UPDATE: SocialSpark site is still in BETA. A BETA service means that the site has some problems and glitches, and thus these relies much on community feedback. It is often useful to suggest ideas on how to improve SocialSpark and report any problems with their service. You can do this with their customer support (Customer Love) or through their IZEA boards.

Probably the newest paid review site to hit the town is SocialSpark. I think this site is a spinoff from IZEA’s PayPerPost. PayPerPost has probably the largest network of bloggers and IZEA had been convincing PPP bloggers to signup with SocialSpark as well.

PPP Charm

PayPerPost is perhaps the biggest source of paid reviews with a huge network of bloggers working to get some paid opportunities; I’m not wondering so much if SocialSpark had gotten its charm from PayPerPost. I’ve checked my account and there seemed to be a thousand of registered members bloggers and advertisers.

SocialSpark is truly a handsome Web 2.0 design website; at first I was intimidated by its looks. It looked like a site made for those circle of professional bloggers. I got all my blogs approved, but I did not start taking any of its listed opportunities.

Like PPP, SocialSpark is getting to be an attractive work opportunity for work-at-home moms.

Opportunity Reservation

When the opportunities at PPP got dry, I started to revisit SocialSpark. I tried bidding to some of the posted opportunities. Within a month, I got an email informing me of a reserved opportunity that I had to write for my blog. If PayPerPost gives only a few hours to finish a reserved opportunity, SocialSpark gives 12 hours for a blogger to write a reserved opportunity slot.

SocialSpark is unlike other paid review sites. Here are some notable changes:

• In-post disclosure widget is always a requirement for every SocialSpark opportunity: Some of my posts have that in-post disclosure badge installed at the end of the post. An example of it is a post that I made for promoting SocialSpark to advertisers.
• All available opportunities do not need a blog with good pagerank; however, having a good traffic is a big factor in getting qualified for opportunities: All the opportunity links require “nofollow” links. Advertisers who decide to post opportunities often like blogs that contain a good traffic, so Alexa and RealRank ratings are important. To the blogger, a “nofollow” post does NOT hurt any page rank.
• Advertisers can post opportunities then handpick their bloggers, or post opportunities that meet an Alexa or RealRank rating requirement, or do both: This arrangement it is quite a mix between PayPerPost and SponsoredReviews paid review sites. If an open opportunity does not qualify a blogger, then this blogger can request for a slot by writing a compelling message to the advertiser to request for a slot.
• Meet other bloggers and make friends with advertisers: SocialSpark introduces a new concept in paid blogging by making it a social network. Bloggers can make friends with other bloggers and advertisers; advertisers can do the same. However, I have yet to encounter someone who is successful in getting good traffic and establish good relationship with other bloggers from SocialSpark.
• I’ll blog about you and then I’ll blog you back: Since there is a social element to this paid review marketplace, bloggers can blog for each other at no charge. This is done by posting out sparks together with the necessary requirements.

Payouts

Like PPP, payouts from SocialSpark can be taken out through Paypal. This time, a SocialSpark blogger gets to decide when to withdraw funds from the account out to Paypal.

The site is still in BETA, so there are always changes and some problems that need some fixing up. If I were to pick an additional income for blogging without losing pagerank, then SocialSpark is my best bet.

Watch Out, SocialSpark Members: Don’t Get Your Accounts Suspended!

Be sure to read the SocialSpark’s code of conduct. It has been revised recently to discourage bloggers from soliciting props. Comments that ask a slot from an advertiser’s opportunity are also forbidden. Too many friends added in one’s account at one time can also get one’s account suspended.

Don’t Take US Opportunities, If You Live in the Philippines

I had this experience months ago when I decided to write some opportunities that require US bloggers to blog about it. However, I got rejected after a manual review of the post because of my location. I lost $30 of effort. It really pays to follow instructions! The next time you see US opportunities, don’t spend extra effort writing for these even if you are qualified or included in the advertiser’s blogroll. Don’t hope that reviewers might miss out checking if you are a US blogger or not because they are already keen on it.
SocialSpark is the sister site of PPP; you can still write about SocialSpark with the PayPerPost badge below.

I used to play Bingo when I was a kid. My grandmother taught me how to play this community game and we used to do this whenever a typhoon knocks off the electricity in our place. We always played Bingo games for hours to avoid boredom. Indeed, the game truly strengthens family ties.

My grandmother passed away a decade ago, and our family had not played bingo since then. The old bingo game had gathered dust in the cupboard with some of the boletas missing.

Computers and consoles had slowly replaced board games. Kids are more exposed to electronically-powered games. Even board games had been slowly making their transition to online gaming. For instance Disney Bingo is a game designed for playing using a TV and a DVD player. This game is sold at Amazon.com and Drugstore.com. The video below shows a quick preview of the game.

The kids of today belong to a generation of electronics and information technology. Although they still appreciate playing non-electronic games, computer and console games remains to be the main attraction to younger people. Board games may be slowly dying; but putting out online versions of these board games can definitely help rekindle the spirit of family and community ties.

As long as a visiting typhoon does not knock out electricity in our place.

Uh oh! This blog got deleted by Entrecard today!

I got the message when I checked my email Inbox of the email associated with this domain. One of the Entrecard support personnel suddenly deleted this blog’s Entrecard account. The reason: my email autoresponder associated with this blog was ON.

Email settings on My Email Autoresponder

I was happy when I saw the option Auto Reply in my GoDaddy email account. When I purchased this domain, I got a free email address with it. Auto Reply is entirely different from the vacation messages that come from Yahoo, Gmail and other free email services include in their settings.

This Auto Reply email is great to have when someone tries to contact me, to let them know that I had received their messages. But to some, it could be irritating. This morning I got a series of failure notice from mailer-daemon: they all did not like my email. To some it could be irritating and I could easily be marked as spam.

What does this have to do with Entrecard?

When I received the email that my blog was deleted, I could not really believe it. I was suddenly worried about the advertisers who had spent expensive EC credits to make their sites visible on my widget for a day. Entrecard still remains to be the main provider of my blog traffic. I could not afford leave Entrecard - not yet!

My Entrecard account was configured to notify me through email whenever I get whenever somebody leaves an email in my Entrecard Inbox or someone decided to advertise on my widget. Whenever I receive email from other sources, my email account automatically generates an email response. This irritated the Entrecard authorities and they suddenly deleted my account.

I know many stories about blogs getting deleted because of some violations in the terms of service. I checked their rules and references: there were not any particulars written about using email autoresponders in Blog Quality Standards, Illegal Activities and Account Deletion/Reversion. However, the terms of service still states that Entrecard still holds the discretion of deleting accounts and blogs for any reason.

Everything is Back to Normal

After receiving the Entrecard Deletion email, I disabled the autoresponder completely then requested Entrecard support to reopen this blog’s account with all the advertiser’s widgets intact. The Entrecard support was prompt; it did not take an hour to un-delete this blog’s account. All the sites where I had bought advertising on their widgets were cancelled and those credits were refunded back to my account. The advertisers who had bought advertising on my widget do not have to worry much, because the credits that they had spent on my widget were also refunded back to these respective accounts. If you want to check whether your advertisement with my site is refunded back, check it under my Entrecard account number 19751. These refunds were also under the transactions. The items that I bought from the Entrecard shop were NOT affected.

When Entrecard restored my account, my widget cost was back to 1 EC for a short moment. It did not take long before the price rose back up to 1024 EC.

Avoid Getting Deleted by Entrecard

Blogs with music autoplaying in the background are the easiest target of Entrecard deletion, because music significantly slows down the loading of a site. Some blogs that run full page ads also gets easily deleted. Members who also send spam messages are also get deleted. Entrecard may not be able to conduct audit on all blogs but some EC members can find this irritating and can report these kinds of violations. If you want to get active on Entrecard you have to keep your blog up to the blog quality standards.

Don’t forget to make sure that your email autoresponder does not bounce emails to Entrecard support, if you had turned that ON.

I’m so sorry to all of those people who had been affected and irritated with my email autoresponder messages.

By the way, I am able to reach 300 drops per day and get a good amount of traffic. Are you interested in how I do it?

Have you been deleted by Entrecard?

Several people actually gave me this lovely award. All of them are different bloggers. Perhaps you’ve seen this cute little award (I’ve read it somewhere that a kid blogger actually started this one). I’m taking the floor off from the usual topics that I discuss here and feature other bloggers as well.

Three bloggers gave me this award all at the same time. When someone gives me an award, I feel appreciated. Who doesn’t love awards?

1. The Ultralife of Student Nurses: Jamck is a male student nurse but makes time for blogging to share his experience from the course. Did you ever think that a nurse are trained to make beds? They even learn how to do flower arrangements! He is one of those who gave me this award.
   
   Nurses learn the right way to fix beds (Is there a wrong way?)
2. My Country Home: Mizé is from Portugal and I’m glad she loves my blogs. She helped me translate one of the Portuguese language awards when she happened to stumble in one of my personal blogs. She also surprised me with this award. I hope I can also get to Portugal and meet her, but right now her country home is a cool place to learn more about Portugal. She also gave me this award.
   
   Mizé’s shot of Algarve Countryside (Portugal)
3. Call Center Gal: This mysterious girl shares her tips and experience in working at  a call center. She’s got some humor too and I hope I get to see more of about the lighter side of call center jobs. If you want to take a peek on what’s going on at call centers then this video should enlighten you about call center operations. She got here recently in Baguio to train PeopleSupport personnel.
   
   a guy who works in ePLDT support (from a YouTube video in Call Center Gal)

I love having an audience in my blog. I’m getting more readers and it is through you that I get my motivation to expand my blog by writing more and reaching out to more readers. Thanks a lot!

Now I’m featuring SOME of my frequent visitors of this blog.

Easy Homemade Fragrance and Essential Products: We know that many best chefs are guys. The best fashion designers are also guys. Perfumes too. Bobby writes about how to make a homemade aromatherapy perfume. Are you willing to spend $2,350 worth of perfume?

World’s Most Expensive Perfume (looks like a gem)

A Haiku Poem Blog: A haiku a day: that’s the goal kouji wants to have in his blog. I prefer responding in his comments by making a haiku myself. Short and sweet, and the design of the site reflects simplicity as well. I got  captivated when he described Capiz. He has featured a series of haikus to promote a cause: how about playing a game to help end hunger.

My frequent visitor list and blogging friends is getting longer and I could still think of more bloggers to give out this award.I still have another award, from MJ of Sagada Philippines, but I decided to save that award next to feature a new set of bloggers.

Questions that I’ve asked myself before switching domains:
Is it possible to retain all the rankings after switching from blogspot to custom domain? Can I still own my page rank after switching domains? What would happen to other rankings (Alexa, Technorati, Yahoo backlinks)?

Did you notice my new domain?

photo credit: bigevil600 (SXC)

As some of you had noticed, I’ve changed the URL of this blog to a new domain. For this little blog that has some PR and good Alexa stats, it is not an easy decision. I did not even think that this blog would really make it that far in statistics and put me to a good exposure to various opportunities. For anyone doing paid reviews, PR still remains the most important thing: higher PR means more paid reviews. A PR of N/A or zero means lesser paid review opportunities.

I’ve searched over the World Wide Web for information before I switched to a new address. Purchasing a new domain is not a new thing to me, as I’ve done it already before. This is the third domain purchase: the first two ones were spent on my personal blogs. I’ve lost a PR4 blog due to a new domain.

Throwing Out the Old URL
Over the weekend I decided to throw away my rankings and see what the new domain will lead me; being a lady programmer I had been curious about what will happen to this one. If you are planning to own a new domain (believe me, it feels great to have a custom domain even if you lose all the rankings), then you might want to dig in to more information that I had consulted myself.

photo credit: lusi (SXC)

Blogger help has some resources to setup custom domains.
How do I Use a Custom Domain on my Blog?
How do I create a CNAME record for my custom domain?

You might find Amanda’s information, but she still points out to other bloggers like Blogbloke below on setting up custom domains. She’s great on explaining how to tweak blogger templates, but on the discussion on domain topics, her advice on using meta-refresh pages is not recommended. Still, I’m giving out the link references below.
How to Setup Your Blogger Custom Domain
A Better Way to Setup Your Custom Domain?
How to Setup your Blogger Custom Domain with GoDaddy

Blogbloke does not have a great looking website (in my opinion; well, I messed up my blog and I had missing parts that I haven’t got to fix in my site), but his write up on setting custom domains using 301 redirect is the best one I’ve seen around. This is the one that I’ve followed during the entire setup.
Blogger Custom Domain: Best Setup for Optimizing your Blog Pagerank!
6 Blog Tips Why You Should be using a Custom Domain Name for your Blog
Blogger Custom Domain: Best Setup for Optimizing your Blog Pagerank!

Do you want to understand what 301 redirect is all about? That’s the one that I have used for the new domain. It is the proper way to redirect a site. Don’t ever use 302 redirect and meta-refresh tags.
Transferring a Website to a New Domain
Best Practices When Moving Your Site

I am not an expert so I hope that the resources that I had bookmarked for you will guide you when you decided to have a domain that you can call your own.

Unfortunately I could not provide the answer to the questions above right now. This domain is still less than a week old as I am writing this post.

Before I forget, if you got links using my old URL, I would appreciate changing it to the one that uses this new domain. Thanks again to those who made quick changes to their blogrolls and links before I made this formal announcement. I prefer having the URL using http://www.ladyprogrammer.com (with the WWW). Thanks!

Do you have any joys and pains when you switched to a new domain?