I know it has been a little while and I am sorry for the gap in communication.

We have been very busy over here working on some incredible things.  I want to tell you about them,

but first let me tell you about Traffic-Bug’s recent changes and clarify a few points.

1) The first thing I wanted to make clear is that Traffic-Bug is aimed at being a indexing tool!  Any time you post new content it can take weeks or even months before that content is even found by the search engines.  I still talk to people everyday who have this issue.  Traffic-Bug simplifies that entire process.  Through Social Bookmarking and RSS submission it makes getting your content recognized by the search engines a piece of cake!  ;)

2) Traffic-Bug can literally get you thousands of unique visitors but it doesn’t work for everyone!  I have talked to dozens of people who have used TB to get thousands of visitors.  People do it every single day on social bookmarking sites.  But there are a few realities to face.  1.  When using Traffic-Bug you have to write compelling titles and descriptions…other wise nobody will ever click on your link to visit your website.  2.  Your content has to be unique!  If you are just repeating a popular story that has already been out for several hours then chances are you are already late to the party.  3.  Not all niches are equal.  This is a important point to realize.  If your niche is about dog clippers…then the simple fact is you will never get as much attention as a site about a celebrity, news, etc.

3)  Can Traffic-Bug build backlinks.  Absolutely!  However it is very similiar to the previous points made above.  Directories are human edited.  So if you don’t have unique content, write compelling titles and descriptions then you will be rejected.  Also there is a simple hard fact to face.  Again, if you have a overly salesy website or a website about an obscure product then you will just not get accepted by these directories.  TB can only guarentee the submissions, we can’t guarentee any acceptances.  Also these directories take months to accept your submissions and then weeks for those submissions to be indexed by the search engines.  Directory submissions can be a nice strategy for building backlinks and securing your ranking.  However, this is just an added bonus to TB…it’s primary purpose is RSS distribution and Social Bookmarking.

4)  We have thousands of new customers joining the system over the next few months and so we have simplified alot of the proceedures and layout.  You will notice everything is easier and cleaner.  One big benefit to this is we have made the submission process far easier.  Only one title and description is now required for doing social bookmarking.  This should save 2-5 minutes of writting!  ;)  Not only that but now sub categories will pre-fill in the category field based off your main project!  So that too will save time.

5)  In the display field we are now showing when your site is indexed.  This feature is not quite finished.  We hope to have this up and running in the next few days.  This feature will visit the search engines and see if your new post is actually indexed by the search engines.

So what have we been up to?

Well, for one I have hired on a whole new development team seperate from TB’s team.  It has taken me several months to put together a dream team and set up an office for them.  Then we began work on building up TB from the ground up.  Changing all the things people don’t like, adding new features that will blow you away, and building a fantastic system.

The search engines are constantly updating their algorythms and to keep up with these changes I decided we needed a new system that was more nimble with supperior function and features.  Also the new system has complete transparency.  So you will be able to see absolutley every submission, bookmark, etc.

This new system is really going to be fantastic and I am so excited to show it to you!

We will be giving away this new system to all TB customers for FREE!

Yeah you heard right!

This new software should be out in just a few short months.  I don’t want to rush this project and we are working out all the kinks before it is fully released.

Thank you for your support,

Michael R Roberts

2. Harness fast feedback about your audience. Social media is a wonderful gauge for putting ideas out and quickly testing reactions. User interactions with landing pages and resultant actions can be easily benchmarked, measured, tracked and compared with little additional investment which can often lead to big insights worth several times the investment value (like real time BI scores). An ongoing feedback loop that continually evolves itself – it doesnt have to be perfect during the first stages – will help a lot to accurately categorize data into multiple streams by proper usage of A/B tests.

3. Open up a dialogue or conversation. In keeping up with the spirits of social media, a landing page can be a good source of discussion and a generator of dialogue, option and feedback. Instead of offering a static, bland web page the landing page designer can provide options – are you interested in Option A, Option B or Option C. This can provide further inputs for multivariate testings down the line. This technique has been tried before and is also known as multi-step landing pages or conversion paths.

4. Authenticity and transparency is better than artificially crafted hype. People using social media have become used to authentic and plain, raw, and simple feedbacks and reviews. They can easily see through hype and gimmicks. So landing pages need to present facts and verifiable facts and play down on hype and gimmicks for customers can easily think ‘yeah I KNOW thats a gimmick’. The webmaster is supposed to avoid exactly that kind of opinion formation in the surfer’s brain. The trick to win more mind share and possibly converts from your landing pages is to be genuine, creative, original, open and enthusiastic. Thus here we have seen how the parallelism concepts can be visualized and perceived between social media and landing pages.

Michael R Roberts

Digg has removed the display of thumbnails of avatars of submissions that appear in the Digg home page. This was posted as an announcement in the Digg blog a few days ago. This is aimed as an improvement to server performance and seen as aiding faster page loads.

There has been another concurrent development. Digg raised the limit of stories that could be ‘dug’ by a single user, from 200 to 300. Then this magical figure was put back at ‘unlimited’ allowing unlimited number of ‘diggs’ per user account.

Speculation has it that Digg noticed a decrease in user activity (number of diggs) due to the limits placed on digging. People had to be more judicious in their use of the daily digg quota and thus the Digg usage decreased.

This new development does mean that Traffic-Bug will re-review Digg as a potential option to be added to the service.  With the post restrictions they had in place Digg was not a viable option as it would be a nonstop battle creating new accounts.  We will be testing Digg and possibly adding it to the service in the next bookmark update.

Michael R Roberts

Our third update is now up and live!
It is exciting to keep moving forward and now celebrating our second month aniversery just a few days ago, things are moving along so nicely.

Our newest update has introduced a bran new Submission form UI.  The new User Interface is a quite a bit longer and also offers more explanations on how to use each field properly.

However, the new User Interface is far from just all looks!  We have done an extensive amount of coding on the backend that went along with this new UI.  The new form and code to go along with it are our battle on “SPAMMERS”.

The world may be at war on terror but I fear there is a war on the internet as well.  “The War On Spammers!”
I under-estimated this war when I first opened my doors to this software and the spammers came rolling in like, well something that rolls quickly.

They abused the system in every way possible!  Creating multiple accounts to try and do multiple submissions on a single URL, Submitting Porn material, etc.

The bottom line was these spammers hurt the softwares effectiveness and cost me thousands of dollars.

Like any battle there are many steps to winning.

1. First we had to identify the attackers and remove them.  -All the spammers that were on the system have been banned.

2. Set up a line of deffense. – This is what we have done with this new update.  Spamming with our software has just been made immensly more difficult and this keeps the integrety of the software.

The next step is:

3. Repair damages. – This is where we are at currently.  I have spent thousands of dollars on fresh clean accounts, new IP’s, etc.  After this repair the software will be back at 100% with stronger defenses.  This update should be implemented in roughly 7-12 more days.

4. Go on the offensive!  – With this update which is already in progress we are adding 50 new social bookmarking sites and 50 new RSS aggregators.  This will bring the total number of social bookmarking sites that we can submit to just over 100!  All these social bookmarking sites and RSS aggreagators are currently being tested on dozens of blogs to make sure they are good enough for my customers!

But briefly I would like to talk further about the update that has just taken place.

It’s all pretty self explanitory and the training video will also cover all the major details on the page, but the one new requirment that might baffle customers is the new requirment of 3 different single word keywords.

You might say “Mike, why do I need 3 single word keywords? I don’t have 3! What can I do?”

Not all social bookmarking sites allow for multiple or long tail keywords.  This update will ensure that we can now reach all the social bookmarking sites.  If your primary keywords are long tail keywords don’t worry!  You can still enter those keywords under “Multiple Word Keywords” column.  They will be used at the majority of the bookmarking sites!  However for those few bookmarking sites that can’t handle this our software will use your single keyword’s that you have entered.

Now if you have a lot of trouble or simply don’t have 3 single keywords to use for your submission then you can get a little clever that the social bookmarking sites don’t mind.  You can use “-” or “_” to seperate two or three keywords.  As an example I can submit Traffic Bug as a single keword by simply submitting as:  Traffic-Bug or Traffic_Bug.

That’s not so hard eh?

Well that is it for this update!  And remember Traffic-Bug is an assisted automated submission solution.  This means it acts like an army of employees for you working 24/7, but YOU are still responsible for what YOU enter.  That means submitting rich unique content that abides by bookmarking and directories rules!
I hope you enjoy the update and I will be with you in roughly a week with our next ground breaking update.

Michael R Roberts

Michael R Roberts here from Traffic-Bug.

I am very pleased to present to you Traffic-Bug’s very first ever blog!

I know it’s about time huh?  Well actually the software has only been out for two months and we have been very busy.  It has been something I have wanted to add ever since the creation of the product but just hadn’t had the time.

The Traffic-Bug blog is a great new tool for us to stay in touch with our customers!
We will be posting about current updates, future updates, issues, etc.
This will be the first port of call for updates reguarding Traffic-Bug!

I will also be, along with the help from some of the staff, be writting some Social Media blog posts and uploading them here.  So you will also be able to learn more about breaking news in social media and web 2.0 techniques!

I wish to connect with everyone better so subscribe to the blog so you can stay on top of all our updates!
Also you can join me on my twitter for updates and information as well!
http://twitter.com/MichaelRRoberts

Talk to you all more,

Michael Roberts
CEO of Traffic-Bug.com