Pinterest Weekly Roundup: The Blog-Building (Bl)Edition

March 31, 2012 By Leave a Comment

I have a very exciting announcement to make! As of yesterday, Bellesouth has more than 5,000 unique views per month!

This is kind of where I reach that area in-between Social Media Indie Rockstar and Social Media Major Label Debut. But it is a major accomplishment for bloggers, and it has NOT been an easy road.

As I told you  many moons ago, I started working with a small group of bloggers who have been seriously devoted to building better blogs. Our group has a board on Pinterest, and I’d like to share some of the members’ pins where we’ve found inspiration to work harder and finally feel that you really like us!

First, here’s an infographic found and posted by my dear friend Misty at CEO of Me, Inc. It helps you survive the new Facebook timeline!

We LOVE infographics, so here’s another one on the magical world of Guest-Posting, discovered by Beth at The Catholic Couponer:

By the way: I’m looking for guest bloggers for a once-a-week “Open Mic Night.” I want to give some great bloggers and other creative types to do something a bit different from what they normally do for a living. No selling, no affiliate links and no spamminess. Looking for homegrown creativity here. If interested, email bellesouthblogs (at) gmail dot com.

 

Here’s one I found called The Legal Guide for Bloggers. LOTS of great stuff for bloggers on how to protect yourself, your individual property and your business.

Source: eff.org via Bellesouth on Pinterest

And here I found some creative-commons images of women in art as bloggers. This is great if you’re writing about girl bloggers and don’t have the money for a stock image. Just be sure to give credit where it’s due!

That’s it for this week – and seriously, thank you for ALL the love and support. I really mean it. Now I’ve gotta get 10,000 uniques, so let’s keep helping one another!

Filed Under: Follow your bliss, Get Paid to Blog, Pinterest Weekly Roundup

Five Smartphone apps that really pay you

January 19, 2012 By 12 Comments

The Smartphone has enabled brands to connect with people and provide incentives more easily than ever. There is a HOST of smartphone apps out there that promise you quick cash and rewards and often end up being a real hassle to deal with. I’m here to take out the hype and share with you some smartphone apps that really have earned me money, gift cards and prizes.

I earn them my checking in to local businesses, scanning products in the store, endorsing my favorite products and even just walking into stores.

I’ve been using smartphone reward apps for almost two and a half years, and here are some of the best ones I’ve come across. I use these on my Samsung Galaxy S II Skyrocket with Android 2.3.5 (Gingerbread), so your mileage may vary.

Please note that I have included my referral links with all of these products. These really are great products and I have spent a lot of time working with them to find the best out there, so if you want to sign up, please do so through the links n this post. In return, you can invite your friends and readers and get referral bonuses as well!

1. CALYP – Once called Blue Calypso, CALYP (pronounced “k-lip”) is a program you can use on your PC or smartphone to endorse products on Twitter, Facebook, email, text messages or your blog.

Getting a CALYP account is easy. You can set up an account through Facebook or Twitter. Immediately you’ll see a list of a few dozen products you can choose to endorse. Simply pick out a product, tap the “share” button, and decide which of your social networks you’ll send it to.

The more online places you endorse, the greater your earnings will be. You’ll always earn -something – and instead of being paid per click, you just get paid per share.

CALYP will send you payment via a debit card, and your earnings will be deposited once a month. They sent my debit card this week; I plan to use it to buy Amazon gift certificates or even use as rainy-day money. You can also level up and get more money per share, along with  additional perks, which get you discounts at all kinds of places. Right now I’m easily making 80 cents for every share, which gets me some solid, extra pocket money once a week.

The good:  This is, by far, my FAVORITE rewards app. The products available for endorsing are QUALITY products. You will not be sending out messages telling people how to get white teeth, gain 10 jillion followers in a day, or about the latest Acai-Pomegranate-Magic Potion that all the talk show hosts are using. Also, you aren’t given incentives for additional points by downloading adware-filled apps or signing up for any programs. You just endorse products you like and share them with your followers.

Products I’ve endorsed through CALYP include: Dingo rawhides, Blue Buffalo dog food, L’Oreal and the latest album from DEVO. Since you can only endorse four products a day, it’s a guarantee that you’ll be able to find four things you use every day that you will be proud to endorse.

The bad: CALYP is still kind of new, and I’ve found it to be buggy at times on my smartphone. However, the team has AWESOME tech support and will quickly help you if you have a problem. The good outweighs the bad on this one a thousandfold. To get started with Calyp, visit here.

2. WeReward: This is a fun Smartphone app from the folks at IZEA, one of the top sponsored-content companies in the world. WeReward is like FourSquare, except checking in can actually earn you money. You can also fill out very brief surveys to earn, and you can also take photos of yourself in stores or restaurants and with products to earn. It’s kind of like a brand scavenger hunt! It’s very fun, and I’ve earned more than $300 from them.

The good:  You can rack up points and cash them out VERY quickly. Each point you receive is worth a penny, and once you reach $10, you can immediately cash out your earnings through Paypal.

The bad: Some people think this is bad, but I don’t: any IZEA product requires you to submit your social security number. This is bona fide income, and if you earn $600 or more from IZEA during the year you will get a tax form and you will need to file it as income. I actually find peace of mind with this, because it lets me know that IZEA is playing fairly in the game. To download WeReward for your Android or iPhone, go here.

3. Shopkick:  This is a fun app that rewards you for scanning products in store and even walking into stores! It also includes coupons that the cashier can scan from your phone’s screen. The interface is cute and simple and the app has never closed on me, and I’ve earned gift cards from Target and Best Buy just for scanning.

The Good: The prizes are great! You can win gift cards to Best Buy, Macy’s, Target, Old Navy and a whole bunch of other places. Also, you can register your VISA with shopkick so you can earn points for purchases in certain stores.

The Bad: Shopkick has a lot of bells and whistles and pointless badges that take your point-earning time away. I’ve also had difficulties with the walk-in, sometimes having to walk in and out of a store two or three times to get my kicks. Also, it can sometimes be really difficult to scan products in store, either because the lighting is wrong, the bar code or QR is difficult to get to, or a number of other reasons. But the app works perfectly more often than not, and if you have a great smartphone, you should have very few problems. To join Shopkick, go here.

4. Checkpoints: This is another scan-to-earn app. There are no walk-in points, but for scanning products in-store, you can earn points and coins to use to play one of two games. The games can allow you to win extra points, and you can use your points to make donations to your favorite causes, or get airline miles, gift certificates or other prizes. You can also download apps to earn more coins.

The good: This is the only rewards app JUST for your smartphone (at least to my knowledge) that gives out Amazon gift cards. I actually cannot remember the last time I have used my own money to add to my Amazon balance, because I keep earning gift cards from Checkpoints, Swagbucks and other places online.

The bad: The “Easy points” section of the app allows you to download games and apps to earn extra coins. The main problem is that many of these “easy points” are riddled with adware. However, in most cases you can just open the app once and then uninstall it to get your points. You can opt not to download these extra programs, and checkpoints, in and of itself, just has ads in the app, no surprise pop-ups. It’s worth it to me to earn the extra Amazon cash. To join Checkpoints, click  here and use the code “bellesouth” to start off with some extra points.

5. Swagbucks Search Swidget and Swagbucks TV Mobile: LOVE these two apps because it makes earning a lot easier. I use swagbucks as my default search engine on my phone now. It’s not a browser add-on; it’s basically just a widget you place on one of your screens to search just as you would with Google. Essentially it’s a shortcut to the swagbucks search engine from your phone. The Swagbucks TV Mobile app allows you to watch all those swagbucks videos on your phone. You can even set it to stream continuously, put the phone down for a little while and in no time you’ve got more points in your account! Swagbucks is an awesome way to earn Paypal cash, gift cards and prizes. I can’t think of a shopping blogger who doesn’t use it. If you don’t have an account, sign up here.

I know having a smartphone is expensive, but when you combine these programs, it really does make it easy for your smartphone to pay for itself! These are all paying you for doing things you would do anyway – shopping, searching, walking into stores, playing games. I hope I’ve provided you with some great tools to get started and find new ways to pay for your stuff!

Are there any smartphone rewards programs you use? I’d love to know!

Filed Under: Consumer Tips, Earn Rewards, Get Paid to Blog, Get Paid to Tweet, Pay Your Bills, Rebates, Reviews, Saving Money, Smartphone Apps - Earn Cash or Rewards, Technology Tagged With: , ,

My blog is not free advertising space

December 7, 2011 By 6 Comments

Are you being thrown crumbs for your work?

If you make a living as a review blogger like I do, chances are you’ve partnered with Word-of-Mouth marketing outfits that ask you to promote brands without guaranteed compensation.

In some cases, if you write a blog post, you’ll be entered into a drawing with a bunch of other bloggers for a $50 gift card.  In some cases, you won’t be compensated at all; the offers that arrive in your inbox will say something like “We’d love for you to share this with your readers” and a request to disclose where you obtained the material for your post.

With my new site comes a new resolution: No more free rides. I even have a list of questions that must be answered when deciding whether or not to endorse someone.

What type of compensation is offered? Compensation comes in many forms, from coupons for free products, to samples, to autographed copies of some self-published book that is tainted with spelling and grammatical errors. And then, of course, there’s money. It’s up to me to decide whether or not the time I spend marketing their products is worth the compensation I am offered. I’ve been paid in food, gift cards and greeting cards, and that’s worth it to me.

Compensation can also come in the form of trade; for instance, last year I promoted a friend’s novel, and in return he linked to me, and he interviewed me for his blog. Even though no money or products were involved, we worked together to draw in new readers. The benefit is additional traffic and more subscribers, which ultimately lead to bigger and better opportunities for both of us.

If a company is providing you no compensation for your work,  they are taking advantage of you. They know that people pay attention to you, will share your links and talk about their product.
How much time will I spend on this? Right now I can think of one blogging community that sends out a lot of opportunities for you to promote products, and while not compensating you, they’ll enter your name in a drawing for a $50 gift card. If you’ve spent four hours promoting various products and never won a gift card, you have already exceeded your value, and they’re taking advantage of you.

Are they going to help promote my blog? If the company or brand is linking back to you, retweeting and sharing your links and sharing your content with a massive audience, it could be a very good relationship. You’re essentially trading free advertising for free advertising.

But if they aren’t paying you, promoting you or bringing you a return on your investment, it’s time to move on.

Self-employment requires a lot of investment. For the type of work I do, I have to have a smartphone, an Internet connection and a quality PC. I have to keep track of my income and am responsible for determining state and federal withholding. Let’s not even mention the education I received.

My work has value. If it didn’t, I wouldn’t have the following I have. I have a little message for brands: asking me to promote your business while providing nothing in return is equivalent to asking for free ad space in the newspaper or free airtime from a television station. Bloggers deserve better.

If you are a writer, focus on your writing, your relationships with your audience, and the quality of your content. You do not need to work for free to have something in your “portfolio.” 

This phenomenon of wanting something for nothing is extremely popular in the media industry. I’ve come across people who felt entitled to a free full-page ad in the newspaper, people who called me as a reporter and were upset that I didn’t include everything they said, and now large brands who think it’s A-OK to let me promote their stuff for free.

Before I leave, I will link to this lovely exchange from b27-6′s David Thorne, who is a champion of the I’m-not-gonna-work-for-free cause. May include foul language.

Please design a logo for me. With pie charts. For free.

I hope some other bloggers and other freelancers chime in on this one. Have you been burned by a client or expected to promote a brand without guaranteed compensation?

Filed Under: Get Paid to Blog, Pay Your Bills Tagged With: , ,
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