Sean Wu’s Tag and Ping Course Review

I received a review copy of Tag and Ping 1 week before the launch but you did not receive a promo email from me about Tag and Ping like all the others who promoted this product. I had a dilemma and I wondered if I should “cut and paste” and send out glowing reviews like everyone else or tell you the naked truth. After some procrastination, I decided to write this review based on how I feel about this Tag and Ping course by Sean Wu.

Introduction to Social Bookmarking

I must admit I didn’t give a damn about social bookmarking web sites before I read about tagging and pinging because I bookmark web sites into my Firefox browser. Why would I need to use these bookmarking services? Why would I want to show all my bookmarks to the world? It didn’t make sense to me at all.

After doing some research on social bookmarking at Wikipedia and Google, I realised a lot of people actually use these social bookmarking services and I should do something to my web sites to let them do that.

A Summary of the Tag and Ping Course

I consider this more of an ebook than a course because the bulk of this course is a 24-chapter ebook with a hundred odd pages in it. The first part of the ebook is about tagging and pinging with blogs and tagging sites. The second part is about using social
bookmarking web sites to create an “authority site network”.

Part 1: Tag and Ping

You must have a blog to use this information. What is covered in the ebook is what I have already applied in my blogs. Check out the bottom of every post in this blog and you will get a feel of this tag and ping process.

I tried looking for free information about tagging and pinging and compared it with the one learnt from the tag and ping course and I feel there is probably one of two things you will not find in the free information out there. I like the part Sean talks about looking for high PR pages on social bookmarking sites while most people overlook this little trick.
The tag process is about creating special hyperlinks for sites like Technorati.com and you can learn this by reading their support documents. The ping process is about pinging the social bookmarking sites to visit your blog. This can be done easily if you use WordPress as your blogging platform. WordPress already has Technorati.com in it’s ping list. There are a couple more sites like Technorati.com and you can find them if you search on Google.com.

I have the Technorati.com ping url in my ping list for ages but I did not create those special Technorati HTML tags and therefore my blog entries were not picked up by Technorati.com. Sean teaches you exactly how to ensure your pages get indexed by Technorati.com that Technorati.com doesn’t even tell you about.

I have no doubts that this tag and ping works because I am receiving more traffic from these sites to my blog ever since I added these features to my blog. You could drive traffic to your blog and probably pre-sell some affiliate program. Some of you will read this review as a result of clicking a link to this blog from Technorati.com.

The negative side of this section of the ebook is the free software included. Sean includes 2 WordPress plugins and they do not belong to him in the first place. He modified one of them and left the other one untouched. I searched some WordPress plugin sites and I found better plugins.

The automation part is hyped up too. These plugins will not help you automate the tag and ping process 100%. It will make your life easier but it won’t do everything for you. You can actually find other WordPress plugins that can add tags to your posts dynamically and automatically.

Part 2: Authority Site Networks

My interpretation of this “authority site” is that these sites are “big time” sites. Social bookmarking sites are popular and established sites with high Google page ranks. To have a link from a “authority site” to your web site must be a good thing to have especially when it is free.

In theory and in a perfect world, you will be able to get a zillion links back to your site from these “authority sites” which will cause your affiliate and Google AdSense income to skyrocket. Some of his techniques can and will be abused by many people. When abused, it is not different from social bookmarking link spamming.

When used ethically, I do not think the “strength” of your back links will be strong enough to make any noticeable impact. Herein lies the question on what is ethical and unethical use of these “authority sites”? This I leave up to you to decide.

Like the tag and ping process, this “authority site network” cannot be fully automated. You will be reduced to a data entry clerk when you apply this information. Sean includes 2 free software and again these software are free software he conveniently packaged into his course.

Conclusion

I believe the course is way too expensive at $147 since all the software included to help you automate the tag and ping process is free anyway. So you’re actually spending money to buy a $147 ebook. I believe the information Sean Wu is sharing can and will help you increase your web site traffic and sales but it is way too hyped up in the sales letter and in the way it was promoted by his JV partners.I encourage you to study his launch process because it reminds me of Jeff Walker’s launch process. Very powerful stuff indeed.

I also believe this tag and ping technique (Sean doesn’t call it a technique but I call it just that) will not go away as long as web sites like Technorati sort their information with tags and allow pings to their web site to inform them a web site with a particular tag exists. When I first read Sean’s ebook, my head went spinning with ideas on how to use this to make money. After the initial excitement, I realised the course doesn’t have much “meat” after all and you can get the same information elsewhere for a fraction of the $147 retail price.