What Mage Monster essentially does is that it automates the entire process of putting up a complete and profitable affiliate website (Wordpress) in just 5 minutes.

As part of his pre-launch gig, Greg is offering 2 giveaways for FREE -

1. The Affiliate Mage WP plugin that easily enables you to insert affiliate offers from Amazon, eBay, Overstock and Clickbank into your  blog posts …

2. Mage Monster Blueprint, a 45-page guide which includes

• a 7 step module that will teach you the "manual" way to build affiliate sites that actually make money
• 3 Common Mistakes to AVOID when selecting your domain so your site doesn't get de-indexed.
• How to have unique content on your site (WITHOUT doing any writing).
• 3 "unusual" ways to create your keyword list that guarantees engaging traffic.
• How to monetize your site… the fast and easy way
• 3 "affiliate laws" you must follow to avoid your site being black-listed by the search engines

If this is something you are interested in, then please head over to the Mage Monster pre-launch page here and sign up.

Before I give out the reasons why I rate this product so highly and provide you some insights on how I use it, I would like to briefly tell you about Semiologic Pro …

First of all don't be mistaken … although many refer to Semiologic Pro as a Wordpress theme, it is not to be confused with a 'typical' Wordpress theme.

Semiologic Pro is a software that turns the WordPress content management system (CMS) into a powerful and comprehensive website builder. Initially released in 2005, Semiologic Pro comprises a stable version of WordPress combined with a suite of powerful plugins and widgets designed to support the ease and speed of use for both technical and non-technical Internet marketers.

In the words of Denis De Bernardy -

"Semiologic Pro is a carefully prepared combination of WordPress, tweaked with proprietary Semiologic code, and integrated with over 70 tools and plugins, each selected for both utility and SEO considerations – then tested to work harmoniously with each other and within the Semiologic framework".

Here's what I like about Semiologic Pro -

1. Design inherent search engine optimization – I'm truly amazed by Semiologic Pro's ability to generate organic traffic from the search engines – you can see proof of it as most of my blog posts are ranked in the top 1-3 pages of Google for the select keywords, without any/much of promotion or link building.

If you are wondering how this is possible, here's how -

Many WordPress implementations load pages left to right, making the sidebar appear before the content. Not Semiologic! Denis Bernardy created an optimized layout which serves your content first, then the sidebars. While you may not notice this 'sleight of hand', the search engines do notice, reading and indexing your content faster, because they see it sooner.

2. Quick, Easy and sophisticated website building – I use XsitePro to build corporate php/html sites but prefer Wordpress for my Internet marketing sites. Semiologic provides the the same simplicity and power (as XsitePro) to build Wordpress sites. You will find everything you need, in one cohesive framework. One-click feature customization, advanced page templates, built-in SEO, ad management, newsletter subscriptions, visitor tracking, author images, podcasting, video casting, comment subscriptions, spam control, advanced caching, are some of the many out-of-the-box functionality provided by Semiologic Pro!

3. Suite of powerful, common-sense plugins – The plugins that are bundled as part of the software is a treat. The best news is that it can be used with most Wordpress themes (I use 25 of these plugins by default). You cannot find the range of functionality that the entire suite of Semiologic Wordpress plugins provides anywhere else. And the best part is that the support for these plugins and their seamless integration with the Wordpress platform is simply outstanding. They are well tested and designed to work cleanly with Worpress and upgrades are a regular feature.

Click here to read my post on the Semiologic Pro (and other) plugins I use most on my blogs!

4. The Blog Cloning and Theme/Plugins Update Wizard – When I am putting up multiple mini blogs on a domain, I use the same theme, widgets, header, footer, etc. and I'm able to save a significant amount of time by simply cloning the 'parent' blog using the Semiologic Cloner tool. Simply enter the url of the blog you need to clone and enter the unique site identifier code and sit back and wait for a couple of minutes while Semiologic goes about cloning your blog. All you have left to do is add posts and pages and you're ready to go.

The latest version of Semiologic Pro's Version Checker tool enables one click upgrade to the latest version of Semiologic as well as one-click mass upgrade of all the plugins … a significant time saver.

5. Website Layout & Customization – This is the icing on the cake, so to speak. The variations you can implement with the Semiologic theme is simply mind boggling. Some examples -

a) Layouts and Skins

Semiologic Pro includes 18 layouts, 24 skins, 3 width options, 12 font options and 3 font size options. Ideally, you will probably choose one or two combinations as favorites, but it is good to know that you have so much variety, and that each one has built-in SEO. (If these are not enough, you can also use other WordPress themes and take advantage of the powerful plugins).

b) Advanced Templates

In addition to the standard template based upon your choice in the Layout and Skin switchers, you can also select a sales page or a single-column template to create some variety and override the "blog" look for those particular pages that need it.

c) Header Customization

With Semiologic you can have a different header on any page/every page, if you wish. You want can also have the navigation bar above the header by simply dragging the respective widget within the Header area.

d) Widget Contexts

This feature is not available anywhere else. If you wish to control the display of the content specified in one of your widgets, you simply deselect the box where you do not wish the content to appear. The selection is done totally within the widget. Just to give you and example of how practically useful this feature is, if you don't want the say, multi-language translator widget on the home page of your blog (for the obvious reason that the home page is constantly changing and you can't cache it), all you have to do is to deselect the Home page box and you're done. As simple as that!

e) Widget Management

This is even more powerful stuff – how Semiologic uses Widgets. Widgets can be anywhere: in the header, before the entry, in the content, in header and footer blocks, in the footer, and in the sidebars. You would be hard pressed to find an area where you could not insert a widget. Imagine, every area of every page can be reordered and is reconfigurable (see sample image below). Your imagination becomes your only limitation.

Furthermore, Semiologic provides for generalized or fuzzy widgets which can be used for posts, pages, and links. They can also be further customized to show only certain categories, allowing contextual sidebar navigation.

For easy entry of widgeted content into posts and pages, Semiologic has inline widgets, a virtual widget location which can be accessed from a drop down menu within the editor to effortlessly insert a widget any place within the content. For example, adding an optin form within your post.

6. Siloed website -  Siloing your website with themed content is one of the key requirements of good SEO. Semiologic serves this design best practice with Silo Widgets.

There are three types of silo widgets:

- A Silo Page Widget outputs what amounts to an automatically generated navigation menu for your static pages.

- A Silo Stub widget, which you can use as an inline widget when you'd like to automatically generate the contents of a page whose only purpose is to link to its children and

- A Silo Map widget, which you can use as an inline widget to automatically output a full site map of your site.

7. Many More Features – There are many, many more features which make Semiologic the outstanding product that it has become. My favorites are -

- The Redirect Manager which lets you create a site that redirects affiliate links as well as pages
- Built-in auto tagging
- RSS and Social Bookmarking
- Google Sitemap Generator
- Plugin for Google Analytics Integration
- Script Manager – to add various scripts site-wide or to specific pages.

I also like the tools that allow you to easily insert content using our Article Uploader, the Search Reloaded which is without doubt the most powerful improvement to WordPress's built-in search in the market, and Advanced Cache, the easiest to use, and most advanced caching plugin for WordPress.

The Bottomline:

Quality & Support - To add to all the above goodies, Semiologic Pro is, undoubtedly, the best maintained piece of software in the internet marketing world. Denis and his team are extremely professional and proficient. The product is in continuous upgrade mode, both to parallel the releases of the underlying WordPress platform, and also to implement features and modifications suggested by users and research staff.

Semiologic Pro Pricing:

Priced at $295 for unlimited site license plus and annual maintenance fee of $175/year, Semiologic Pro is definitely an excellent investment for any serious Internet marketer.

To order you copy of Semiologic Pro, CLICK HERE.

Important Note: If you CAN AFFORD Greg's WP Mage system, then this post is not intended for you. Simply head over to his website – www.wpmage.com – and order your copy there.

——————–

This post is not a review or promotional piece for the WP Mage software (which I think is a cool system) but for all of those Internet marketers who would like similar functionality at a lower price point.

There has been a lot of buzz recently about Greg Jacob's WP Mage (Wordpress Mage). Greg is offering a completely automated point and click Wordpress-based website building system.

The Wordpress Mage system is, without doubt,  a very well conceived system that delivers high productivity for an Internet marketer. The only caveat is that, like all tools, they can deliver profitable results based on responsible usage, a proper plan and execution strategy.

The problem is for many the price tag – $1,297 (or $997, if you get the $300 discount coupon).

A Cost Effective Alternative to WP Mage:

After evaluating and using various tools including the 2 membership sites – Wordpress Direct ($47/$97/$197/month) and Firepow 2.0 ($127.00/month), here is my recommended cost effective alternative to WP Mage -

1. WP Robot – $140 (matches WP Mage's Content, Affiliate & Posting modules)

combined with

WPmanagerDX – $97 (provides the CP Mage functionality).

Total cost: $237

Here is the comparison between WP Mage and WP Robot + WPmanagerDX :

1. WP Mage Content Module:

Content sources -

- eZine Articles
- Articlebase articles
- Yahoo Answers
- Flickr photos
- YouTube Videos

WP Robot Modules:

- Article module: Articlesbase.com or Sooperarticles.com
- Yahoo Answers Module
- Flickr Image Module
- Youtube Module

WP Robot includes a Translation Module that is identical to that in WP Mage.

(Note: While this may look like a useful feature to generate unique content, please note that the content will appear unique to a search engine robot, but to a human viewer, the translated content could be junk content – do you really want your website to have this type of content?).

2. WP Affiliate Mage Module:

- auction items from eBay
- products from Amazon
- products from Overstock.com

WP Robot Modules:

- Amazon Module : Automatically create Amazon product posts for any keyword you specify
- eBay module : Adds recent and popular auctions from eBay to your weblog on autopilot
- Clickbank module : drip-feeds ads from Clickbank.com

(Note: If you want a Commission Junction plugin for Wordpress (for merchants like Zappos.com, Overstock.com, Dell.com, GAP, RitzCamera, ABT, Buy.com and a lot more), you can download the free CJNiche Wordpress plugin at http://wpnicheground.com/)

3. WP Posting Mage Module:

Takes the content from sources selected in the Content Mage module and using keywords from a list, then creates thousands of posts at a click of a button.

WP Robot's equivalent functionality:

- Bulk Add Keywords feature lets you quickly add a large number of keywords and can also assign random posting intervals to them if you want similar to that offered by WP Mage.

- WP Robot includes a new MIX feature allows you to mix content from different modules with each other. By utilizing that you can for example add related thumbnails from Flickr to the article posts WP Robot creates automatically. Or you can include a related eBay auction below each Yahoo Answers post in order to monetize your blog even better. The possibilities are huge. Currently this feature is offered by the eBay, Youtube and Flickr modules.

(Note: WP mage enables a back posting feature that allows you to back-date your posts up to 4 years ago and also forward-date them to essentially drip feed content. WP Robot only allows you to forward post.)

4. CP Mage Module:

This is the WP Mage site manager. CP Mage (combined with the WP Mage engine) takes the headache out of creating and managing sites.

WPmanagerDX application provides all of the above -

with WPmanagerDX…it goes like this:

Step 1: Log into WPmanagerDX
Step 2: Click on Add New Project
Step 3: Fill in blog details
Step 4: Submit

Total time… less than 1 minute! Literally, you can watch the database get installed, WordPress uploaded and configured, plugins uploaded and activated, themes uploaded and main theme chosen, in only a few seconds.

With WP ManagerDX, you can create 12 blogs in a single hour (if you use the Single Install feature), with zero stress and very little work at all. ALSO you can use the Batch Install feature allowing you to install as many blogs you want in one go.

The real power is what you can do with centralized control. Things like this:

- Update multiple blogs all at once. For example, you can update any number of blogs with a new theme at the same time (a new feature in WP ManagerDX).

- Manage all aspects of each blog. That means you can edit everything for each one, including activating plugins

- Create as many blog templates (called Projects) as you want. Manage these in a convenient list, and generate new niche blogs from them anytime you want…with all the info pre-filled for you automatically.

- Generate multiple blogs at multiple sites from multiple Projects in minutes. (it is recommended that you install your blogs on the same hosting account)

- Backup and restore your databases. You can configure the software to backup every one of your blogs to your computer automatically…and restore whenever you need to.

- Manage all your themes and plugins in one place. You can add more, remove ones you don't need, etc.

So that's it – simply get WP Robot and WPmanagerDX and you can get the same results compared to WP Mage.

(Note: It is not absolutely essential that you buy both WP Robot and WPmanagerDX together … depending on your budget, you can get WP Robot first and then when your blog empire expands, get WPmanagerDX).

To get WP Robot – CLICK HERE.

To get WPmanageDX – CLICK HERE.

Hope you find this post useful. Please submit your comments below.

Note: All links on this post are affiliate links. I will receive a commission from the product vendor if you order the products using my link. All links are powered by PrettyLink Pro.

Blogs started off their life on the World Wide Web as web journals that people made, to record and share their views and basically anything they thought appropriate to share. It started off more as a online diary-like concept. The nature of blogs were as diverse as the individuals themselves.

Due to their role as extremely effective marketing tools, today, blogs are being created to make announcements and product launches and to connect with customers. The resulting 'blog-explosion' has necessitated the creation of blog submission software to quickly reach all those prospective customers out there!Blogs are an effective way to establish oneself as an expert in a niche. As a matter of fact, much of the research that happens online is from blogs, and for this reason, Internet marketers need to be prominently visible – both on their own blogs as well as by collaborating with other bolgs. New Web 2.0 software has enabled the creation of the platform for a variety of blog-related activities.

Another very easy way to use blogs is for greater publicity. Simply target some of the most powerful and high-ranking bloggers, and you will be surprised at the kind of publicity you can get as compared to what you could expect to receive from the conventional media.

What distinguishes blogs is the fact that they focus on a niche. Even more exciting is the fact that blogs are normally frequently updated which make them favourite content for the search engines! This has led to the development of a number of effective Internet marketing software that ease the process of reaching these niche blogs, along with the blog submission software.

Well written and designed blogs are invariably ranked high by the search engines, which is why no Internet marketer can afford to ignore blogs when they are strategizing on their online marketing efforts. In their portfolio of Internet marketing software, the web 2.0 software is a must-have.

The effectiveness of blogs lies in their ability to collaborate and link with other blogs. So let us say 'A' has great things to say about a product; if he/she is influential, his/her opinion would be good enough for other bloggers and they would, in turn, link to his/her blog. As a viral marketing tool, blogs are extraordinarily effective since they are able to reach far and wide in cyber-space.

Savvy Internet Marketers us blogs to establish himself/herself as a brand in the Internet marketing world, in relationship building, building credibility, and sharing useful information and for generating web traffic.