After an hour in the sun, I’m ready to do some work, and during the last week, I’ve been testing a new product called Curation Soft.
You might already have read a few hundred mails about it, praising how fantastic this tool is, and I wish I could agree to that.
But that wouldn’t be the whole truth, and I don’t like to keep things in the dark.
So let me tell you straight away: Curation Soft both pleased me immensely and annoyed me.
If you haven’t heard about it, you can take a short look here and then come back and read: http://malka.im/e/curationsoft
What I Loved About Curation Soft
It is so fast!
Really! I typed in a search phrase and split seconds later I had a list of interesting blogs to choose from.
My keyword was very broad, and some of the results inspired me to a blog post, so I narrowed it down to search for only that keyphrase.
Then I chose the posts to use, and I even found some Amazon products too to add to my blog post.
You can add your Amazon affiliate ID to the settings, and you can even set up your blogs and post directly from the program. I didn’t do that, but I’ll try that later. Instead I just copied and pasted the HTML code to my blog and published.
Even after adding my own comments and fixing the format, it took me less than ten minutes to come up with this blog post.
Does it look perfect?
No, and this is where my frustrations came in. Let me elaborate on them.
Format and Browser
Okay, I have to be honest, so let me tell you that I didn’t watch all the tutorial videos. At the moment where I created the first curated post with this program, I had only seen one tutorial.
But that was because of one of the things that made me frustrated: The built-in browser!
I just chatted with Peter Lenkefi, one of the two persons behind this program, and he said that the browser will probably be removed.
I couldn’t change its size properly and I couldn’t close it down. So when you’re watching the tutorials, I suggest you use a real browser instead.
Second problem was the format of the text from blog posts and the pictures from Amazon products.
When you grab blog posts to curate, it will only show a text snippet, and that part might not be what you would want to curate.
This means that you cannot just drag and release. You will have to click on Expand and see the whole text, and then copy and add the part you want to use.
Afterwards, you’ll have to fix formatting issues, because the text size might not be the same as in the part you dragged and dropped.
It annoyed me, but still, this is a minor issue. I still save time compared to finding blogs in a browser, copying, getting the link to the post, etc.
Amazon Pictures and Curation Soft
You can find Amazon product based on your keywords and add them to your blog post with your affiliate ID.
That’s awesome.
What is less cool is that the pictures aren’t formatted correctly.
If you’re into Amazon affiliate marketing, you probably know that Amazon uses a smart way of sizing their images. They add the size and format to the file name. So a picture file that contains “SL75_.jpg” would show up with the largest dimension (height or width) of 75px.
Curation Soft doesn’t explore this possibility, which it should. I told Peter about this issue and he will see with his programmer if they can add it to an upcoming update. I’ve seen so far that the program is frequently updated, so I hope to see this feature soon.
Update
I just got this message from Peter:
> new version is deployed
10/25/13 [3.0.9]
*Added ability to select Amazon media size ( small, medium, large)
now user can select in amazon settings what image to insert into result small, medium or large
My Conclusion
Curation Soft isn’t perfect.
I think, though, that it is a tool that can help save a lot of time and even serve as inspiration for future blog posts.
I love that you have all the sources in there: free pictures, Amazon, blogs, news…
And its search is really fast!
The price is perfect. I’ve seen similar products for $97. This is around a quarter of that price, even less, depending on what version you pick. The light version costs $17 and the pro version $27.
If you’re blogging, I think you should get this program now, when it’s so low priced, and then nag the creators to change things that you don’t like. I created a support ticket today, and I got a reply within minutes. And that’s in the middle of a very well-going launch! Rare, that 🙂
Check it out for yourself here => http://malka.im/e/curationsoft
I’ve received excellent service both from Dylan K and Peter. They take issues seriously, and I like that. (And as you can see from my update, the problem with Amazon images has already been fixed.)
Best regards,
P.S. You get a 60-day refund guarantee, if you don’t like the software, but I don’t think I left anything out here, so if you liked what I wrote, then you’ll love the software (I do, despite the flaws at the moment): http://malka.im/e/curationsoft