I Like Answer Analyst

Over the last couple of days I’ve been using a research tool that I am finding helpful. It’s called Answer Analyst. It does two things: It helps answer questions and it helps find questions. So why would this be useful?

I am always looking for shit to write about. I do the typical keyword dance to see what people are searching for and write some wordy mess that pools together a bunch of primary and secondary words that people ignore on the road to clicking a pay link. I can write. I just find it exhausting to come up with ideas sometimes.

Some of your favorite guberus have made the suggestion to go through the question and answer sessions at Yahoo Answers. It’s a good idea. It helps prime your brain with good topic suggestions. But it’s a mess going through the inane questions to get to  something that you would want to use as fodder for your next masterpiece. Answer Analyst helps.

Let’s say that you have a site about mountain biking. It might be helpful to know what the hell people want to know about the activity. If you knew the questions you could provide the answers. Google would love you long time.

Look at the screen shot below of the search I did for mountain biking. As proof I own this software for you and the FTC, the screenshot shows my blog behind the tool.

Anyway, the search was on Y! Answers. It took about 3 seconds to collect all those questions. Time save = huge. Now I know what people really want to know. And I can write a post for every single one of those queries. Do you see the research potential? No, you don’t need the tool to do this but I would much prefer to spend my time playing marbles with my daughter than sorting through questions manually on Yahoo for ideas.

Ok, so much for finding questions. What about finding answers? Basically you ask the tool a question and it goes out to Google or Y! Answers for the answers. Your choice.

For this example I used the ever popular, acne. I put in “what is acne” and it took about 5 seconds to go out and parse through the results. It left me with tons of answers and references. You simply select the results you dig and paste them, with or without the reference, to your clipboard. Grab half a dozen and go in a reword the things and you have a quick post. You can get short, medium or long answers, by the way. Handy if you just need a quick blurb to quote or if you need a long dissertation to rewrite.

I prefer finding questions. I can typically write 300-400 words on most anything. What I did last night for a couple of posts was find the questions people are asking then go to Nichebot and get some secondary keywords to sprinkle around.

Getting answers from the tool is not as excellent as finding the questions. I put in “what are carrots” and got two lame wiki answers. Then again I put in “what is solar” and got a ton of answers. The longer the question the more dubious the results. You can’t put in “what is the best front fork shock” and expect an answer. Well, you can expect an answer but you ain’t getting one from the tool. It’s best used for high level research. One maybe two keywords.

I like the tool. By itself it won’t make you any money. It is simply a nice tool to help with mundane tasks. If this is not how you want to create content or find ideas then it won’t be of any value to you. I am always looking for ideas to write about. Knowing what the questions are is a great place to start.

So here is the deal. Homeboy is selling it for a discount until tomorrow. You’ll have to go through your spam email and find a favorite guberu with the discount price. My affiliate link is for the full boat price of $97. I paid $27 for it. Well worth the price. He is normally selling it for $97. Telling you this makes me the worst affiliate marketer on the planet. But I can live with that.

Would I pay $97 for it? Yes and no. Yes knowing what I do about the product after paying $27 and seeing the research it provides quickly. Grudgingly of course, because $97 is a high price. But no, because I would be in your shoes and not want to part with the cash for this tool at that price. I know your thought process.

Tagged as: answer analyst