Social Spark is a new service by the people who brought you Pay Per Post and IZEA ranks (real blog ranking). Social Spark bridges the gap between bloggers and advertisers.
Social Spark is a bit of a blogger / advertiser social network. On the site I keep reading comments like “I don’t know how this thing works”, so I wrote up this article to break it down.
In SocialSpark, these are the three main types of Marketplace Opportunities:
Sponsored Post:
A Blogger will create a unique sponsored post on thier blog based on the guidance you provide. You can choose to have the Blogger include an image, video or press release. You pay per unique blog post that is created on each unique blog.
Blog Sponsorship:
Blog sponsorships utilize SocialSpark’s unique technlogy to create a Welcome Mat and persistent sponsorship banner. Sponsorhsips can consist of text, images or video. You pay per 24 hours that a select blog runs your Blog Sponsorship.
Spark:
Sparks are free Opportunities that serve as ideas for blog posts. Sparks are utilized primarily by bloggers and offer no tracking or segmentation options. This is a sorta you blog about me I blog about you type of thing. This is a good way to get some free content for your blog as well. Someone will put up a spark with information allowing you to republish their work in return for a link back.
How to accept an opportunity:
In any of the SocialSpark pages, you can get to the Opportunity’s details page by clicking the Opportunity’s title or image. Once there, simply click the ‘Take This Opportunity’ link in the tools section on the upper right of the page. Complete all the details on the submit page, and submit your post for review.
How come I don’t meet the requirements for opportunities:
Advertisers set basic requirements, like traffic, before they become available to you. Try some of the free sparks first and get a hang of the system. The minimum traffic looks to be 5,000 visits so work on getting your traffic up.
Why should I prop:
Props are your new way of giving someone your vote of confidence or high rating. You have the option, in many areas, to offer a ‘prop’ or ‘drop’ to other users, opportunities, blogs, etc. If you’d like to give a ‘prop’, or positive vote, click the icon with the thumbs up sign. If you’d like to give a ‘drop’, or negative vote, click the icon with the thumbs down sign. It’s a users voting system for bloggers to say if an advertiser is good or not and a way for advertisers to know if a blog is liked by readers.
To recap:
I think people signing up are mislead into believing they will get instant advertising on blogs with no traffic. Social Spark is not clear on the amount of traffic you need to be eligible for opportunities. The drop down for filtering blogs by traffic has a minimum amount of 5,000 but doesn’t say if its per day, month or week. My guess is per week. The site is in alpha so write in with your comments about the system so it can be improved.
If you are new to blogging, your best bet is google adsense. Once your blog is established and you are getting traffic then venture into other advertising areas. You should definitely use Social Spark to get familiarized with it and post sparks for other bloggers to take. I would look at it more like a Myspace for bloggers than an easy way to get advertising dollars at least until it gets open to the public and there are more opportunities to take.
