For several months now, I've been flirting with the idea of submitting thumb and movie galleries to a variety of Thumbnail Gallery Posts (TGPs) and Movie Gallery Posts (MGPs) in an attempt to drive more traffic to my lovely wife Dawn's single-model amateur site. While TGP traffic isn't the most productive traffic, our exclusive content isn't oversaturated, and the folks who it will appeal to would likely join, and become long term members; hopefully making the effort (and bandwidth expense) worthwhile.
I've heard first-hand horror stories about overwhelming bandwidth usage with little or no return on investment from folks diving into the TGP game with little preparation or knowledge and didn't want to be counted among them. So it was that I consulted with a variety of other Webmasters who either owned TGPs or submitted galleries to them, to see what they thought about the whole auto-submission process and what tools and methods were best to use.
The consensus was similar to what I've heard about search engine auto-submitters: when used correctly, they are a great help in reaching large numbers of sites quickly and easily, but you are often better off hand-submitting to the most important ones, and acquiring "partner status" at those sites which most closely target your niche, or deliver the best results. When the topic of "What's the best gallery auto submission tool?" came up, one name that was often mentioned was Chameleon Submitter.
It was about this time that I came across a press release announcing the latest update of Chameleon Submitter, and decided to give it a try.
Form, Features & Functions
While I could provide you with an enormous "laundry list" of items, this software is so loaded with useful features and functions that interested webmasters should really visit their comprehensive Web site for all the details on Chameleon Submitter and its companion product, Chameleon Confirmer (more on this add-on in a future article). For now, let me tell you a bit about my first impressions...
As a first-time user, I have to say that I was impressed by the ease of installation of this software, which is downloaded from a password protected online "user account" control panel. The Chameleon Submitter software seems well behaved, includes an installer and uninstaller, and appears in Windows XP's Control Panel "Add or Remove Programs" section, making setup (and removal, if necessary) a breeze.
Immediately after installing Chameleon Submitter I was greeted by a pop-up dialog box recommending that I connect to the online database update tool to ensure that I had the most recent site list and reciprocal link collection installed. Periodic e-mail announcements from the company serve to alert users of database updates and other news, ensuring that your installation is always kept fresh and up to date.
There's always a learning curve with the adoption of any new software, but it's doubtless that experienced gallery submitters would have an easy enough time of using this intuitive software. For the rest of us, ample help files quickly address any confusion, and provide a step-by-step users guide which includes detailed screen shots and many helpful tips.
The main screen of Chameleon Submitter is where you enter in all of the information about your gallery, including type, appropriate niche, descriptions, host type, and other details. Once completed, you move on to the next section using the tabbed interface. This is the "Generate" screen which builds a list of appropriate TGPs / MGPs for you to submit to based on the information you entered in the first step, and the information contained in Chameleon Submitter's site database. Once again, the help files are quite comprehensive and include a variety of helpful tips and tricks.
The next step is to "Duplicate" your galleries using your clean template gallery. Reciprocal links are automatically inserted, and you have control over the number of recips per page, as well as the recip templates that are used. Webmasters submitting sponsor-hosted galleries will skip this step. Next, Chameleon Submitter's built-in FTP client will upload your finished gallery pages to your Web host.
So far, this handy tool has made the process of preparing and uploading your galleries simpler than it might otherwise have been. The real value of Chameleon Submitter comes in the next steps, where the software automatically submits your galleries to the selected sites, and provides an easy interface for manual submissions to sites where that option is preferable – giving you the best of both worlds!
Finally, the "Report" section shows submission success with a high degree of accuracy, and allows unsuccessful submissions to be either resubmitted automatically, or queued for manual submission.
While my initial impressions of Chameleon Submitter are quite favorable, the value of such a tool goes beyond mere time-saving and into actual money making. Grab yourself a copy and see how it works for you!
Good luck, and stay tuned for more! ~ Stephen
