Competing products

Alternatives include membership sites such as BlogMySite that provide a blaster service in return for a one-off membership fee of $57. The ones we looked at were limited in the number of blogs they posted to (eg. only posted to a small internal blog network) or the pricing was not attractive.

The only closely comparable standalone software we could find was BlogBlasterPro, marketed by Tunza software at a cost of $97.

Criticisms

Our main criticism - if it is one - is that the tool is so easy to use we didn't bother reading the instructions and so botched our first ad submission.

The instructions should probably remind the user not to use ad-trackers.  The primary aim of the software is to improve incoming links, and as a result of those additional links, create more traffic from search engines. So it seems best to use a primary URL that points to a page on your web site, rather than an adtracker URL in your advertisements.

Although this tool is best for those with their own websites, if you don't have one, you can partially get around the affiliate link problem - ie. your affiliate link is ignored by search engines - fairly simply. Just create a direct link to a splash landing page you've put on a free webhost, and use that to direct the reader to your affiliate site.

Overall assessment

This tool is best for those who have a little patience and don't mind waiting a month or so to see results. It always takes time and experimentation with these sort of business aids, to get the full benefits.

The results you get may decline over time as more and more people make use of them, just as similar innovations have in the past. That doesn't mean they lose their usefulness though, you just have to become a bit smarter in using them to compensate. Given the explosive growth in blogs it should take some time for that to happen.

Overall we are very happy with the results from our modest one-off outlay. This has automated an aspect of our marketing and takes advantage at the right time of a new trend.

We expect to be using this tool for quite some time. The free updates once you register are also attractive. We are quite content to get a regular increasing flow of free targeted traffic for just a few cents a week cost and very little work.

Check out the Blog Blaster site for yourself