Sick Marketing’s Sick Submitter is “yet another” automated link-building software and it, just as many tools like it, build backlinks to your sites by doing various content submissions and creating forum profiles. However, as you’ll soon see, while Sick Submitter is similar in principle, to many of it’s competitors, it’s at the same time a completely different beast…
What exactly does Sick Submitter do and is is it better, worse or just different, compared to the competition? Read on for all the details.
Sick Submitter Overview
| Name: | Sick Submitter (v. 3.043 reviewed) |
| Creator: | Sick Marketing |
| Medium: | Backlink Building Software |
| Price: | $20/month |
Sick Submitter is a Windows desktop program that was originally built to create forum profiles as backlink-sources and has since evolved into an “everything submitter” with capabilites for submitting articles, bookmarks, RSS feeds and various forms of profile links.
One thing that comes to mind almost immediately, when you start working with Sick Submitter is “learning curve”. While I wouldn’t say that the software is needlessly complicated, it sure is complex. It does a lot of things in many different ways and it’s highly customizable. These traits and “simple” are mutually exclusive, I’m afraid.
Custom Lists, Custom Wizards, Custom Everything
Out-of-the box, Sick Submitter does not have a very impressive list of link targets and isn’t nearly as capable as it can be. Sick Submitter is very much based on customization and it has a very lively community. To really get the most out of it, you will either have to download free link packets, purchase premium link packets, use something like Scrapebox to create your own link packets or do all of those things combined.
There are two types of scripts you can add to Sick Submitter: packets are lists of link targets that you can load into the program and run submissions for. Wizard templates are like plugins that “teach” Sick Submitter how to do a new type of submission. For example, there’s a Wizard Template that lets you add your own lists (or purchased lists) of WordPress multi-user sites to then submit content and links to, which is something Sick can’t do out of the box.
Here’s an overview of the types sites Sick Submitter can submit to without additional Wizard Templates:
- Forum profiles (SMF, FluxBB, PunBB, PHPBB)
- RSS Directories
- Link Directories (PHP Link Directory)
- Article Directories
- Social Bookmarking Sites
- Blog Comments?
And here’s a non-exhaustive list of what it can do if you add the available Wizard Templates, from the Sick forum:
[one_half_first]
- Coppermine Photo Comments
- Dotclear Comments
- ELGG (social bookmarking)
- Expression Engine (blog platform)
- FluxBB (forum platform)
- Freeglobes Directories
- Jcow (social networking platform)
- MyUPB
[/one_half_first] [one_half_last]
- Nucleus Commenter (CMS)
- phpFox (social networking platform)
- Pligg (social bookmarking)
- SMF (forum platform)
- Statusnet (micro-blogs)
- VBulletin (forum platform)
- WPmu (WordPress Multi-User)
- XOOPS (community platform)
[/one_half_last]
Sick Submitter Video
To give you a better impression of how this program works, here’s a walkthrough video:
Working With Sick Submitter
What sets Sick Submitter apart from most other link-building tools is that it’s highly customizable. This can be a big advantage or a big pain, depending on how you look at it. On the one hand, Sick offers a wealth of possibilities, since you can create your own site lists to submit to (using Scrapebox, or Sick’s own scraping tool), download free and paid packages and link-lists and even create your very own submission templates from scratch. On the other hand, Sick Submitter requires a lot of setup and customization and the importing of link-packets before it really does anything useful.
In short: the good thing is that you can customize it, the bad thing is that you have to customize it.
Conclusion
I can recommend Sick Submitter only if you really enjoy tinkering with software. If you like the fact that you can scrape your own link lists, import various packages and templates and build your very own link-building machine, then Sick Submitter should be right up your alley and the low monthly price is a nice added bonus. Concerning the price, you need to be aware, though, that Sick Submitter is almost certainly going to cost you more than the $20/month price tag. At the very least, you will also spend some money on various packets and link lists (which typically sell in the range of $10-$50 a piece). In addition, most heavy users of Sick Submitter own Scrapebox, maybe a few private proxies and either a dedicated notebook or a VPS to run it on.
At any rate, don’t let the low price tag fool you. It’s no use having a cheap tool that you never use because it’s too time-consuming to work with.
Having said all that, Sick Submitter is a tool with a lot of potential and it can build various types of links that no other tools can. Once past the learning curve and in the right hands, this can be one powerful SEO tool.
Click the button below to get your free trial of Sick Submitter:
Hi Shane,
I used sick submitter for around 3 months. I am a technician for a living and in my opinion there is a very steep learning curve, coupled with very poor instructions on how to actually use the software. The videos were outdated and had that terrible computer generated voice, leaving them hard to listen to.
The software is very flexible once you get the hang of it and can certainly do many wonderful things for your backlinking. There is also the fact that you will need to factor your captchas and packets you need to buy into your costs. They can rack up over the month! BUT it still works out cheaper than Nuke!
Regards
Chris Cole
The instructions have been somewhat improved in the meantime. Still not great, but better than the terrible cg-voice in those videos!
As usual you did good quality review Shane. Thanks. It would be nice to have quick comparison chart of similar good quality SEO tools currently popular among users.
For example:
Sick Submitter vs Magic Submitter vs SEnuke X vs SE Sniper vs SliQ Submitter vs Rank Builder and so on…
I know that you already did reviews of some of this tools, but it is time consuming to go back and find previous reviews and read them again than just have a chart that you can add new tool and post it in every new review for quick comparison with previously reviewed tools.
Again, one more well done review.
A roundup is coming. Just one more review and then I’ll create an article comparing them all.
Hi Shane,
Good review as always. I also think perhaps it’s time you do a round up of SEO automation tools. I am sure it would be an exciting post.
Perhaps you can rate them by tasks quality, interface design, results, price, etc.
I find your reviews objective and informative, keep it up.
Thank you.
I’m working on such a roundup. With any luck, I’ll have it done in about a week’s time. :)
While I still have the sick submitter, I dont use it too much. You can not let it run in the background and do other stuff. If you want to keep it running, you will need other machine or a VPS. Otherwise, its good at what it does although it needs all the bells and whistles for maximum use – decaptcha, proxies and packets.
I am also a Sick user and find it pretty time and resource intensive, especially if you build your own packets. I’ve found that the fail rate for submissions on most platforms is quite high as well, with many forums introducing spam fighting measures (and you can’t blame them for this.)
As you say, Shane, it’s best to run Sick on a VPS. Between the VPS and all the captchas, it’s not an inexpensive tool at all. I’m thinking of just hiring most of my link building out. I have better things to do than sit around and babysit software all day.
I am just getting ready to start using sick. I have heard a lot of pros and cons so I hope the pros outwin. Has anyone had any success with other softwares? article marketing robot for example?
Hi Joe,
You can find an article marketing robot review on this site, as well as a link-building tools review with many different alternatives to Sick Submitter compared.
Hi Shane, thank you for doing this review. I am considering subscribing to sick submitter, and I found your review on your Youtube channel, which led me here to your blog.
Your style is unique in comparison to other people I have read stuff from. Many thanks for posting when you’ve got the opportunity, Guess I’ll just book mark this web site.