Posts Tagged ‘spa’
Saturday, July 5th, 2008
If you are in need of publicity and/or buzz for your service or company, Izea is definitely your one stop shop. You can get everything you need from the various social media advertising they offer. They have products sampling, blog posts, and blog sponsorships just to name a few of the offers you can do. I have been on both sides of the campaigns that can be run; I have run some of my own opportunites for bloggers, and I am a blogger myself. The Izea staff is great — if you have any question, they are great to help you get exactly what you want. Izea now has two marketplaces you can choose from — PPP and Social Spark. PPP allows you to pick segmentation and any blogger who meets your criteria can choose your opportunity. Social Spark is more of social networking site. You are able to set up blogrolls and street teams and choose which bloggers can take you opportunity. There also is the marketplace like at PPP that allows anyone to take your opportunity. You can set it up that after your opportunity is full that people can request a slot. They will tell you why they should blog about you. It is great way for you to find bloggers that missed out on your opportunity but still are a good fit for you. They also have dynamic pricing where instead of spending all your money in one day, you can choose a daily spend. These are just a few of the advantages of working with Izea. I highly recommend trying them out if you want to advertise!
Tags: amp, blog, blogger, bloggers, Blogroll, eed, eve, ing, ins, ip, izea, marketplace, money, mp, ot, ppp, prod, reco, rv, segment, segmentation, ships, spa, tea, ter, unite, wh
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Friday, April 25th, 2008
I am so bad. I have been so busy since I got back, I am finally now writing about this awesome event. I was contacted about this the day before my birthday (I know, what a great birthday present!!!). Sony wanted to talk to 15 mommy bloggers and give us some cameras (I didn’t know this last part till the day before I left for the trip!). All expenses paid trip, how could I say no?
I flew out on April 16th to San Diego. They got me an a flight through Midway (which I seriously needed since Midway is only 15 minutes away and Ohare is about an hour). Sitting in the airport always sucks, but I made due. My plane flight there sucked. A little girl screamed the whole way. This is why I don’t fly with my kids. I am terrified that is going to be me. The mom was by herself, and she walked up and down the aisle for the four and half hour flight. I felt so bad for her.
We then got to San Diego and I had a limo driver waiting for me. He had my name on a sign. It was super cool. I know I’ll never see that again. He took me to the La Valencia Hotel in La Jolla (it was about a half hour drive). The hotel was awesome (I’ll be writing about it on my travel blog, so I won’t go into too many details here). Sony had boxes set up in our room (to use to Fed Ex our cameras back). They also had left us headphones for our kids, a rose, and two chocolate candy bars. They obviously know the way to a woman’s heart. We were on our own for Wednesday night (though we did have a $50 certificate to use at the restaurant). I met up with Deanna and Anne Marie , and we went to dinner. I had filet mignon. It was super yummy. It was one of those steaks that you didn’t even have to chew it — it just melted in your mouth.
The next day we had to be at breakfast at 9:00. We had a buffet breakfast (which was awesome). This is the view we had from the room we were in. Beautiful, isn’t it? We spent the first two hours after that introducing ourselves. We then had lunch out in the beautiful sunshine. We were only out there for about an hour eating some of the best food ever and I got sunburned!!! Here’s a list of all the awesome ladies who were there (if you have more blogs that I haven’t listed, let me know and I’ll get them added):
After lunch, we got to learn about Sony and the impact of women on their business (Let me tell you, we have a huge impact!!!). We then got to start playing with the cameras we got. Oh wait, I didn’t show you the cameras yet —-
Camera #1: Sony Cybershot
Camera #2: Sony DSLR-A300K
Camera #3 – Handycam HDR-SR10
Yes, Sony gave us all three cameras! They also set aside time for us to work with their trainers so we could learn how to use them!
We then got instruction from photography expert Me Ra Koh. She gave us shooting instruction and tips of how to get specific results. She was really nice and she’s a blogger too!
We then got to go out to the beach and play with the cameras!
We then got a little bit of time to run up to our room and get ready for dinner. I took these pictures from my room!
We then met up with Sony and went to dinner at the Azul Restaurant. I got back to the hotel between 10 – 11 and went to bed.
On Friday, (April 18th), we met again for breakfast. Me Ra took some of our photos and critiqued them for us. She told us how to make our photos better. We then had a presentation from Rocket XL (the advertising agency who helped pull this all together). Us mommy bloggers ended up taking over that session with our opinions and thoughts.
After this session, we were able to do whatever we wanted till we caught our plane. Sony also gave us certificates for the spa, so I went and had a deep tissue massage. I then ate lunch and then had to get on my plane.
And that was my trip to San Diego!
Tags: 30, 300, 4d, ack, adi, Advice, ady, aisle, amazon, ava, babies, bed, bet, birthday, bling, blog, blogger, bloggers, blogs, blogspot, busines, cameras, candy, celebrity, certificat, chocolate, contact, cooks, dd, dsl, eed, eft, eta, eve, flickr, flo, fly, geek, girlfriend, headphone, heart, home, hose, ied, images, imo, ing, ins, ip, kids, ko, logs, lunch, mak, map, midway, mom, mommies, mommy, moms, mp, ot, pens, phone, photo, photograph, photography, photos, picture, rain, ramblings, rant, readable, sag, scream, smack, smackdown, sony, spa, stat, sun, sunburn, target, tea, ted, ter, terri, time, tina, train, umm, vent, wh
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Saturday, April 5th, 2008
I know I have talked about how much I love Entrecard. They are a great way to drive traffic to your blog and have a great community. Today, some cool changes took place and some not so cool changes too.
First, the cool changes. Now, you can see how many times a person has dropped their Entrecard on you. It also lists your last 5 posts that you have done on your blog. Both are very cool changes that I think are great.
Now, onto the not so good changes. The change that I absolutely hate that happened today (without any warning) is that you can only drop 600 cards per ip. Now, if you have one blog this is no big deal. However, if you have more than 2 blogs in the system (I have 3), this royally screws you. How? Normally, you can drop 300 cards per account you have. Since I have 3 accounts, I was dropping up to 900 cards a day. Yes, I actually do read the majority of those blogs I was dropping my cards on (not everybody updates daily or weekly). It would take me several hours a day to do. However, the traffic that I received from that made it well worth me doing. By looking at my entrecard stats, I can definitely see the difference in my traffic depending on the number of cards I dropped. More cards = more traffic.
Now, this not only effects me. This effects every person who has more than 2 blogs in the system. If I drop evenly between my blogs, I will drop only 200 cards per blog. I am losing out on potentially 100 more drops (if everyone reciprocates). If this is the case, this blog will never make the top three spots nor will my other two blogs since I won’t be able to reciprocate everyone who drops on me. I am also going to assume that the top three blogs are people who only have a single blog in the system. If that is the case, they will be dropping 300 cards to my 200 on a daily basis. Tell me how I ever catch up to the lost traffic. The top spots got there by dropping 300 cards daily.
This change effects anyone who uses a shared computer and/or ip to do their drops. Husbands and wives won’t be able to both have accounts and not effect each others ability to drop. People won’t be able to drop (or be limited) from work if anybody else in the building does Entrecard. And heaven forbid, if you have to use an internet cafe or library to drop. Who knows if somebody already used up the 600 drops off those ips?
What’s the reason for this change? Well, according to Phirate (one of the head guys of Entrecard):
It’s not a penalty, it’s just our only real rational response to people creating multiple “spam blogs” and going nuts dropping a thousand + per day. Unfortunately, some legitimate users will get caught in the cross-fire.
Well, go after the spam blogs. Set up a system where the blogs have to be 30-60 days old and have 10 posts or so. That should weed out a bunch of them right off the bat. I would think they would rather be able to say that they have 7,000 good blogs in the system instead of 6,000 good and 1,000 not so good.
Another issue with this is that it is pretty easy to change your IP. If you use AT&T like I do, it is simple (just a pain in the butt to have to do everyday). I won’t go into how you do it, but if I know how to do it, the spammers definitely do to. Also, another way around this is to use a proxy. Again, if I figured this out, so can the spammers.
Entrecard, I love your system. It does exactly what it is suppose to — it drives traffic to my blogs. However, you are hurting the very people who make the system great. I would think that you would want your best users to be able to put more of their quality blogs into the system.
If you agree, please let them know. From the few people I have talked to like Jenn, I am not the only one who doesn’t agree with this change. Entrecard has made tons of changes based on what the users want. I am hoping that the users can bring about change again.
Tags: 30, 300, absolutely, ady, amp, bet, blog, blogs, butt, cards, computer, eed, eve, Everybody, heaven, hose, ing, ins, internet, ip, ira, legit, logs, love, mak, mate, mp, nin, nuts, ot, pda, pots, rig, rox, screw, screws, spa, spam, spammer, stat, stats, target, tea, ted, tent, ter, time, traffic, wh, ya
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Thursday, April 3rd, 2008
Want to get paid to talk about the things you love (and some that you don’t like quite as much)? Well, Izea (the company that brought you PayPerPost) will be shortly offering a new service called SocialSpark. This brings in a new era of blogging for advertisers and bloggers alike. SocialSpark is both a social networking site and a place to find things to write about. I had a sneak peak at it, and I am impressed by what I have seen so far. Unfortunately, there isn’t a lot I can tell you since it hasn’t been released yet!
My Story
I often have been asked why I do this. Now, if you are a regular reader of mine, you may want to skip this section since you know all about my family and I. I have two kids. When I started blogging, we only had Madison (who’s 4 now). I was using my blog to keep in touch with my friends and family in Green Bay, WI. While blogging I became pregnant with my son Will (who’s 9 months now!). I am stay at home mom and am always looking at how to make extra money from home. We live in the Chicagoland area which means my husband commutes to work long distances and daycare is outrageous! Trust me, I have tried almost everything out there to make some extra money so I didn’t have to go work fast food or retail (no offense to anybody working in those positions. I have done it in the past and it sucks!). My husband is never home at the same time every night which makes things even more difficult to get a regular job of any kind!
Show Me The Money!
Onto the part that you really want to know about! Is there money really to be made doing this? YES! I don’t tell people what I make blogging, since it really isn’t anybody’s business. However, since you want to know, I can honestly tell you a pulled in around $7,000 last year from blogging. Now, I was able to do this on my own time be it midnight or noon. If I don’t feel like writing about a topic, I don’t. As many of you know, I do freelance work also, and I can easily work this around my freelance work and my kids. I don’t have to wait for my husband to get home from work either! For my family, this has been heaven sent.
What have we spent my earnings on? This year I was able to take the money I earned and enroll Madison in preschool. We used the money towards the vacation Bill and I took to Arizona. It is helping to remodel our basement, and we used it a lot last summer on house repairs. What do you need extra money for?
This sounds good. How do I sign up?
Currently, SocialSpark is still in Alpha testing. However, if you click the link, it’ll take you to a site that you can sign up for an email when SocialSpark goes live. Then you can be one of the first to try out this new platform and make some extra cash doing so!
Tags: adi, advertiser, advertisers, airs, amp, badges, basement, Bill, blog, blogger, bloggers, blogging, busines, daycare, eed, email, eta, eve, Green Bay, hasn, heaven, home, honestly, hose, ied, images, impress, ing, ip, izea, job, kids, love, madison, mail, mak, metrics, mom, mommy, money, mp, nin, ot, pairs, pay, preschool, rage, remodel, rust, rv, spa, ted, time, umm, wh
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