iMark Interactive

SocialSpark has been a quality Get Paid to Blog platform for some time now.  It has features that other services do not and advertisers seem to enjoy the service.  While SocialSpark has not been used on this blog, I have used it before on other blogs.  The service was good, but obviously needed to be revamped.  Well, everyone welcome SocialSpark 2.0!

I got the email about this change on July 12th, so I figured I would check it out.  After I read their blog about the changes, I can honestly say that I was NOT impressed.  Most features and changes were great until I stumbled upon their Direct Publishing requirement.  This is exactly what it sounds like, where SocialSpark will use your username and password to your blog to automatically upload your post to your blog.  You actually write your post in SocialSpark and then the advertiser gets to look at it and ask for changes.  This does reduce the amount of times that you have to deal with non payments after you run your post, which was a pain for everyone.

While you do get guaranteed payments, you also give up your login credentials to SocialSpark so they can automatically post to your blog.  I am not sure about everyone, but that does not happen on my blogs without careful consideration.  We don’t even allow guest authors to have access via different logins.  It is to make sure that we have full control over the quality of the content.  I think SocialSpark made a huge mistake with this crazy requirement and with other people commenting on this, they agree with me.  This is a no-no for most bloggers.

SocialSpark…..Change this crazy requirement and make it optional for bloggers.  Do the right thing!

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Over the years, I have come across many different people in the online world.  People that are dedicated to their cause, people that just want to make a buck, and others that just learned how to use email.  I tend to not really deal with too many people that have just learned the great wonders of the internet, but still come across them.  I know that they will catch up with technology at some point.  My main concern is with the people that are just online to make a buck through blogging.

There are so many different ways to make money online that it tends to lean toward ludicrous.  A good majority of people start blogging online just to get their feet wet and then find out that they enjoy it.  These are the people that I applaud.  If you are working on a project online that you enjoy, then go for it and keep doing what you are doing.  The reason why most people fail to make a name for themselves or make any money is because they are trying to make money doing something that they do not enjoy, or know nothing about.

There are thousands of sites out there that will show you the “secrets” of making money online, but most are just sites that are making money off of you.  Will you make money with their software or idea?  Most likely not.  The main reason this is true is because you are looking at this with pure dollar signs in mind, not if you actually enjoy it.  The thought of making money is on the forefront of minds these days with the massive US recession, but doing it online is very difficult.  There is so much competition to contend with that you will quit before you make any money.  Most people that I have spoken with spend more starting up the website or blog than they ever will make.  This is just not a good business practice.

Creating blogs based off the most popular keywords or highest margin adsense topics will only result in failure in the long run.  There are millions of sites that are already established and running for the same thing you are.  Starting in this type of environment is a leading cause of failure.  If you want to succeed online, the one thing I ask you to do is stay true to what you love.  Blogging was created in order for people to voice their opinions, concerns, and views about anything that they pleased.  After a while, people found out you could make money blogging.  Then everyone tried to cash in and the industry became over saturated.

If you want to make money online with blogging, then stick with a topic that you are knowledgeable in and you actually enjoy.  If you can do this, then blogging will become fairly easy.  Remember that it can take a year to start getting good traffic to your blog and then you can start monetizing it.  Once you build a solid reader base, then you can start showing them ads for things that are relevant.  People respond better to ads if they know the site well and understand the topics that are being discussed.  Knowing the topic that you are blogging about will keep you blogging for a long time because posts will be able to be created with ease.  If you try to make a blog just to make money, you will spend more time researching, then writing.  Keep true to passions and the money will come in later.

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This is a guest post by Kevin Ryan. If you want to guest post on this blog, check out the guidelines here.

Blogging is a great way to open up the world to your opinion.  Your blog is your voice with a blank slate to relay your thoughts and ideas.  Blogging can be fun, but it can also be tough.  If you have created a blog in order to make some extra cash, then you need to remember one thing that will help you out in the long run.  Just starting a blog will not get you traffic and only posting once in a while will not help either.  One large thing that you need to remember is to stay consistent.  It is important that you stay consistent with your blog topic and you post regularly.

Adding new content to your blog regularly is a good thing to attract new visitors, but as well keep the readers that have come to your blog before.  If you have RSS subscribers, then it is important to keep your blog updated as RSS readers need a reason to keep coming back.  Without updated content, it is too easy for subscribers to move on to another blog with consistent content.  If you are having trouble with keeping your blog updated, then try scheduling out your posts.  There are a lot of occasions when I write multiple posts at one time because the writing bug strikes.  In order to keep everything consistent and regular, I schedule my posts to go out at certain times to make sure my content is regularly updated.  This is an easy way to keep it updated without continually trying to find new posts.  You can also try and get guest bloggers to post on your site with their perspective and that can keep your content fresh.  Just remember, keep it up!

We blog in order to provide our perspective to others, but we have to remember to blog about something that we know.  If you are choosing to blog just in order to make money, then you might not succeed.  You have to know the topic you are writing about in order to keep the blog regularly updated.  Blog about ideas that you are passionate about and have a lot of feelings for.  This is the best way to keep your visitors interested and coming back.  Try not to start a blog about one topic and then change it later down the road because you have ran out of ideas.  If you start your blog, try to find a topic that has a wide range of topics to choose.  This will let you branch out down the road, but still staying under the umbrella of your original topic.

If you want to blog for a living or maybe just make some extra money on the side, then just stay consistent.  Make your posts regular and keep your topic in line.  This will help you out in the long run with creating a great blog that many will want to discover and read time and time again.  If you want traffic that is qualified to your site, then stay on a topic that you care about.  This is the only way to blog!

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If you are looking for a way to increase the visibility of your RSS feed in order to increase your email subscribers, then check out rssHugger.  This is a dedicated site only for RSS feeds and bloggers. At this current time, they have over 5,000 rss feeds for viewers to see in all different types of categories.  You can get your RSS feed put in this dedicated directory by registering and picking the method.

They provide you with two ways to submit your rss feed.  A webmaster can choose to post a review of their site on their own blog and then the listing is free.  This is a great way for new blogs and webmasters to gain visibility of their rss feed.  Another method if you do not want to write a review is to pay a  $20 one-time fee via Paypal.  rssHugger gives each submission their own dedicated page for 10 years.   This calculates out to $2 per year if you just want to pay for the listing.

If you are looking for more ways to increase your RSS feed visibility, then check out rssHugger as another way to do so.  With a larger visibility, then you can slowly increase your rss feed subscribers, which is what every blogger wants to do at some point in time on their blog.

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This is a guest post by Chris Johnson. If you want to guest post on this blog, check out the guidelines here.

HootSuite is a great platform for an avid social network person or company to manage their networks in one place.  This platform makes it easy to keep everything updated without having to login into every other location.  It makes it easy for anyone that deals with a lot of platforms to keep it all organized.  The best part is that HootSuite is currently free.

HootSuite has outdone themselves with a new integration with WordPress, one of the most popular blogging platforms in the world.  Now you can post a new entry to your blog along with managing your twitter account and others just in one place.  They made it easy to create a new post and post links, images, and more.  There is nothing better than making social media easy and Hootsuite has done it.  If you are thinking about something to help you with managing your social media experience, then I would suggest trying out HootSuite as we do not know how long it will be free.  All you have to do is enter your wordpress login credentials in the settings page and you are ready to post to your blog.  I suggest trying it out with a simple test post before you start posting everything from HootSuite as you might  not like how it works or might like other features.  Either way, you cannot complain with how easy they make it for us social media crazies.  Check out a sample video from HootSuite on the new integration below.

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If you have a website or a blog, but do not have an email newsletter, then you need to start one soon.  An email list is one of the number one items that most marketers use to make money on their websites and blogs.  If you have the content and the visitors, then building your list can be easy if you have the right software.  There are many email marketing software providers out there, but only one that most internet marketers and affiliate marketers use and that is Aweber.  They provide one of the best solutions for email campaigns and increasing your subscriber count.

Start with Aweber for Only $1…..Sign Up Now!

Like other solutions, Aweber has a lot of features to use in order to maximize the program, but unlike others, Aweber does it better.  You can send out email newsletters, create signup forms on your website or blog, setup autoresponders, manage unlimited email campaigns, simple and effective email templates, blog newsletters, and much more.  There is not one feature that they provide that won’t help you create and build an effective email list for your website.

Aweber provides an intuitive form creator that allows you to publish signup forms on your blog or website.  This is the first step to building a great list.  If you do not have a good signup form, then how do you expect to get readers and subscribers.  You can set it up to send your visitor to any page after they signup, so you can offer some quality CPA offers or any other webpage that you wish.  You can have the signup page be on your webpage, or in an unblockable hover popup.  They allow split testing for headlines of your form to see which one has a better conversion.

If you have a blog and you want to send your subscribers updates of your posts, then Aweber has your covered.  You can send out your updates daily, weekly, monthly, or whenever you post something new.  This is a great way to keep your active readers up to date with your posts and your blog.  While bringing in visitors with your blog newsletter, you can entice them with a nice CPA prepop offer, which might earn you some extra cash if the offer is good.

While we are not going to get into every aspect of Aweber, you can see that it is one of the best programs out there for website owners and bloggers alike.  It has a very intuitive feature set that will build your list leaps and bounds above whatever method your are currently using or thinking of using.  Remember…..The Money is in the List!

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There are many blogs out there that are working hard to monetize via adsense or affiliate marketing.  While it can be a hard thing to do in order to create the optimal amount of ads and content, users are starting to get used to Google Adsense on blogs and thus not clicking them as often.  Webmasters can use either text ads or banners ads, but they might not be the best performers.  Now there is a new way to provide ads to your customers without using adsense or affiliate ads.  MaxBlogPress has created the Stripe Ad.

The Stripe Ad allows you to put up a few phrases or sentence about a product or service that you may be an affiliate of.  The user can click the banner and possibly earn the webmaster an affiliate sale.  You can also put up things such as getting a user to subscribe to your RSS feed, or to follow the site on twitter.  These are just easy things to do with the interface that MaxBlogPress has created.   They have developed an easy plugin for wordress that can be installed and ready to go in less than 5 minutes.  You have control over the text, color, background color, alignment, header space, and many other things that make it one of the best ways to put up new ads.  If you have a wordpress blog and you are looking for a new type of ad to show your visitors, then check out MaxBlogPress.  You can download the plugin here.

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