Tag Archives: IZEA

Photo-A-Day

Welcome NY Times Readers

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Hi there! I’m really grateful that you chose to pop through and see what BenSpark.com is all about. I’m also grateful to Ted Murphy and the folks at IZEA for believing in me and my blog. If you are a regular reader and you have not yet read the article please go and read the full New York Times Article.

The article states that I get compensation to recruit bloggers and teach them how to improve their blogs. That is not entirely the way it is. I am an IZEA Insider, as such I am compensated $1500 a year to go to blogger conferences and be an ambassador of IZEA. I do try to recruit bloggers to the IZEA properties because I believe very much in what they are doing, they empower small time bloggers like me to make a little extra with their blogs.

As for the teaching bloggers to improve their blogs, that is a little something extra that I try and do for my IZEA Insiders Crew so that they learn how to use SocialSpark more effectively. I am not compensated for that I do it because the better the network of bloggers are the better advertisers we can attract.

I call those posts SocialSpark Saturdays. I also received $1500 for having the largest crew of bloggers in my IZEA Insider crew. I actively recruit bloggers to my crew and welcome each and every one of them. I’ve created a blog specifically for that crew where I try and spotlight different bloggers on the crew. My goal is to interview each and every one of my 1000+ members. I love finding out about other bloggers and what makes them tick.

You might want to check through my Photo-A-Day images. I’ve been doing this for over 4 years and each photo tells a story. I can go back to April 9, 2005 and visually appreciate every day since. At my 1000th photo-a-day I explained how I was able to do so many photos with… a photo.

Read More About Photo-A-Day.

Here are my sets
2005, 2006, 2007 (pre-flickr) 2007, 2008, 2009. I have taken my best photos and made calendars the past two years. My 2008 and 2009 calendars were also fundraisers for charities.

I love kayaking and had a kayaking blog for a while but found ti to be more of a seasonal thing, I do have 5 videos that I made while kayaking and one more on the way from my latest trip this past Saturday. The Roger Williams Paddle Trail trip.

I also love food and making crazy things so occasionally I post some fun things I’ve made like – Fry Sauce, ‘Grilled’ Peanut Butter & Pickle Sandwiches and Average Betty’s Hoffapenos.

And I love my Family. I write most often about my family. My wife Allison and my daughter Eva.

Blogging

Workout on Friday, Blog Well on Saturday

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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.