Home > Reviews > PortalFeeder Review

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Updated August 28, 2007

What PortalFeeder Is ...
PortalFeeder is a software application. You've heard time and time again that to get solid traffic from Google you need to update your content on a regular basis. I've tested this. It is fact. Sure there are exceptions - there always are. But day in and day out, sites that update their content on a regular basis climb the SERPs.

The problem is, updating your site on a consisent basis doesn't happen that often, It's a pain, it takes time, and other stuff gets in the way ... you know, like life.

PortalFeeder provides that capability, and it's an easy system to use. While not perfect, it allows me to basically "set it, and forget it" when it comes to my affiliate sites and they will update, on their own, according to the schedule I determine.

Quick Summary: PortalFeeder allows you to customize your current website layout, or use one of their templates to "drip" fresh content. For example, if you were going on vacation for two weeks, you could write enough articles for the two weeks you were gone, set it to update once per day, and each day, new content appears on your site as if you are there posting it youself.

In the tests I conducted, I loaded 18 articles and had them "drip" on schedule throughout the month for an affiliate site I have and it took me all day to write the articles and setup the system. However, after I did that, I never had to update the site again, as PortalFeeder took care of it for me. That was a HUGE stress relief for me.

Of course there is a lot more to the system, but that is what I used it for and was impressed at how quickly the pages were indexed and new traffic was flowing into the site. It greatly reduced the "admin time" for me which is another benefit.

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The Complete PortalFeeder Review
Let me review with you briefly some key terms you need to understand before diving into this system:

Portals - Defined as the websites or portions of sites you have assigned PortalFeeder to automate and manage.

Tokens - Tokens literally control the layout of your page. You must use these to indicate to PortalFeeder where you want various aspects of your article to appear on the page. You can also use these to place Google AdSense or Yahoo! Publisher Netword ads on your pages.

There are numerous built in tokens and PortalFeeder allows for an unlimited number of custom tokens. At anytime, you can change where or what token appears and completely change the layout of your page.

This isn't "programming" so don't let the word "tokens" freak you out. The training system online is also quite good and helps you get up and running quickly. If you get stuck, there always seems to be help available.

Keyword Lists - This is where you will begin most of your projects. Keywords can be imported from your current list or directly from WordTracker. When building keyword lists, you can assign keywords to groups and then to create "themed" and "silo" pages.

Template Packs - This is where you will create the look and feel of your pages if you don't already have a site. You will want to have at least two templates, one for the article index and one for the articles themselves. Some create fairly generic templates so they can be used over multiple portals. I don't recommend that you do this, as you will get the best conversions if the site has a unique look and feel.

Article Packs - This is your content that PortalFeeder will use when adding pages to your site. You have four options in creating Article Packs:

1. Use the collection of "shared content".
2. Import from the PortalFeeder Network. I highly suggest spending time modifying the content.
3. Create articles manually or you can cut and paste directly into PortalFeeder.
4. Import articles from a local folder on your hard drive. The import functions can be a little tricky manage at first. You must learn how to format your text files so PortalFeeder can import them properly. After about 2-3 attempts, you'll get the hang of it.

Each “article” has the followingl fields:

• Title
• Author
• Body
• Resource Box
• Commentary 1 and 2
• Keyword - Each article is assigned to a keyword or keyword group. This allows you to highly optimize and theme your content.
• Weight – A value of 0-999, tells PortalFeeder the order you want the content pages added. The higher the number, the higher the priority. A weight of 0 means that the article is not to be used in the drip – which can be helpful when testing.

Product Packs - You can create an entire catalog of products, including the product image and pricing information. This feature is killer. PortalFeeder recreates your entire portal each time it runs and creates static HTML pages that are easily indexed by the search engines (no dynamic URL spider traps). The reason this is killer is if you need to make a change to the price of multiple items, change them within PortalFeeder, generate the portal again, and ALL previous pages created with PortalFeeder are updated with the new price in one shot. You can delete and add products in the same manner.

List Packs - List packs are great for building data lists. If you want to create a directory of links, you create a “links list”. You can use tokens to layout the fields in your template and you’re done. It is real easy.

Let's say you're an affiliate in the travel industry and you wanted to create and maintain contact information for the list of hotels you are affiliated with. Create the hotel list in PortalFeeder including the name, address, phone etc. and then place tokens where the data in to be placed in your pages and you’re done. What if a new hotel is added? SImple. Just add it to the list in PortalFeeder and the next time PortalFeeder generates it will be added.

Blogs - PortalFeeder can be used to create and manage your blog content too. This is a HUGE benefit. Blog content can be set to a predetermined schedule or number of new posts per day. You can randomize the timestamps of posts too.

As most Blog posts are not necessarily time sensitive, you can write ten blog posts in an afternoon, set it to post once a day, and you have your blog postings for the next week and a half done. This beats blogging everyday, which most webmasters dread.

You can tie the blog postings to your website, so when a new blog posts occurs it can be announced on the website. Very cool indeed.

Styles - PortalFeeder allows the full use of cascading style sheets (CSS) and you aren't limited to one style sheet. Creating them is as easy as point and click, and adding them to a template is as simple as using a token. This is one of my favorite features is it allows me to quickly and easily change the look and feel of an entire site.

RSS Feeds - Give it a name and the feed URL and the feed can then be included in any template with the use of tokens. Simple, isn’t it? If you aren't using RSS Feeds now, once you see how easy it is with PortalFeeder, you will use them for every site you create.

Easy five step set up process:

1. Select the keywords.
2. Import or select an article from PortalFeeder’s article bank and assign the article to a keyword list.
3. Create or select a page template and insert tokens.
4. Create or select a Portal.
5. Schedule the content drip.

That's it. It is that easy and I was very pleased with the system overall. But as I said earlier, no system is perfect. So let's talk about the negatives.

Downfalls of the PortalFeeder system:

1. Article Import – This feature is difficult to use until you get the hang of it, and also can be picky about the file type and formatting.
2. When I first starting using PortalFeeder, there wasn't a comprehensive user’s manual where the set by step process was given from start to finish. This is now available, but it isn't as complete as it could be.

PortalFeeder Benefits
Benefits of the system include saving you time and energy in a multitude of ways:

1. You no longer have to connect to each site through FTP to make a change on a given page, multiple pages, across the entire site or even on multiple sites that use the same information. Get in, fix it, get out, and focus on more exciting aspects of your business.
2. Provides a means for you to do a “brain dump” of the information in your head once and schedule it to add fresh content to your site over a series of days, weeks, or even months. New content is vital.
3. Gives you the liberty to post to your blog(s) a couple of times a week and still appear to be posting on a daily basis.
4. PortalFeeder creates static HTML product pages that are easily indexed by the search engines.
5. Easily create CSS and RSS Feeds.
6. Integrated with one of the tools I highly recommend: WordTracker.
7. One or more template can be created across multiple sites for the same niche.
8. Phenomenal customer support – we had DNS issues while using the Beta version of PortalFeeder eariler this year, my staff called customer service and within a day they had a patch.

In summary I think this is one killer tool. The ability to create and modify individual components and then mix and match them to create a fully functional website or network of sites is made extremely simple.

The cost of PortalFeeder is $397.00 upfront and $297.00/month for the life of the subscription.

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