Social Sparking!

I was one of the lucky individuals chosen to participate in alpha testing for SocialSpark.com, and now that SocialSpark.com is in beta testing, it's obvious to me that it's really picking up steam!

SocialSpark.com is a unique way for bloggers and advertisers to get to know each other, sort of a social-networking community. Unlike other paid-blogging sites, SocialSpark.com bloggers and advertisers have the chance to interact directly with each other. I'm a blogger, of course, and I'm impressed with the number and kinds of advertisers SocialSpark.com has attracted.

That said, here's a few ideas as to the kinds of advertisers I'd like to see join SocialSpark.com as well. In no particular order:

1.) Local advertisers. Many bloggers have a "national" audience, but we also draw a sizable readership from our local community. Small businesses could really benefit from this kind of advertising -- it's very cost effective, and as SocialSpark.com requires honesty in its posts, readers can rest assured that if I rave about my local pizza place, I mean it. That means you, Pomodori Roast Beef & Pizzeria!

2.) Pet care stuff. I spend an inordinate amount of time talking about my cats on this blog. One of said felines would eat nothing but Whiskas Temptations Treats if I let her. I would love, love, love to blog about that. Alternately, given my newfound dedication to frugality, I'd love to blog about special deals at places like PetSmart and Petco.

3.) Public service stuff. Many states spend a significant amount of money advertising various programs and public education stuff. Bloggers would be a great way to extend these messages to an even wider audience. I just did a post about water safety, sponsored by the state of Arizona. I think that's a great idea, and I'd love to do more of it.

Those are just a few ideas. Readers? What kind of brands or subjects would you like to see me blog about?

Elle

Safe Boating

I live next to a large body of water (the Atlantic Ocean) and every summer, it seems, brings a story of some moron who gets into some kind of trouble by boating while intoxicated. I'm sure everyone who lives in areas where recreational water sports are popular has heard the same.

For whatever reason, some people associate boating and other water sports with drinking. Now, I like a nice glass of wine or a good, cold beer as much as the next person, but I like one, possibly two, and no more. And, I like them in situations where I will not be operating any kind of vehicle. I'm not the only one who feels that way. The state of Arizona has started a Boating Education Online campaign to alert people to the issue of alcohol-related boating deaths and accidents.



Boating Operating Under the Influence is every bit as illegal -- and dangerous -- as it is to operate a motor vehicle while under the influence. In fact, 50% of all fatal boating accidents in Arizona involved alcohol. You don't have to live in Arizona to benefit from checking out the Arizona Boating page, there's good information there for anyone who boats or operates a personal watercraft, no matter where you live.

Check out these videos for more information about safe boating in Arizona!





Elle

Mmm, shoes!

Infinity Shoes!

That is the name of what has just become my new favorite website. They have a huge selection of shoes and boots, from styles which range from casual to dressy and the prices are quite good. I've spent the better part of an hour looking through this site and I'm still not done.

As I mentioned, they have a huge range of styles. I really like the seychelles shoes, particularly the "Drive a Hybrid" boots. I love the pattern on those! The minnetonka boots are very cool as well, especially "Sail Fish." But, my favorite style may well be the tsubo shoes. These are just gorgeous, especially "Celini" and "Kiva."

Shoes, believe it or not, make a great gift for someone, though it's not always the first thing that comes to mind. However, I had a birthday recently and got a great pair of boots from a friend, so trust me -- if you know the recipient' shoe size, shoes may very well be the way to go in terms of a gift.

Infinity Shoes offers free shipping on all orders over $59.98 (at least they do right now, it's a limited offer) which is very nice, as shipping charges add up. Quickly. I'd like to mention, too, that Infinity Shoes also has physical store locations, so if you happen to be in New York City, you might want to drop by. The rest of us will have to make do with the website. Give them a look, you won't be sorry you did!

Elle

Ecco Bella -- Here is Beauty!

There's a trend towards organic everything nowadays. Ecco Bella (which means "here is beauty" in Italian) is a line of cosmetics that offers Mineral Makeup and other organic beauty products, such as shampoos, body lotions and skin care.

Not only are these products formulated from organic ingredients, they are cruelty-free, never tested on animals. Whether or not you care if your beauty products are organic, I think most people would agree that cruelty-free is always the way to go when it comes to personal care products.

Ecco Bella has a very wide range of products, something for everyone, and I use some of them myself and I love them. Give them a try, or give them to someone else -- Mother's Day is coming up!

Elle

Planet Fat Loss!

As you know, many of my blog posts deal with diet issues, specifically low-carb diets. I've followed a low-carb lifestyle for nearly five years now, and it works for me.

There's a pretty cool website out there that deals with Fat Loss. It's called Planet Fat Loss, and they have some pretty interesting and informative articles on their site. One of the better ones, which specifically mentions a few low-carb plans, is Diets That Work. I also like Weight Training Strategies, since I'm thinking about starting to do a more formal weight-training and exercise routine. In the land where "formal" means "at all," mind you!

Anyway, it's a good site, very easy to navigate, and has lots of useful information. Definitely give it a look!

Elle

Free time and expense software!

Attention, small business owners! I have a really great find for you! It's free time and expense software. Really free! It's Journeyx Timesheet and from what I'm seeing, it looks like a perfect solution for those of you who run your own business.

If your business bills for expenses, tracks employee efforts, or does any kind of project-oriented work, this could be a huge help to you. It can help you manage timesheets, invoicing, project control expenses and payroll. Click on the link to read some Timesheet success stories and see if Journeyx Timesheet is for you!

Elle

Izea Ranks: Real Ranks for Real Bloggers

There are many blogs out there nowadays, on every topic under the sun. Some blogs are personal, maintained as a way for family and friends to stay in touch. Others are "niche" blogs, which provide a forum for discussion on specific topics -- which can range from daily discussions on comic strips to the latest tech gizmo.

You might not think that the owner of a "mommy blog" detailing the day's happenings in the life of a family would care so much about how many people visit and link to that blog as would a professional tech blogger, but they do. It's a given that the professional blogger has a lot more invested in traffic than does the personal blogger, but we all like to know how popular our blogs are.

There are several ways to gauge how popular a blog is, and how much impact a blog has. There's counters, which record how many people visit the blog in a given day. Another measure of a blog's importance is how many other sites link to it. The latter is most often used by various search engines to assign a "rank" to a blog or website.

But neither counters nor the number of links can really give a full picture of how much impact a blog has. Luckily for bloggers, there's a new ranking system out there which takes both visitors and links into account -- Izea Ranks. Izea Ranks is a system in which bloggers register their sites, and it ranks you against other blogs, as opposed to every kind of website out there. This ensures that your blog's popularity is matched against other blogs, not every last website out there, and it gives you an accurate and true measure of how you stack up against your fellow bloggers.

Izea Ranks is simple to use -- just click on the link, follow the process to register your blog, and start seeing your stats! (Hint: The lower your ranking, the better your blog!) I've been registered with them for several months now, and I find it's a very good measure of how well I'm performing as a blogger. I'd encourage everyone who maintains a blog on a regular basis to sign up for it -- it's a great tool, and it's sure to become the way to rank blogs in the future.

Elle

Attention, Mommy Bloggers!

As many of you know, I've been doing sponsored blog posts for some time now, as part of my ongoing campaign to pay off all those student loans, and it's going very well. It's a great way to sharpen my writing skills, and earn a little extra money in the process.

I've been working for a wonderful company called Izea, and I really can't say enough good things about them. They've got a great base of advertisers, which means that there's all kind of opportunities available, which in turn makes it easy to select sponsored blog posts that fit in well with the general theme of your blog and are of interest to your readers. Their "Customer Love" team really lives up to their name -- I've peppered these poor people with questions many a time, and they've always been friendly, courteous, and quick to respond.

Izea is launching an incredible new service called SocialSpark. I was fortunate enough to be chosen to be one of the alpha-testers for SocialSpark, and I'm loving it. SocialSpark is a new concept in sponsored blogging -- it's a social networking site (think Facebook) where bloggers and advertisers can interact with each other. I think it's going to be really big, and I'm very excited about it, and quite proud that I was asked to help test it, along with many other bloggers.

A lot of my fellow bloggers are "mommy bloggers." These stay-at-home moms do sponsored blogging as a way to help supplement their family income, and SocialSpark promises to be another great Izea resource for such bloggers. I've seen lots of opportunities directly related to topics targeted towards families -- educational software, children's clothing, vacation destinations and things like that. While it's still in alpha-testing at the moment, SocialSpark will be available to the general public soon. If you're a mommy blogger -- or any kind of blogger, for that matter -- who'd like to be paid for writing on topics that you write about anyway, visit the SocialSpark website, and sign up to learn more.

Happy blogging!

Elle

Speaking of beer ...

I very seldom drink, even in social situations, because frankly, I just can't hold my liquor. It's embarrassing, really. My former work husband, D (referenced below) loves to recount the time(s) we all went for Happy Hour after work and I ended up with my drink straw in my hair.

Because I low carb, I usually get a drink featuring a diet soda of some kind, but every now and again, I like a beer. Dancing in Socks Guy, as I mentioned before, is like a sommelier, except for beer. Though he is not much of a drinker either, even in social situations, he has an exquisitely developed beer palate, and is very passionate about educating the unwashed masses as to what beer goes with what food.

The last time I had beer, in fact, was with him. We were in Albuquerque, and were having sushi at our favorite sushi place there, Azuma. Because I'd already blown my 90g a day carbohydrate limit with the sushi, I resisted his importunings to order a Kirin, no, just try it, come on, you look beautiful don't worry about the carbohydrates, YOU NEED A LAGER WITH SUSHI, EVERYONE KNOWS THAT!

As I said, he's passionate about properly pairing beer with food.

Anyway, we split the difference and I got a Kirin Light. He was a little suspicious at first when I told him it tasted like regular Kirin, but he finally tried some of mine and found I was right. He was right, too. There is nothing like a nice, crisp lager with sushi. Mmmmm, sushi and light Kirin! I'm going back out to 'Burque in the beginning of April, guess what I'll be having?

Speaking of light beer in general, there's a survey contest over on Brand Noise, you can find the rules here. It goes without saying, but I'll say it anyway, you have to be over 21 to enter this contest. If you're interested, check out the contest rules, but here's the basics: It's a survey by text message. To start the survey, text the word beer to 247365, and you will receive ten questions via text message, Everyone who answers all 10 questions will be entered for a chance to win a $300 Amazon gift card. If you're interested, check it out!

Now, off to drink water. Per usual :)

Elle

Australian Jobs Site

As I may have mentioned a time or two, I'm of (partial) Italian descent. One small benefit from this, besides a love of pasta (actually, for me that's a curse) is that I qualify for Italian citizenship, which I'm in the process of getting. I will, of course, retain my US Citizenship, but the Italian citizenship will come in handy. Not only will I be able to flash around two passports, but I will be able to work anywhere in the European Union without all the fuss and bother of work visas and whatnot. This is a longstanding dream for me and Dancing in Socks Guy.

Part of that dream is to work and live all over the world, including New Zealand (where he lived for a while) and Australia. Regretfully, that pretty new passport won't do us much good there, but there is a great website for Australian Jobs that would. This site, jobs.com.au, has a nice, clean design and a ton of information on it. There's the obvious listing of, uh, jobs in many different categories, but it also has useful tools such as a salary calculator and links to recruitment agencies, as well as news and reviews.

Pretty cool. I wonder how much work it would take to get a work visa ...

Elle

Online Casino

Or, adventures in web design.

This is a casino site, and it's got a very slick design. A lot of similar sites tend to be eye-gouging in terms of their design and layout; entirely too busy and with obnoxious color palettes. Not so joylandcasino.com. The content is located in the center, surrounded by clean, white space which draws the eye to said content, the online casino games.

Many sites are so poorly designed that it's impossible to see what they're offering, but here it's obvious -- it's an online casino, offering a wide assortment of games, such as:

• Video Poker
• Blackjack
• Progressive Slot Jackpots
• Video Slots
• Multi-line slots
• Single-line slots
• Caribbean Poker
• Craps
• Roulette
• Baccarat
• Keno
• Arcade Games

They apparently also do a lot of bonus offers and promotions including a $808 Welcome Bonus for new players. The games aside, I am really liking this site's design. I'm re-doing my dad's business website (I do the occasional small-business site) and this has given me some ideas.

Elle

Review of Francesco Vitetta Wedding Speeches

This is a sponsored post.

Today I will be reviewing Francesco Vitetta Wedding Speeches, which can be viewed here:

http://www.brideheaven.com/index.php?p=Francesco_Vitetta_Wedding_Speeches_Ebook

Let's see if they're serious about wanting honest reviews. This website needs a serious amount of work.

The idea itself, an eBook filled with wedding speeches, is a great idea. I was actually at a wedding today in which I sat through one particularly excruciating speech, and the sad thing was, I knew the person giving it had put a lot of work into it. So, something like Francesco Vitetta Wedding Speeches eBook could be quite useful.

Useful, that is, if the website design were improved, which includes cleaning up the grammar and spelling errors on the website. I won't bother pointing them out, but there are more than a few, and they are very distracting. It's also probably not the best sales tool when you're trying to market a product like this. It's also not necessary to list every last kind of wedding speech in this eBook, but what would be useful is if a sample speech or two were available. There are a few short blurbs here, but nothing which rises to the level of a "speech." By providing a sample speech or two the prospective buyer could have a look and decide for themselves whether or not the quality warrants the price. I'd tell you what that is, except it doesn't seem to be listed on the page. In fact, the only place you can order it is from an obscure little link on the main page, Bride Heaven. The site owners should address this; I'm no marketing genius, but if I have to hunt to find out how much something costs or jump through hoops to order it, I'll probably decide not to buy it.

There are several pages on this site, one for the bride, one for the groom, one for the aforementioned speeches, and one for wedding gifts. They all offer a lot of tips and suggestions for planning a wedding, which is a nice touch. But again, the erratic grammar, capitalization, and spelling distract from the message. The multiple ads are distracting as well, and site owner, this is coming from someone who is doing paid blogging and also has ads. Too many are distracting, and they do nothing to give your site credibility. Basically, this site looks amateurish at best, as if it were being done by someone for a little extra beer money.

So, here's my advice. Clean up the spelling and grammar. That's a nice banner at the top, but the rest of the color palette makes it hard to read. There is entirely too much content in certain places, and not enough in others. If the main product is the eBook, then links to where it can be purchased should be prominently located, which will have the salutary effect of forcing the removal of some of those ads. Make this site look professional, and improved sales should follow. Because, and I hate to say this, as a bride-to-be, there's no way I'd buy that book with a website like this.

Elle

Review of $ 8 Zenni Optical Rx Eyeglasses and zennioptical.com

This is a sponsored post.

If you couldn't read that first sentence (or any other sentences in this post), you may need glasses. One option might be http://www.ZenniOptical.com, home of the $ 8 Zenni Optical Rx Eyeglasses, plus a case.

When I first decided to start doing paid blogging, I vowed to only take on work that didn't compromise my principles. Not that I have many, mind you, but the few I have are near and dear to my heart, and one of them is a distaste for blatant, biased, poorly written paid blog posts in which the author clearly would say anything for the money. This review, dear reader, will not be a blatant paean to the wonder that is http://www.ZenniOptical.com, though it may be poorly written. Poor writing isn't technically a principle, as far as I'm concerned.

Anyway. Upon viewing http://www.ZenniOptical.com for the first time, my first thought was that whoever designed it is in fact themselves in desperate need of an $ 8 Zenni Optical Rx Eyeglasses. And a case in which to store them. This website reminds me of the first personal website I ever did, a slick little Geocities number, laden with buttons and banners and scrolling on for miles. My second thought was that perhaps this bargain-basement website was a deliberate choice on the part of Zenni Optical, a cost-saving measure, perhaps. You wouldn't believe what some people charge to design a website, and how many idiots out there will pay for it. I was told a little while ago that one company I used to work at, let's call them BadScienceXgen, paid over 100K for an website that makes this one look sparely beautiful in comparison.

Clearly, our friends at Zenni Optical are too smart to fall for that trap, and I am deducing this from the fact that BOW HOWDY THOSE ARE SOME CHEAP GLASSES! Whatever they didn't spend on web design clearly went into savings for their customers. The page of their $ 8 Zenni Optical Rx Eyeglasses may scroll on for miles, but there are some nice looking frames on there, such as these:


Also nice is that anti-scratch coating is free, a feature that appeals to me since I am squinting through some seriously scratched lenses right now. UV protection is also free, as is lens edge polishing and beveling, though frankly, polishing off those sharp little spikes of glass and finishing the edges strikes me as simply good business practice when one's business involves the manufacturing of little disks of glass or polymer to be worn near one's eyes, rather than a special deal.

I wear contacts when not at work, which means I wear glasses a lot of the time, and this pair I am wearing are nearing the end of their useful life. I am thinking of checking these guys out meaning buying some glasses from them, especially since shipping is a mere $4.95, whatever the size of the order. Of course this means I will need an eye exam, now a year overdue, since I don't know my prescription other than "nearsighted" and I think they may need that.

I must confess, one dream I have is to get a pair of rhinestoned harlequin frames, an extravagance I have not yet indulged in because my hold on a dollar is a lot tighter than my grip on good taste, and I can't see spending $100 or more for a second pair of glasses that only I would find amusing. I don't see any rhinestones on the site, but hey, I've got a glue gun around here somewhere!

Elle

Paid Blogging

I signed up for Pay Per Post last week, and apparently my blog gets enough traffic because they approved me. I've been toying with the idea of doing paid writing for a while. I've written plenty, though most of it has been unpaid or part of what I was getting paid to do in the first place. The main obstacle has always been time. Writing, serious writing, takes acres and acres of time, or at least it does for me. I'm sure there are plenty of people out there who think that someday they'll spend a couple nights a week for a month and turn out a book in no time.

Would that it were that easy. All I know is I spent an hour today rewording a paragraph for a grant renewal. It's not always that bad, last night I whipped out a 3,500 word synopsis in just under two hours, and it needed very little editing when I looked at it tonight. Blogging is different, somehow, I never have much trouble finding something to say though if you're paying attention you'll see that occasionally I'll go back and edit/fix things.

I've been aware of 'paid blogging' for a while. It's pretty much what the name implies, someone makes you an offer to write about something, and you get paid for it. I've decided to give it a go, for two reasons. One obvious reason is that even a little money is always helpful. Unlike some people, I am too ethical a person to start my own fraudulent diet site and I'm actually paying back my student loans.

The other, more important reason has little to do with money. Frankly, I'm not going to get rich from this, or even make more than might treat me and Dancing in Socks Guy to an extravagant meal at Sonic, mostly because I can't do it full time or even truly part time. But there are other tangible benefits from this. Those who read the non-kimkins content may know that I have been writing fiction for some time. Some of it appears to have gotten to the point where it doesn't suck so badly no one would look at it, and it's ready to earn me the first of many rejection slips. One thing that is helpful to a first-time author is to get something, anything published. Apparently, it serves as an indicator that your book might sell, or something like that. I'm in a bit of an odd position here, I actually have been published, but it's in the scientific literature, which while important to some people, doesn't carry all that much weight when it comes to fiction.

The same goes for my foefiction (I was thinking of doing a quick fraud-fiction based on you-know-who here) -- it's nice, if you like that kind of thing, but no one is paying me to do it. Thus, I thought trying paid blogging might be a good way to get going. It's not Vanity Fair and I doubt it'll impress an agent, but you have to start somewhere, and I'm hoping that it will help me sharpen my prose skills. Beyond those which I use in my everyday work, that is, but honestly, those skills are useless unless you happen to be writing something in which 'elucidate' and other big words must appear constantly.

After careful consideration, I decided to go with payperpost , mainly because they offer the opportunity to write positive, neutral, and even negative posts. The money is a nice little side benefit, but not so great I'd throw everything away and go to the dark side, you know? Not that many people read here, but I value those who do and I'd rather not run all one hundred of you away by littering this site with stuff best left to spam filters. Not every post will be paid, and those that are will have that nifty little graphic at the bottom to indicate that I am being paid to write it. I think paid blogging has it's place if it's done right, and I think I can do it. You may recall some time back I burbled unsolicited about my Collette Vacations Tour to Italy with my mom. Hand to God, somehow Collette heard about it and contacted me, asking if they could use some of what I'd written. Even though the actual post had the word "snot" in it.

Of course, if you hate it, feel free to get together and send me a hundred dollars each, and promise to buy my self-published book and we'll call it even ;)

Seriously, this is an experiment. Most of what I write will not be paid and if the paid posts are too obnoxious, if it's too jarring, comment and tell me so. If it doesn't work, I won't do it.

Elle