Ed Earns

I’ve been a member of Social Spark for about 2 years already, I think. Nowadays, this is where I earn through my blog opportunities. I’m not active in PayPerpost.com or other Sponsored Review sites anymore which is just okay because I’m also working on my freelance work.

I love Social Spark since the main feature that determines a blog’s eligibility is through it’s category, country and Real Rank. It is not focused on Google Page Rank which is what the rest of sponsored review or pay per post sites are mostly catering to.

I don’t understand why Google has to dominate the rankings and eligibilities. I can see that they play and important role (heck, I still earn through Adsense) since they’re definitely a giant and this is where most companies invest in but I hate the monopoly.

Looking at my record, I’ve made a lot of money already which makes me happy but lost as well since I’m wondering where the money is already. hehe.

This is my total earnings so far. It already amounted to $1,233.72 which is really big. I hope to earn more from this.

This is no bull, I don’t do that.

I cashed out some funds from SocialSpark! I withdrew 201 dollars from my account which is the amount accumulated ever since I became active in looking for opportunities some time last June 2009. Now I can put them in my paypal account so I could just accumulate the money to pay off old debts. I’m glad, really really glad of SocialSpark as it’s the only big money-making opportunity that I’ve been getting these months (can’t stress this as much as I can). At least there’s a somewhat steady stream of tasks that I get to write for my blogs and the amounts are big (least is $5 per post and would reach $25). Even if all my sites’ Page Ranks are 0, I still got to be competitive because of RealRank. Thanks SocialSpark!

I still have some Pending Payouts but we’ll save them for later.

I’m loving SocialSpark because of the many opportunities that I’ve been getting at the start of June of this year. The tasks aren’t only many, the payouts are also big; bigger than PayPerPost. At least SocialSpark relies on RealRank which is another form of ranking that is totally different from Google’s PageRank. It’s more reliable for me as it is updated on mostly a daily basis which is pretty good since you get to expect your traffic everyday if it’s going up or down.

Going back to SocialSpark, this has been the only marketplace that I’ve been getting some constant income the past few months. If it weren’t for this, I wouldn’t have any other cash flowing in. I’m so grateful that somehow, my opportunities are getting accepted and my blogs are being qualified to take in posts every now and then. I really wish this wouldn’t stop because I don’t have any other venue to earn.

PayPerPost and SocialSpark, both are under the same umbrella (IZEA) but both have different ranking categories.

PayPerPost is the first blogger-advertiser marketplace that provided me some good opportunities to earn extra income. It’s one of the more known marketplace that everybody (well, every blogger who wants to earn money while blogging) knows. But it largely depends on the PageRank for its requirements for bloggers to be able to bid for tasks or opportunities. The problem with me is that I rarely have any website that has at least have a PR of 1. Want to know more about PageRank? Visit my blog entry about it.

SocialSpark is also part of IZEA wherein it is more of a networking site that also has blog opportunities for you to write tasks for advertisers. However, you can also add friends to your network, leave comments and build your profile (hence, social). The tasks here are wider and has a bigger scope considering that you can take opportunities that require you to post links of advertisers, sponsor reviews etc. The great thing about this is that it relies on RealRank as its basis which defies Google’s standards.

Now what’s the difference between RealRank and PageRank? I don’t know yet. hehe. All I know is that RealRank is more on the traffic while PageRank is more on Google’s way of looking the value of your site. I’ll probably research more about it so I can blog it next time. I’ll probably include the Alexa Rank with the entry next time.

Anyway, of PayPerPost and SocialSpark, I’ve been getting more tasks the past month of the latter since the PR of my sites really dropped to zero, that’s why I seldom have opporunities in the former. Nevertheless I’m happy that I’m getting some tasks to keep paying the bills.

Just when I thought everything would be smooth sailing, my last website that has a more than zero PR –> Edearns.com (PR 1) has been slammed by Google and my PR has now dropped. Ironic that it went down the moment that I blogged about it.

Oh well, we can’t everything. Even if people do say that it’s PR is a good measurement, I know it’s not everything. I just wished I could reach a 4 or something like what other blogmates I know were able to do. But hey, I’m not Google. hehe.

It was fun while it lasted.

They say it doesn’t really matter if you have a high Page Rank or not. But for me, it still does. It’s a big factor especially when you bid for tasks.

I know I was able to get some opportunities online from different advertisers even if my blogs are of 0 Page Rank value. But I could definitely earn more and have more options if I had a higher Page Rank.

It’s sometimes upsetting that I don’t know that much on how to increase the status despite having a number of blogworthy entries. And I don’t want to result into putting my face plastered all over the website in order to attract more traffic (assuming. hehe). Still, I wish I had a higher PR, but it seems that it’s really impossible unless I do something drastic.

But I’m glad that I still have some tasks to do despite having Zero values of my sites (except for Edearns.com). It’s been almost a year since I have the same status. Dang.

It’s nice to receive emails once in a while that you don’t really expect. I received two this week.

• One is I received an offer to place a text link ad in my other domain’s homepage. They’d pay me 30 bucks per quarter just for placing their advertisement on my site.

— I haven’t received any reply yet with the mode of payment but considering the number of emails they receive and transact business with, I totally understand. I’m still giving it some time.

• Another one is I got an email offer from a new paid post site that’s still in the beta period. They were offering me 50 dollars to write 10 articles (5 dollars each) for their clients and they’d pay me within 24 hours once I’ve submitted the post.

— I was a bit skeptical at first because I didn’t know if it were real or not. I just made 5 opportunities out of the 10. Surprisingly, I received their paypal email payment within the next 4 hours! Shoot, I should’ve finished all the tasks, I’d be 25 dollars richer. Still, it’s better to get 25 than nothing.

I never expected I’d receive those emails because my blogs don’t have that high page rank values (0) and I got them through my Spam folder. But it’s nice since I feel proud of getting offers from advertisers. The only question I still have on my mind is how they were able to reach me through my email. But I’m still glad!

I feel guilty that I haven’t been able to update this blog as much. Maybe because I haven’t been earning as much? hehe. Ever since my Page Rank dropped, sheesh, I’ve been getting lesser opportunities from paid post sites.

But since I have another blog that I created and applied for different paid post sites, I’m getting the first-hand experience of anxiously waiting to get my blog approved in these opportunities. So far, there’s not much luck. But at least, I’m able to earn something. Again, it has everything to do with Google Page Rank.

Ever since my primary site’s PR was dropped to PR 0 from a PR 3, I’ve not been very happy with earning as much. I’m still in the process of retrieving and I’m wondering when the next Google PR update would be. dang.

Page Rank is Google’s way of measuring your page’s worth. It is an indicator of the value of a certain page in the world wide web.

It can be a combination of different factors on how it is being tallied and calculated, It may be because of the number of websites linking back to your site and the number of unique visitors (not spam!).

In a layman’s point of view, it shows that if you have a high page rank, then you have a high chance of being “WANTED” by different advertisers. Because if you have a high rank in the eyes of Google, then more so do advertisers want you more. It is represented with the numerical values 0 until 10; with zero being the lowest and of course, ten being highest.

Honestly, I don’t have that much understanding how to increase the page rank. However, to give you a clue, my site: soloflighted.com was still starting to generate some traffic; suddenly it went up to a page rank of 3! I was ecstatic. However, because I had to go somewhere during a holiday break, I was not able to update my blog. When I came back to check it, *&#^*&^$, it went down to being 0. Right now, I’m having a hard time recovering it.

What I use to check my page rank is prchecker.info. You might wonder when you check your blog/site’s rank by entering your URL there, it might get a result of NA. This is because your page is not yet indexed/recorded in Google; because most likely it’s still new, or nobody visits that page often enough to make a mark in the cyberworld.

Of course, if your site is still new, you won’t get a page rank that easily as it takes some time to generate traffic to your site. It doesn’t take an online university to figure that out. Just to leave a note, page rank is not the be all and end all, but I can say that it does have a huge impact if you have a high position.

But what I did to try to gain traffic from different sites out there to at least get a higher rank will be discussed next.