SocialSpark - social network for both bloggers and advertisers

Nowadays, there exist quite a sum of social networking websites which form virtual community for bloggers to get to know each other and getting publicity for their blogs. There also exist several blog advertising marketplaces where advertisers wanting to promote their websites, companies, products, services, etc. can look for suitable blogs to put their advertisement.

SocialSpark is a new concept evolved from the famous PayPerPost marketplace that get the best of both worlds. It brings both the bloggers and advertisers into the same community, encouraging them to have more interaction with each other. In fact, the boundary between bloggers and advertisers is seemless, and a user can even hold both identity at the same time.

Users in SocialSpark can vote for a user, a blog, or an opportunity with the Props and Drops option. Those with more Props will have higher position in listing and get more exposure. Opportunity for bloggers in the marketplace comes in 3 types:

• Sponsored post - similar to the PayPerPost concept, the advertiser is paying for qualified blogger to write a specific article in their blog.


• Blog sponsorship - this is a Pay Per Day concept whereby qualified blogger will be paid daily for putting up the required advertisement (normally in the form of widget, icon, logo, button, link, etc.) in their blog.


• Spark - this is a free opportunity for bloggers to promote each other, such as you write something about my blog in your blog, and in return I'll write back something about your blog in mine.

I've joint SocialSpark since 18 June 2008 and feel happy to make friend with the bloggers and advertisers in the community, visiting each other blogs and proping each other. Here is my profile page in SocialSpark with the URL at http://socialspark.com/bloggers/the-8th-voyager.

SocialSpark is a pretty new social network just started a few months ago. However, IZEA the team behind isn't new as they have experience in successfully running the renowned PayPerPost marketplace. To date, SocialSpark has a community of about 8,000 bloggers and about 1,000 advertisers. The number keeps on growing daily in a fast pace, as more and more people are getting known to it. Why don't you sign up and join the community too?

You can participate to monetize your blog with the various opportunities in SocialSpark as long as you are 18 years or older, your blog is verified by their Customer Love, and the following Code of Ethics adhired:

• 100% Audit-able In-Post Disclosure - you must disclose each sponsored post by putting a specific Disclosure Badge inside the post.
• 100% Transparency - your participation in SocialSpark marketplace will be made viewable by the public.
• 100% Real Opinions - your sponsored post must be honest and genuine.
• 100% Search Engine Friendly - to avoid being penalized by the PageRank system of search engine, sponsored links must carry the "no-follow" attribute.
  

You can easily differentiate my articles in this blog which are sponsored by SocialSpark from others, as all the sponsored articles will have a button similar to this one:

and yes, this is my first sponsored post.

Web of Trust (WOT) the people-driven website reputation scorecard system

Web of Trust (WOT) is an innovative community driven website reputation scorecard system whose members exchange security info of websites: Can they be trusted? Are they safe to use? Do they deliver what they promise? Do they contain age-inappropriate item?



After installing a freely downloadable plugin into your web browser, you can easily see the reliability of companies and websites indicated by WOT colour rating icons. WOT will also dropdown a warning screen to you upon visiting a possibly dangerous site. In this way, WOT helps to keep yourself safe from spyware, adware, spam, viruses, browser exploits, unreliable online shops, phishing, and other Internet scams.



The 4 available WOT ratings are:

• Trustworthiness: Do you trust this website? Is it safe to use? Does it deliver what it promises?
• Vendor reliability: Is the site safe for buying and selling, or for business transactions in general?
• Privacy: Can you trust the site owner, safely supply your e-mail address, and download files?
• Child safety: Does the site contain age-inappropriate material (content that is sexually oriented, hateful, or violent in nature) or encourage activities that are dangerous or illegal?

To date, WOT has rated over 18 million websites, and marked more than 857 thousand websites among them as dangerous.



You don't need to register to use WOT. If you registered an account and join the WOT community, you can also participate to contribute your ratings and comments on websites you have visited. Beside collecting the website reputation data from the WOT community, the WOT system also gets the data from hundreds of trusted sources such as listings of phishing sites. The reputation info is efficiently recalculated every 30 minutes, updated and make available for all WOT users.

WOT also shows its rating icon beside the links listed in webpage of famous web services, such as Google, Yahoo!, Live Search, AOL Search, Ask.com, Digg, Gmail, Wikipedia, del.icio.us, dmoz, etc.



WOT is available as plugin (in some 10 languages) for:

• Mozilla Firefox 1.5 or later (Windows 98 / ME / NT 4.0 / 2000 / XP / Vista, Mac OS X, or Linux)
• Internet Explorer 6.0 or later (Windows 2000 / XP / Vista )
  

It is lightweight, works seamlessly, ads free, and doesn't slow down or disturb your web browsing experience at all.

Click here to download WOT for Mozilla Firefox
Click here to download WOT for Internet Explorer

Using Google Analytics for blog performance analysis

I use Google Analytics, a free web analytics online service provided by Google to analyze visitors and traffics to this blog.

The reasons of using Google Analytics are:

• It it an online service. I just need to add-in the tracking codes into my blog template, and it will do its job automagically. I don't need to install any software, and can access it anywhere with the Internet.
  
• It is free and linked to my existing Google account. Simple and easy to get started.
• It has continuous improvement. It evolved from the renown Urchin 5 Analyzer, and continuously add in new functions, features and supports.
• It produces sophisticated and comprehensive reports. Unlike most web analyzers which just translate the raw data into presentable information, Google Analytics' report goes broader and more indepth.
  
• It has nice customizable dashboard. I like its geographical map that shows visitors' location, which can be detailed up to the city level.

Click here to learn more about Google Analytics features.

Have you LinkedIn?

I tend to ignore those email invitations asking to join social networking sites such as Facebook, Friendster, Hi5, etc. Those sites give me the impression that they are for the youngsters looking for dating partners and/or sharing living photos, and somehow don't catch much interest to a married person who have already left the university campus for years like me.

Until recently, I received an email from a friend who is about my age of thirty plus, and well known to be serious at work, inviting me to join his network in LinkedIn. Out of curiousity, I signed in, and I Linked In.

LinkedIn really makes a different and unique from most other social networking sites, as it is targetted to working people in the business and professional groups. There, I found people I know at work and linked to them. I found those executive recruiters who had contacted me and matched the jobs for me before. I also found my schoolmates and got to know their latest whereabout with their trail of C.V. after leaving school. I could also find those famous people in the industries and professional areas. In summary, this site is about contacts, relationships and opportunities focusing on business and career.

After I sent out some invitation to my contacts to link with me, I found that many are new to LinkedIn and just created their account following my invitation to them. I wonder, have you Linked In or interested to get Linked In?