is to go "wide", but still go just a little deep.

For example, get some footprint links to pages that are similar. Create an account while using Ghost Control to record your action.

Open up a bunch of similar pages in different tabs and run Ghost Control (speed it up in the macro editor).

But instead of doing 100's or more, just do about 20. Don't worry about the ones that don't work, just make sure some work and keep using Ghost Control.

After you've done about 20, find a different footprint and repeat and repeat.

This gives you unique "footprint footprints" and I think you'll see a real benefit from the engines doing this.

More to come...

Another FREE form filler (compare to Roboform) is LastPass.
http://lastpass.com/features_free.php

Here's a quick video showing how to use it for filling forms:
http://lastpass.com/features_free.php

Hi Kurt,

Thanks for this. I've just ordered scrapebox and I've got the firefox addons, plus I'm just having a play with ghost control trial.

Looking forward to those scrapebox footprint lists.

Lots of learning to be done for now, but hopefully I can contribute soon when I've got used to these new tools and tried out your techniques. Thanks again.

Hey Fredola and All...

Quick Scrapebox tip related to this:

You want to try to find the registration pages using footprints, this saves a lot of time.

Once you've scraped some URLs, run them through the "check PR" function. Use the option for the homepage PR. Eliminate any domains with a PR of 0. But don't use the homepages for submission, keep your "register" pages.

(Note: With Ubot you can often have it find a "register" link and click it, but wthout Ubot it's a lot tougher.)

I'm not big on PR, but I do like a PR of at least a 1.

The next thing I'm looking for are a lot of pages that are identical or close to it.

Learn an auto-form filler and use it with Ghost Control. You can even use Ghost Control on a form filler.

Think about combining a free auto-form filler, Ghost Control and Scrapebox, you can do some very, very powerful stuff.

Some more...

Ghost Control:

Don't set it to loop forever. Always put some limit on it. I set it to forever once and had to unplug my PC to reboot.

Learn how to get it to input different lines of text. Maybe you have a bunch of email addresses or urls...

Let's say you have a list like:

one
two
three

And you need Ghost Control to copy "one" and then paste, then go to the next line and copy "two" and paste, etc.

You can try to do this two ways:

1. If the text editor allows it, CUT the line. This can cause problems sometimes when trying to paste a line break.

2. Use the down arrow then click the line of text you want to copy.

Play around with this as it's a vital part of this.

When you open more than one tab in Firefox, try to open the same number of tabs each time (be it 10-15) so each tab is the same size, making it easier for Ghost Control.

Then, always use the first tab, then click to close it, so the next tab becomes the first tab.

You can also use keystrokes to close the tab...

Another option is to copy/paste a list of URLs a line at a time into your browser window.

I'm not an expert, just trying to give tips to help you figure things out for yourself.

There are plenty of more complex macro recorders out there such as Imacors and Winautomation. But I find the learning curve way too high. It doesn't make sense to spend 3 hours learning how to automate something that only takes 20 minutes "by hand".

And if you already know those programs, you don't need me telling you what to do.

I think Scrapebox along with Firefox and its free plugins, plus Ghost Control is the best $67 you can spend on SEO today...Then if you need to upgrade Ghost Control in the future for $35 it will be $100.

Even if Google bans all "footprint links" tomorrow, there's still so much power left that these skills will be used for years to come.

Here's a quick "fake" step by step recipe. Some steps may be missing or not work for everyone, etc. And I'm not going into details...But here's a guideline to get you going in the right direction:

Scrapebox some links using a footprint

Check and sort PR of home pages, starting with highest PR. Delete PR0 sites.

Save as html.

Open this html page in Firefox.

Open 12-15 links in different tabs using Open Selection

Make new profile and use auto fill form program based on first site.

Train Ghost Control to click first FF tab.

Have Ghost Control use the fill form program, including "submit" button, if needed.

Close first tab.

Repeat 10-12 times. (I always set this a little lower than actual tabs open to help reduce errors. Just make just this number is NOT larger than the number of arrows.

Advanced:

Instead of opening tabs, try to get Ghost Control to switch from your text editor to FF and paste in a new Scrapebox URL. In this case, have Scrapebox save the list of URLs to a text file and not an html file.

Now you can use Scrapebox to make a text file with a list of 200 URLs to phpforum sites, set up the first one recording your actions with Ghost Control and have your system create accounts at each.

If you can get these skills down you'll have more power than any of the SENuke type sites can give you because you'll have your own unique resources and footprints. At the very least this is an excellent addition to any and all of the automated SEO/Social sites.

And it's actually easier to learn this than it is SENuke, etc.

Here's another "recipe". Again this is theory and I'm not sure it works as is, but it should generate ideas and twist it for your own uses.

...And this is a blackhat account creator method.

Prep:

Use Scrapebox to gather and check proxies. You'll need a bunch. Save as text file and close Scrapebox.

Open:
text file in any text editor that lets you "tile" the windows.
Ghost Control
FF
Install/config "proxy switcher" FF plugin to work with your proxies. Have it switch every minute or so.
Open CCleaner
Go to site account creation page

Start Recording with Ghost Control.

Open and run CCleaner. Make sure to give Ghost Control enough time for CCleaner to run and for Proxy Switcher to change proxies.

Have a text file for each field, such as:
user name.txt
passwords.txt
email.txt

Open each in "tiled windows" in your text editor.

Use Ghost Control to switch between each open window, copying a line, then switch back to FF and paste in the info into the site's forms.

Repeat up to the number of times equal to the number of lines in the smallest text file.

If you can get this system down, it will be easy to make an account creation tool for just about anything. It may be slow, but you can probably make your needed accounts in less time to find, buy, download, install and learn another account maker, assuming there is one.

And by using CCleaner each time, it will be pretty safe.

If you want faster, you can try a different method for swapping proxies, using the same proxy 2-3 times or not running CCleaner each time, etc.

The key now is really the proxies...More on them on another thread.

The next thing to be a big time player is proxies and email addresses. I'll post about proxies on another thread.

Email addresses are getting tougher to go by so we need to be more creative.

The first thing we want is one "main" email account we'll use for verification.

We'll then look for ways to create new email addresses, then forward that mail to our main account.

This way, we can use all sorts of other email addresses to use to create accounts with, but will only need a program to verify emails in one email account. It's much easier.

You want a main account that has pop, imap and web capabilities. You want it to be as flexible as possible.

You'll also want it to be very popular. Even though you are using proxies when you create the accounts, when you verify the emails, you're probably using your home IP and the click referals when you click a "verify" link will come from your home IP address, unless you changed it.

You also need to think about the host your email is on. There's safety in numbers. If you are creating 1000 Youtube accounts, it's better that the clicks come from a major service with tons of others than your own IP, either home or web.

And, I don't recommend Gmail. That's just giving Google too much info. Maybe they see tons of verify emails, get your IP, more info from the toolbar and use this info in some way?

I'm not being paranoid, but why take a chance if there are other options? So let's use a service that's NOT a search engine.

The email service that's popular, uses IMAP, POP, and web, and isn't a search engine is AOL.

I suggest you sign up for a free AOL account and use it for this purpose.

The other option for your main account that fits all our criteria I suggest is GMX.
http://gmx.com/

Now we need to create tons of email addresses. You can use them a few times each, and get more mileage if you stretch out using each.

Find free email forwarding services - Look for any and all free email forwarding services.

Buy domain names at registars that offer free wildcard * email forwarding. I like namecheap.com for this because they give free whois guard for the first year. (Then throw the domain away).

Try to get something generic for "mail", but it's hard and I've tried and tried. It takes some time. Something like mailmailtoo.com . No hyphens. Not good for email as they just don't look right and you don't want to stand out.

Set the domain up in your namecheap admin to forward all email (use * ) to your main account.

Any user you create at mailmailtoo.com will be forwarded to your main AOL account for verification.

Just make stuff up:
me@mailmailtoo.com
metoo@mailmailtoo.com
cowboyfantastic@mailmailtoo.com
ImNotKurtMelvin@mailmailtoo.com <= maybe not.

For many sites you can get away with this. After all, gmail.com, aol.com and yahoo.com are all just domain names with many different users, just like @mailmailtoo.com.

But there's that obvious footprint that links directly back to you, despite the WHOIS privacy guard. So don't do anything dumb. Get your money's worth, but don't get greedy.

If you aren't making enough to justify $10 for another domain name, then don't do what you've been doing any more.

Combining your automation with exisiting automation services.

Think about sites like:
http://Ping.fm
http://posterous.com/faq
http://pixelpipe.com
http://tubemogul.com
http://ping-o-matic.com
http://socialmarker.com

Each of these sites automates tasks themselves.

Let's say you have a list of Scrapebox URLs that you used to create accounts. With a little quick guesswork you "may" be able to figure out your profile page and do a search/replace changing the account register RLs to your profile page URL.

Make a Ghost Control that copies each URL, changes proxies and runs ccleaner and "gently" submit your list of profile page URLs to Ping-O-Matic.

Or, make some accounts www.Posterous.com works with, using Ghost Control to record everything. Then change IPs, run CCleaner and make are few more accounts. Not a lot, but you've already done the work, just edit your account info as needed in the Ghost Control editor.

Don't make Ghost Control macros too big though...but do experiment to get a feel of how much you can do. Instead, make a series of smaller ones if necessary.

Hi Kurt,

Thanks again for the additional info.

Quote - "I think Scrapebox along with Firefox and its free plugins, plus Ghost Control is the best $67 you can spend on SEO today"

hxxp scrapebox dotcom/cheapskate gets it for $57

As for proxies, I was thinking of going for the one recommended by scrapebox via the link at the bottom of their page -

your private proxy dotcom

$29.97 per month for 10 proxies which can be reset to new IPs monthly. Do you have any thoughts/recommendations please? I think somewhere else you recommended hidemyass dotcom, but I'm not sure if you changed your mind on that one?

If I set firefox up with the proxies and then use a web based email client, presumeably then I am going through the proxy?

Last (dumb) question - what is the main thing we are achieving by using C Cleaner - is it removal of cookies?

Thanks in advance for any help you can give.

>Hi Kurt,
>
>Thanks again for the additional info.
>
>Quote - "I think Scrapebox along with Firefox and its free
>plugins, plus Ghost Control is the best $67 you can spend on
>SEO today"
>
>hxxp scrapebox dotcom/cheapskate gets it for $57
>
>As for proxies, I was thinking of going for the one
>recommended by scrapebox via the link at the bottom of their
>page -
>
>your private proxy dotcom
>
>$29.97 per month for 10 proxies which can be reset to new
>IPs monthly. Do you have any thoughts/recommendations
>please? I think somewhere else you recommended hidemyass
>dotcom, but I'm not sure if you changed your mind on that
>one?
>
>If I set firefox up with the proxies and then use a web
>based email client, presumeably then I am going through the
>proxy?
>
>Last (dumb) question - what is the main thing we are
>achieving by using C Cleaner - is it removal of cookies?
>
>Thanks in advance for any help you can give.

I'll post about proxies on another thread a little later.

CCleaner is used to remove cookies and a lot of other traces/footprints. In many cases it's over-kill, but useful if you want to take an extra step to cover your tracks.

The first time you run it, it can take 5-10 minutes to run, if you have a lot of "stuff" to clean up. After that, it should only take a few seconds if you run it a lot.

>Another FREE form filler (compare to Roboform) is LastPass.
>http://lastpass.com/features_free.php
>
>Here's a quick video showing how to use it for filling
>forms:
>http://lastpass.com/features_free.php

Hi Kurt,

Great thread / info as usual.

In general, how does does robofrom compare to these form fillers, as I already have to paid version.

Kelvin

>Hi Kurt,
>
>Great thread / info as usual.
>
>In general, how does does robofrom compare to these form
>fillers, as I already have to paid version.
>
>Kelvin

Hey Kelvin,

Roboform is as good or better. I try to suggest free stuff if it will get the job done.

If you have Roboform use it...But if someone doesn't, they can get the job done with other stuff.

"Self" automation is great, but if there's a good program for a job that doesn't cost a lot, then they can be a great investment.

Automatic Attack Kit - Here's one of those programs. It's an automatic link verifier for $20:
http://www.automaticattackit.com/account-verifier-software-never-open-another-verification-email-again/

Gmail
Hotmail
AOL
Yahoo
And also any “custom” emails you may have (you’ll simply need to know their POP settings).

It works better than programs built using Ubot.

LAST EDITED ON Oct-11-10 AT 06:37 AM (PST)
 
Hi Kurt,

I've been checking out your recommendations on this page and working with some of them.

I've found another firefox addon which I find pretty useful - I don't think I've seen it mentioned on this forum.

It's link gopher -

http://sites.google.com/site/linkgopher/

I was looking at the addon you mentioned 'selection links', but I wanted something different.

Let's say I use a site like backlinkwatch.com because I have found a website where the owner has meticulously found himself a bunch of dofollow, high PR blogs to comment on that have approved his comments and I want to 'borrow' his work for my own benefit and get my own comments published on the same blogs.

Once backlinkwatch has found his backlinks and displayed them to me, I might not want to open all the links in new tabs, but instead take the links as a text list to insert into scrapebox or some other tool.

If I just highlight them and copy them, it also copies all the stuff on the page that I don't want, like the anchor text used and 'dofollow' etc, so I would have to clean up my list.

With the link gopher addon, I right click the little 'links' icon in the bottom right of firefox and select 'extract all links', and it takes the links and opens them in a new SINGLE tab/webpage in a list format.

I can then highlight this list and copy/paste it into a text file without all of the extra junk.

It also gives a list of the same URLs stripped down to the root.

It also has a 'filter' setting which can extract only the links that include certain terms.

I hope this is useful!

Thanks again Fredola...

This should save a lot of time. I've been using the Linez Tuel to strip out URLs, but this is another option to make stipping pages down to a list of URLs.

I own linez and like it very much but for a larger amount of urls you need something like http://notepad-plus-plus.org/ (free)
and a reference guide like
http://www.regular-expressions.info/tutorial.html