SocialSpark is leveraged by most bloggers as a means to earning money from advertisers, but what many bloggers don’t realize is that SocialSpark works very well as its own social networking platform.

I wrote a detailed post about How To Use SocialSpark To Find Fellow Bloggers but here are some additional idea’s on how to leverage SocialSpark to find fellow bloggers.

To start just log into SocialSpark
Click on Community -> Browse Users
I usually select the Bloggers tab if looking for other bloggers, this way I can weed out Advertisers.

When I first started SocialSpark, I wanted to network with the most popular and successful, I did this by sorting by “friends” and “blogs” to find who had the most friends on SocialSpark and who had the most number of blogs (with the highest props). This told me the populars and I immediately sent them requests to find out what made them so successful on SocialSpark and learn about them by reading their blogs, checking out how they did paid advertisements (quality, style) and emulate the success for myself.

Next, I searched for bloggers in Arizona by using the “Profile information” on the sidebar and searching for bloggers in Arizona.
I then did queries for technology and eventually poetry, SEO and other categories.

I would add as many people as possible as a friend request, when sending a friend request try to avoid being pitchy and spammy, but do check out someones profile and leave a comment or relevant bit of information that invites the blogger to want to accept your friend request.

I found many friends on SocialSpark and it was here that I first started delving into blogging in August 2008, SocialSpark was the network that helped me become as successful as I am today.

I buy a ton of stuff from Amazon.com. If you do please buy through our links and help support BenSpark.com. Thank you.

Copyright (c) 2010 Blog Consultant, Photo-A-Day Photographer & Daddy Blogger - BenSpark.com - Everyday Pictures... Every... Day

SocialSpark Saturdays: Networking with other Bloggers

After writing the How To Add Your Blog to SocialSpark WordPress version and the How To Add Your Blog to SocialSpark Typepad Version I figured that a How To Add Your Blog to SocialSpark Blogger Version was in order. And as I look through the blogs of members of the I’m Not A Famous Blogger Crew I see that many of them use blogger/blogspot. So I hope that this helps out.

Many comments that I get from new I’m Not A Famous Blogger Crew Members and non-crew members alike have to do with getting their blogs added to SocialSpark and having them approved. There are a few places to get this information and while the information is sound I don’t think it covers it quite like this little tutorial will. So strap in because this SocialSpark Saturday post is Double Sized

Adding your Blog to SocialSpark

First off you need to sign into SocialSpark and mouse over the Account tab.

Next you will get a drop down menu of options. Choose Manage Blogger Account and Click it.

From here you are going to want to click on the Blogs field in the middle of the screen.

This will bring you to a list of your blogs (if you’ve already entered any). There is a link “Add Blog” Click it.

Now you are on the add blogs page. There is much to fill out here.

Click Submit at the bottom of the page and that’s it, you have now added your blog.

Are you ready to claim it and submit it for approval…

Sure you Are!

LET’S DO IT!

Claiming your blog

Assuming that you follow my instructions above and you added your blog to the SocialSpark network then you are ready to claim your blog. It is pretty easy to do this.

Take a Look at your blog status. You will most likely see three red X’s. This means that you have not claimed your blog. You can find out more about why you need to claim the blog by clicking the “?” next to Claim Your Blog. This is what you will see when you click the “?” next to Claim Your Blog.

“Before you get your blog approved, we need to verify that you really are the owner. We have not yet verified that you own your site. Click the Get Code button to grab the code, place it on your site either before the closing HEAD tag or somewhere between the BODY tags. Then click Refresh here to run the verification script. Once you’ve claimed the site once, you can remove the claim code (Not ITK) from your site.“

The Second red X means that you have not installed the IZEA Tool Kit (ITK), you’re going to need to do this as well. Why? Here is the explanation that you see when you click the “?” next to Install ITK.

“The IZEA ToolKit (ITK) is a suite of tools that maximizes what you can do in the IZEA Network. After you place a piece of Javascript code on your website, we begin collecting statistics that gives you a RealRank and allows you to use other network features such as PPP Direct and SocialSpark Blog Sponsorships.“

We need to take care of the first two red X’s before we can tackle #3. To do this we are going to have to tackle code. Don’t worry it is not difficult at all. Click the Get Code button. The screen will darken and a new screen will appear with three boxes of code. You should only see three boxes if code is missing from your blog. So the first time you install code you will see a box of missing code that has both of codes from the second and third boxes (So you don’t have to copy and past code from each of the boxes. That would be redundant.). Just install the missing code anywhere between the < body > tags in your blog html code.

This might seem scary to some but it really is not. Working with the code is not that difficult. These instructions are for Blogger. Start with signing into your Blogger account. You should default to your Settings Screen. From Settings click Layout.

You are now looking at the layout of your blog. You might be tempted to create an HTML/Javascript gadget and put the ITK and Claim code there. DON’T DO IT! You’re going to have to delve a little deeper. Click Edit HTML.

Now you are in the Edit HTML area. You might be tempted to post your code in the code box right away. Again you have another step. You need to click Expand Widget Templates. That way the complete code of your blog is now in the Edit Template Box.

Your screen will refresh and that lets you know that you’ve Expanded the Widget code and you should now see a check mark in the Expand Widget Code box. Click the scrollbar and scroll to the bottom of your code.

Now you are at the bottom of the code box, paste in the code from SocialSpark directly above the < / body > tag. Then click Save Template.

Now go back to the My Blogs page of SocialSpark and you are going to test to see if the code was added correctly (it had better be if you followed these directions). Start off by clicking the Refresh button. A spider will go out and check your code to see if the claim code is installed. If it is your red X will turn to a green checkmark. Please note that the ITK installed might not go to a green check right away. That is okay, give it a little while and click refresh again.

Once your blog status has two green checks like the one below you are ready for the last step. The most important step.

Submit your Blog for Verification

Once you have claimed your blog and added the IZEA Tool Kit to it you are ready to submit for verification and approval… or are you? Review the qualifications for having an approved blog first. This is from the Terms of Service.

“”Verified Blog”.
A blog that has been Claimed, and also meets these additional requirements:

1. Blogs Only. SocialSpark only accepts blogs, and not websites, message boards, e-mails, IM or other similar services.
2. English or Spanish Only Blogs. The blog and all posts relating to SocialSpark Opportunities must be in the English or Spanish language.
3. Original Blog Content. The blog must contain original editorial content in addition to Opportunity-related or other paid posts. Blogs that exist primarily for payment will not be accepted.
4. Appropriate Content. Blogs submitted to the marketplace may not include or support: excessive profanity, violence, or racial intolerance, illicit drugs or drug paraphernalia, pornography, adult or mature content, or any other content that promotes intolerance, illegal activity, or infringes on the legal rights of others.
5. Minimum Blog Age. Blogs must be live for a minimum of ninety (90) days, counted from the date of the blog’s first post, with at least twenty (20) pre-existing posts written in the 90 days prior to registration with the SocialSpark Marketplace.

SocialSpark will not accept certain blogs and Bloggers as determined by SocialSpark in its sole discretion.”

If your blog fits those qualifications and you are ready to go then it is time to submit your blog for Verification.

To do this you must click the Get Verified link under Blog Status.

That’s it, you do that and you are done, now you wait for Customer Love to check out your blog, a manual process to make sure that quality blogs are approved, and let you know that you are approved to take opps in the system. Your blog status should look like this.

Now start earning some money!

I am an IZEA Insider and my crew is called the “I’m Not A Famous Blogger” Crew and I want YOU to join me. Here are simple instructions on how exactly you can join my IZEA Insider Crew on SocialSpark.

I buy a ton of stuff from Amazon.com. If you do please buy through our links and help support BenSpark.com. Thank you.

Copyright (c) 2010 Blog Consultant, Photo-A-Day Photographer & Daddy Blogger - BenSpark.com - Everyday Pictures... Every... Day

How to Add Your Blog to SocialSpark – Blogger Version

This is a partial reprint of my previous post on How To Add Your Blog to SocialSpark on June 13, 2009. I’m Not A Famous Blogger Crew Member Veronica Thomas of V for … has provided me with screenshots and instructions for adding your TypePad blog to SocialSpark.

Many comments that I get from new I’m Not A Famous Blogger Crew Members and non-crew members alike have to do with getting their blogs added to SocialSpark and having them approved. There are a few places to get this information and while the information is sound I don’t think it covers it quite like this little tutorial will. So strap in because this SocialSpark Saturday post is Double Sized (I missed last week so I’m making up for it.)

Adding your Blog to SocialSpark

First off you need to sign into SocialSpark and mouse over the Account tab.

Next you will get a drop down menu of options. Choose Manage Blogger Account and Click it.

From here you are going to want to click on the Blogs field in the middle of the screen.

This will bring you to a list of your blogs (if you’ve already entered any). There is a link “Add Blog” Click it.

Now you are on the add blogs page. There is much to fill out here.

Click Submit at the bottom of the page and that’s it, you have now added your blog.

Are you ready to claim it and submit it for approval…

Sure you Are!

LET’S DO IT!

Claiming your blog

Assuming that you follow my instructions above and you added your blog to the SocialSpark network then you are ready to claim your blog. It is pretty easy to do this.

Take a Look at your blog status. You will most likely see three red X’s. This means that you have not claimed your blog. You can find out more about why you need to claim the blog by clicking the “?” next to Claim Your Blog. This is what you will see when you click the “?” next to Claim Your Blog.

“Before you get your blog approved, we need to verify that you really are the owner. We have not yet verified that you own your site. Click the Get Code button to grab the code, place it on your site either before the closing HEAD tag or somewhere between the BODY tags. Then click Refresh here to run the verification script. Once you’ve claimed the site once, you can remove the claim code (Not ITK) from your site.“

The Second red X means that you have not installed the IZEA Tool Kit (ITK), you’re going to need to do this as well. Why? Here is the explanation that you see when you click the “?” next to Install ITK.

“The IZEA ToolKit (ITK) is a suite of tools that maximizes what you can do in the IZEA Network. After you place a piece of Javascript code on your website, we begin collecting statistics that gives you a RealRank and allows you to use other network features such as PPP Direct and SocialSpark Blog Sponsorships.“

We need to take care of the first two red X’s before we can tackle #3. To do this we are going to have to tackle code. Don’t worry it is not difficult at all. Click the Get Code button. The screen will darken and a new screen will appear with three boxes of code. You should only see three boxes if code is missing from your blog. So the first time you install code you will see a box of missing code that has both of codes from the second and third boxes (So you don’t have to copy and past code from each of the boxes. That would be redundant.). Just install the missing code anywhere between the < body > tags in your blog html code.

This might seem scary to some but it really is not. Working with the code is not that difficult. These instructions are for TypePad. Start with signing into your TypePad account and going to Weblogs.

You will then need to go into the Design section of your blog.

And then you will go into the Content Section.

Once in Content, scroll to the bottom and check the Blog Footer box and then click on the Pencil icon

You will then receive a ‘pop-up’ – type SocialSpark in the Title bar and then the copied URL in the URL box. Click Save

Then click ‘Save Changes’ at the bottom of the page

Now you are back on the My Blogs page of SocialSpark and you are going to test to see if the code was added correctly (it had better be if you followed these directions). Start off by clicking the Refresh button. A spider will go out and check your code to see if the claim code is installed. If it is your red X will turn to a green checkmark. Please note that the ITK installed might not go to a green check right away. That is okay, give it a little while and click refresh again.

Once your blog status has two green checks like the one below you are ready for the last step. The most important step.

Submit your Blog for Verification

Once you have claimed your blog and added the IZEA Tool Kit to it you are ready to submit for verification and approval… or are you? Review the qualifications for having an approved blog first. This is from the Terms of Service.

“”Verified Blog”.
A blog that has been Claimed, and also meets these additional requirements:

1. Blogs Only. SocialSpark only accepts blogs, and not websites, message boards, e-mails, IM or other similar services.
2. English or Spanish Only Blogs. The blog and all posts relating to SocialSpark Opportunities must be in the English or Spanish language.
3. Original Blog Content. The blog must contain original editorial content in addition to Opportunity-related or other paid posts. Blogs that exist primarily for payment will not be accepted.
4. Appropriate Content. Blogs submitted to the marketplace may not include or support: excessive profanity, violence, or racial intolerance, illicit drugs or drug paraphernalia, pornography, adult or mature content, or any other content that promotes intolerance, illegal activity, or infringes on the legal rights of others.
5. Minimum Blog Age. Blogs must be live for a minimum of ninety (90) days, counted from the date of the blog’s first post, with at least twenty (20) pre-existing posts written in the 90 days prior to registration with the SocialSpark Marketplace.

SocialSpark will not accept certain blogs and Bloggers as determined by SocialSpark in its sole discretion.”

If your blog fits those qualifications and you are ready to go then it is time to submit your blog for Verification.

To do this you must click the Get Verified link under Blog Status.

That’s it, you do that and you are done, now you wait for Customer Love to check out your blog, a manual process to make sure that quality blogs are approved, and let you know that you are approved to take opps in the system. Your blog status should look like this.

Now start earning some money!

I am an IZEA Insider and my crew is called the “I’m Not A Famous Blogger” Crew and I want YOU to join me. Here are simple instructions on how exactly you can join my IZEA Insider Crew on SocialSpark.

I buy a ton of stuff from Amazon.com. If you do please buy through our links and help support BenSpark.com. Thank you.

Copyright (c) 2010 Blog Consultant, Photo-A-Day Photographer & Daddy Blogger - BenSpark.com - Everyday Pictures... Every... Day

How to Add Your Blog to SocialSpark – Typepad Version

Occasionally I get questions from members of the “I’m Not A Famous Blogger” IZEA Insider Crew and sometimes they are just perfect for answering on a SocialSpark Saturday post. So with permission and little patience I asked the person who asked this question below if I could save the answer till today. Here is the question.

“don’t have any idea what I am doing. I tried a CPC today and I am not sure if I did it right. I copied the cost and posted it on my twitter page. I guess what I need is a tutorial. Is there somewhere I can find this information or can you help me? I appreciate any help you can offer.”

I’m going to assume that this person mean “code” instead of “cost”. So let’s start from the beginning. If you recall from my post “How Do I Make Money From SocialSpark” post on July 4th I talked about the different ways in which a user can make money with SocialSpark. One such was is through CPC or (Cost Per Click) opportunities. Usually the cost per click is anywhere from .11 a click to .68 a click. Here is what I said about Cost Per Click in that post.

“… the Cost Per Click opportunities give you various Ad units to use. However with Cost Per Click you are paid when someone clicks the link that you post through your blog, Twitter, or Facebook. You can do a pretty decent amount of money by posting a few links in various places.”

How do you do this right?

I find CPC to be one of the easiest ways of making a little money on SocialSpark because of the simplicity of what your readers need to do. All they need to do is click. You have various ways to get them to do this. Let’s Take a Look at one of the CPC opps from SeaWorld. This one has been pretty good to me without me doing much at all. That is a great thing about CPC opps because you can be active or passive.

Here is the typical CPC Opp screen.

CPC Opp Screen

Let’s break this down to the components. First is the offer detail area. This is where the advertiser tells you about the campaign and offers you ideas about why readers would like to click the links or visual ad units.

CPC Description

The next section is the Additional Info section. This is where you see what you will be paid per click, the landing page, what you have made so far, how many people have seen your links and so on. Take a look and I’ll break that down too.

CPC Additional Info

If we go from left to right you can see first Conversion info. This tells the blogger the name of the campaign, how much each click is worth and gives a link to the landing page. As we move across the image we see the Opportunity Stats section. This section tells you the start and stop dates of the campaign. The stop date is subject to change. A couple reasons for the stop date to change would be if the campaign runs out of money or if the campaign goals are achieved. Below that there may be additional requirements, for instance this opp is for English only blogs. Then there are other requirements like RealRank and blogger location. Advertisers can use blogger demographics to help target the area where the blogger’s readers are most likely from.

The section at the far right is where you see your conversion stats. As you can see I’ve made little under $5.00 in this campaign so far. Below that I can see how many people have viewed the links I have posted and how many people have actually clicked. Below that are invalid clicks. SocialSpark uses Click Forensics to determine if clicks are valid or invalid. This was a bit dodgey early on and many clicks were seen as invalid especially on Twitter. This has since become much better and more accurate. Below the invalid clicks is the area of Pending. These are clicks that will most likely convert to accurate clicks.

So, how do you get the links so people can start clicking? That is where the next section, Ad Units comes in. The Ad Units section is where you can see the types of valid links that the advertiser has made available. In this case SeaWorld has decided to use a Text Link, Twitter, Facebook, A Leaderboard (Great for RSS Feed), and a Larger Ad Unit box. Also at the bottom is the Disclosure Badge. Take a look at this close up. Notice that the Leaderboard is what has generated me the most clicks so far.

CPC Ad Units

With the Text Link there are two ways to use Text Link in your posts. You would click the Get Code button on the far right and a screen will pop up.

SocialSpark Text Link - Get Code

You can copy and paste the code with the view tracking embedded in it like this Visit Busch Gardens or Aquatic free?. This is good because it gives you the wording that the advertiser wants to use. The other option is to grab the Link Only code and attach that to keywords that you would use instead. For example if I wanted to say Buy a SeaWorld Ticket Get a Free Busch Gardens or Aquatica Ticket Free!

Did you notice that the first link looks a little odd. There is space all around it. I cannot figure out if I need to set my CSS to make that look normal or if that is because of the tracking image. I generally don’t take option one because of that very design issue. If anyone can help me make those look better I’d certainly use the link with view tracking embedded more often.

The next type of Ad Unit for this campaign is the Twitter One. When you click the Get Code button a screen pops up with the code for you to copy and paste into your tweet.

SocialSpark Get Code for Twitter Link

As you can see there is a very important message to this Get Code. Each tweet must have the #spon tag that discloses that the tweet is a sponsored tweet. Blogging or Tweeting or Facebooking without disclosure is against the SocialSpark Code of Ethics.

My personal take is don’t forget to disclose on every thing. If you do not disclose then you are deceiving your audience and making SocialSpark look bad. SocialSpark is for the ethical blogger please be aware of how you are a representative of SocialSpark in your blogging, tweet, etc.

So what does a tweet look like with the code and #spon tag in it.

Example of a Sponsored Tweet

So you can see that I put my own personal spin on the campaign and I made sure to put the #spon hashtag plus the link for the Get Code box. This sort of campaign is very similar to the one that you can do for Facebook. You can click the Get Code button for a Facebook link and a box will pop up with the correct link code.

SocialSpark Get Code for Facebook Link

You take that link and then post it into facebook. You will be presented with a catchpa (sp) to determine that you are not a robot. From there you have write your post and with facebook you have more space to get your message across. Depending upon the link you might even be able to choose a thumbnail. Remember that #spon tag in Facebook as well. Here is an example of adding a sponsored link into Facebook. I had to use another campaign, this one for the Rock Band Alaska.

Posting a Sponsored Link on Facebook

Other Ad Units are more visual and they can be many different sizes, for example if you see the top right hand side of my blog you will see some 125 X 125 ads, these are everywhere and they could be CPC, CPA, or Affiliate links. In this campaign that I’m talking about with SeaWorld they have decided to use the Leaderboard size which, as I stated earlier is great for your RSS feed. I use the Plug in RSS Footer. This lets me swap out different campaigns at the bottom of my feed. I make sure that I disclose on this as well. I state “Do you Like BenSpark.com? Help support it by supporting my sponsors.” This gets a few clicks here and there and for this particular SeaWorld opp it has done very, very overall. Here is an example of of my RSS Feed Footer.

My RSS Feed Footer

And to get the code for each of these visual ad units once again you click the Get Code button on the right hand side. Each visual unit will tell you the dimensions of the image so you know where to post it on your blog. Just copying and pasting this code into your blog posts is very easy. Here is an example of what the copy code pop up looks like.

SocialSpark Ad Unit Codes

And this is an example of one of the visual Ad Units for the SeaWorld & Busch Gardens & Aquatica CPC campaign.

Probably the most important thing with each of these campaigns is disclosure and if you are writing a blog post about a particular campaign like I am right now you are going to use a SocialSpark Disclosure Badge. I have one at the bottom of this post. You can easily chose the color of the badge that you’d like to use. Here is an example of what the code box for that looks like. See how you can select the color from the drop down menu and then copy the code.

Social Spark Disclosure Badge Code

So that is it, that is how to use the CPC opportunity on SocialSpark. This of course is a simple way to use the campaigns. “I’m Not A Famous Blogger” IZEA Insider Crew Member DragonBlogger has done a pretty successful CPC campaign that he details in his post Most Successful SocialSpark CPC To Date. He takes this instructional post and goes way beyond in how to effectively make money from a CPC campaign.

I buy a ton of stuff from Amazon.com. If you do please buy through our links and help support BenSpark.com. Thank you.

Copyright (c) 2010 Blog Consultant, Photo-A-Day Photographer & Daddy Blogger - BenSpark.com - Everyday Pictures... Every... Day

What the Heck is a CPC Opp?

Something that I have noticed every Friday when I workout is that I’m always the only person in our gym. No one is working out on Friday. I also notice that bloggers post a lot of their fluff on Saturday. The thing that I realize is that not everyone reads blog posts during the week. Many people save their reading for the weekend so why not give people something worth reading. That is one reason why decided to call my weekly post about SocialSpark, SocialSpark Saturdays. Saturday gives people time to read and digest extra detailed posts and try to follow step by step instructions. I’m more focused on the weekends because I’m not trying to read blog posts and get back to work all day through. On Saturday I can sit down for a solid un-interrupted hour and concentrate.

I guess the point of this is that if you are bucking the trend a bit you are going to see some results. By working out Friday when everyone else is sleeping in (and I want to sleep in) I can focus on my own workout more intensely. The same thing with blogging, write some of your best stuff on the weekends and share it with everyone on the weekend and you just may build a bigger audience.

So, for today’s SocialSpark Saturday let me introduce you to something that not a lot of bloggers take the time to learn about and that would be Sparks. Sparks are wonderful things because they allow you to write about many different topics and receive links back in return. Anyone can create a spark but you have to create an advertiser account to create a Spark. However, anyone can create an advertiser account.

I created a Spark yesterday to help promote the http://imnotafamousblogger.com blog. On that blog I interview the great bloggers from the “I’m Not A Famous Blogger” IZEA Insiders Crew. The Spark can be found here. It is a little different because essentially the blogger will write their own post for my blog and they can include their own links of choice as they promote themselves and their blogs.

My Spark is not the only one, there are many good choices and I encourage bloggers who have not yet gotten their blogs verified to take Sparks, meet other bloggers and build up their post counts and link backs. I’d also say stay with the BlogYouBack ones as they benefit you and make sure you write something quality. It might be just the thing to write on Saturday.

I buy a ton of stuff from Amazon.com. If you do please buy through our links and help support BenSpark.com. Thank you.

Copyright (c) 2010 Blog Consultant, Photo-A-Day Photographer & Daddy Blogger - BenSpark.com - Everyday Pictures... Every... Day

Workout on Friday, Blog Well on Saturday