Content Crooner Review
Overview
There are many article submission services out there – it’s a crowded space to say the least. Here at ArticleSubmissionReview.com we try to give you the scoop on them so that you know what to expect and where to spend your money. This service from Content Crooner has been on our list for awhile but we just hadn’t gotten to it yet. We’ve received a couple questions about it so we wanted to get a review posted up here so you could get the facts.
Content Crooner is a fairly basic article submission software program that can be most appropriately described as a “no frills” article submitter. We actually would classify this as an article distribution service rather than an article submitter. The difference being that we tend to look at article submitters as desktop tools and web based submission as a service. Content Crooner is a web-based article distribution service designed to submit your content out to their network of article directories and sites.
Spin Away
Unfortunately Content Crooner has no support for article spinning whatsoever. Not only does it not allow for spinning but it also doesn’t allow you to do some other rudimentary tasks that we feel are pretty crucial such as create multiple titles for your article, create multiple resource boxes with different anchor text and URLs, etc… None of these features are supported.
The Structure
The setup is pretty basic actually. You create a pen name, or multiple pen names if you wish. It’s good to see that they offer this feature which allows you to not leave a signature on all of your submissions. You can vary the pen name as you wish, perhaps for each project or client. Content Crooner will organize your articles by this pen name as well, so you may want to use it as an internal organizational tool.
After you have your pen name setup you are ready to start submitting articles. The entire process is extremely simple – both its strongest appeal to new users as well as its biggest limitation. The entire submission process is merely a single page form where you paste in your article, title, resource box, select your category and keywords and press submit. Now, this is not uncommon. In fact most all article submitters have a similar interface. The Content Crooner interface borrows much from the acclaimed Unique Article Wizard. It is very similar in many ways. The problem lies with the simplicity of Content Crooner.
We were very disappointed that it doesn’t allow you to put in multiple titles, for example. Lack of support for spinning is already a significant issue, but not even allowing you to put in multiple titles or multiple resource boxes really handicaps the usefulness of the software. You will be restricted to submitting the exact same article and resource box to all of its sites.
Other Features
There are a couple of nice optional features that Content Crooner does offer. The ability to schedule your content to not begin distribution until a specific date in the future as well as to stop distribution at a specified future date. However, these are pretty elementary features and nothing to really set Content Crooner apart from the many other much more feature rich article submitters like Automatic Article Submitter or Magic Article Submitter, or the many article distribution services or networks such as My Article Network, SEO Linkvine, Linkvana, Build My Rank and Unique Article Wizard.
The Results
We did purchase and use Content Crooner, however, due to its many limitations it is not a product that we intend to continue using. It may be okay for some users looking for very basic functionality, but its lack of spinning support or content variation in any form makes it a no go for us. The error checking for the program is also extremely cumbersome. When you submit an article it goes through two stages of validation and checking. The first is an “automatic” check that looks for common mistakes that can easily be programmatically checked. For example, with our test submission it failed the automatic check because the content was less than 300 words. Interestingly enough, I purposely submitted a small article because I wanted to know what the minimum size was and I couldn’t find that documented anywhere.
The automatic process should be done real time so that you can get immediate feedback. For example, it should indicate the required words for an article and it should not allow you to save the article (except maybe in draft format) if you don’t meet those guidelines. However, Content Crooner makes this a post process that happens a few minutes later. You then log in and see what errors you have. I was further disappointed to see that after I fixed the error and resubmitted it found another one. In other words, it doesn’t check for all of the errors in your content in one pass, but rather flags it after each one in a serial, one-by-one fashion that means you can waste a lot of time in this process. Personally, I found this very irritating. Now, the fact is, after using it a bit you likely would not continue to have these errors, but the way it handles them is anything but elegant.
Pricing
While Content Crooner is not terribly expensive at $39 per month, we feel that when you compare its relatively small feature set to the other competitors featured on this site that it just comes up short. For example, if you’re looking for a pure top article directory submitter, Article Submit Auto is a far better choice with its support for Jet style spinning and numerous other benefits at a cheaper monthly price point. Or you could step up to the next tier of more powerful and feature robust article submitters like either Automatic Article Submitter or Magic Article Submitter. Lastly you may want to look at one of the blog distribution networks like My Article Network. All of these other options are much more robust than Content Crooner and range from slightly more affordable to slightly more expensive. However, in our opinion it’s not worth going cheap if you’re not getting results.
Content Crooner Bonus Offer
If you still feel that Content Crooner is for you, or you want to try it for yourself then you will need some articles. If you purchase Content Crooner through our link we will send you TWO (2) FREE Custom Written Articles for buying Content Crooner using our link. The articles are provided by ArticlesOnTap.com, so you are guaranteed they are top quality, 100% unique and custom written articles of between 400-500 words in length. You will also receive a 10% off coupon code for any future orders of articles from ArticlesOnTap.com. You wont find a Content Crooner coupon code, but ours will be worth more to you anyway. To redeem these bonuses simply click one of the orange buttons to visit Content Crooner, make your purchase and create a helpdesk ticket requesting your coupon. Once we confirm your purchase was made through our link, you will receive your bonuses.
Forget writing content, finding link partners, evaluating and testing the best networks - just let us do it for you cheaper than you can do it yourself. Get a mix of link types, unique content, high PR links, a monthly Press Release - plus reports and rank tracking.
On May 27, 2010 Viza wrote:
I tried it out, and while it did get my 1 article out to a lot of places I hate the fact that I cant spin it. I can do much better with Auto Article Submitter, it spins and distributes so I can get all unique versions distributed. Crooner is more like a press release, same content to many places. If they add spin support, I would consider coming back.
On June 16, 2010 J davis wrote:
Content crooner is the worst article site I have ever had to deal with. For two weeks now they say they have had ‘server problems.’ The site is incredibly slow in fact it is so slow as to be unusable. I came to content crooner via Article Marketer, a site that actually worked. Stay as far away from this site as possible unless you have hours of time to waste! In fact I just clicked the ‘visit website’ button above and the connection timed out twice!!
On June 16, 2010 Mike wrote:
J Davis – I have to agree with you – it is painfully slow to the point of not being usable – we canceled the service ourselves.
On August 8, 2010 frankie wrote:
I think that this service is the pits. I am glad you guys have reviewed this one, especially in light of the fact that there are a lot of services that are better, that way other can know to avoid it. The features they have are not extensive, nor are they the best for anything! Mediocre in every way!
On August 9, 2010 Oneida wrote:
You have to be very patient when you buy this one It’s basically no frills because you can’t do anything with it, aside from submitting your ONE article to a lot of sites. A submitter that doesn’t have spinning support. Oh well… And not to mention the site was either down or too slow to use many of the times I tried to use it.
On August 25, 2010 julia wrote:
I’ve always thought that submission services without a spinning service should be a no-no? Was I right about that?
On August 27, 2010 admin wrote:
Hi Julia,
I wouldn’t say it’s a no-no. When you release a press release – that is all the same exact content being syndicated to multiple distribution points. However I would say you get more bang for your buck spinning your articles and distributing unique versions to each article directory.
Thanks
Mike