When I started working for IZEA a little over a year ago I didn’t have a blog. Not to say I didn’t have many web sites and was marketing those, I just didn’t have a personal blog to speak of. Rather quickly after starting with IZEA I started Tech Raving: to test code; to begin blogging about *JavaScript*; technology stuff when I could.

Pre-SocialSpark I had a hand full of visitors each day and even a comment here or there. Mainly the visitors came from those individuals I meet in the forums at IZEA.  I guess I had made enough splash on the intertubes because I got Google rank spanked without a single sponsored post by any company. Apparently just the mention of PayPerPost made Google quake in jealousy. To be fair I shouldn’t say it wasn’t just PayPerPost that lead to the spank as I had a few third party widgets that I found could have been the cause.

When SocialSpark went into alpha release and new users started to trickle in, my daily visitors started to increase. That’s easily attributed to the fact that only a limited number of users were involved and they were checking out the other blogs in the system. So to use that as a gauge would be inaccurate of me to report to you.

SocialSpark has been in Beta now for only a few days and if the MyBlogLog widget tells me anything then it’s that I am getting visitors. Before alpha it may have had a new user once a week, now it’s about every two days. Now I know that’s only one yardstick to measure by and my other stats programs tell me the same thing, visitors are increasing even as the number of members to SocialSpark has increased.

Taking a step back for a paragraph, under the PayPerPost system I could not take any posts. Even when the paintball opp came out that I had a huge interest in; I could not. Now with SocialSpark I can take the spark opportunities to my hearts content, although I’m not sure if I can make any at the moment. Since I love building widgets and plugins I can finally recognize other authors of the same who create SocialSpark sparks, such as owencutajar who also creates Wordpress plugins as well as myself.

Since there is more to me than just JavaScript and coding, I am going to stand up a new blog just so I don’t dilute this site. YES! After a year of blogging it’s time to have multiple blogs; and isn’t that what it’s all about in terms of SEM? Niche systems. Saying that I have a blog in x category and being able to check out like interest blog in my category leads to an expansion of friends.

Even if you don’t find an opportunity to take at SocialSpark the system is designed to build on other bloggers. That is were Sparks come in. Straight to the quick, how many goth blogs do you find in PayPerPost? I’ve alway found that as a deficiency in PayPerPost, yet I’ve found one in SocialSpark already and befriended them. More new users are coming in rapidly. If they create a spark asking for a site review, product review, and what not, I can take it. There is a paranormal video site that fits in with what I was doing with RiffRaffRadio (old site of mine) and doing a spark to boot. Where is that in PayPerPost?

Trust me as someone who see’s behind the curtain to SocialSpark there are others in it that think, and have sites, like you do.

Do not fear to tread there, since you still be accepted from someone. I am so relieved that SocialSpark truly incorporates the entire genre of blogs and bloggers. Let’s keep it realistic, there are exceptions of course and I mean that as saying there are laws in this country as to what you can display on the internet and SocialSpark can not accept those.

I as a developer for IZEA, and a lone wolf programmer that usually kept to himself, I did not foresee the impact that SocialSpark would bring to unknown blogs such as Tech Raving. Trust me I was skeptical as well, pre-alpha, and still am still in some respects. Yet the facts remain that in a month I had the traffic developing to cause me to consider, and soon to create, a new blog for me and not just the technology that I use. This blog was nothing more that a test bed for my code and general brain dump of a few posts. Within a month and without any marketing it has taken on more visitors due to being in SocialSpark than just being a regular blog within the vast sea of the interwebs.

I am scooter on the IZEA boards.
I am scooter on  SocialSpark.
I am Scott Krutsinger on Zookoda
I work for IZEA.

Just so you know, this is truly what I feel and have put together outside of any IZEA requirements. Feel free to drop me a private message on the forums. Within SocialSpark feel free to leave a comment or let me know of any related sparks you create!

Tags: IZEA, PayPerPost, SocialSpark, Zookoda

Since I’m not a visual designer I am forced to getting themes from other places. You’ve probably noticed that several weeks ago I did just that. An unfortunate side effect is that the posts wouldn’t display properly and no paragraph breaks. Technically they were there. Well I traced down the culprit and it was a stylesheet entry the designer used. All better now.

I haven’t had much time to post here as Argus is keeping me extremly busy at the moment. As a matter of fact this is my second weekend in a row that I’ve spent completly in front of the computer. As much as I’m wanting the November unveiling at PostieCon so I can get some down time, I’m also proud of being a part of this. Argus is huge both in form (programming) and function (for the users).

Years ago I had an idea to create a link directory site so I did some research on what to use. I came across Link Management Assistant by Duncan Carver . I just wanted a link site to help market client web sites I worked with and possibly turn a dollar or two from the cheap featured/sponsored listings. So Great Back Links was born.

Link Management Assistant wasn’t difficult to set up or to skin but was difficult to make programming changes. Not that I was allowed to make changes. In order to get the software which is free you need to first register with your email so you can get marketing emails. Basically Link Management Assistant helps the author to gather for email marketing.

A year ago my hosting company changes the linux distro on their serves and Link Management Assistant stopped working because of the Apache configuration so Great Back Links went down. I was actually upset as marketing strategies to promote Great Back Links was beginning to work but I also needed to concentrate on other areas.

This weekend I decided to find other Link Directory software. Using an old friend SourceForge I did a search. I came up with two possible applications and tried openLD first. I didn’t try the second because openLD is exactly what I needed. It has captcha and PayPal capabilities that work, and I didn’t have to hack in. I operates will well but just looking at it to re-theme it I found that it’s going to be a bear.

So here’s the link http://www.greatbacklinks.com go ahead and leave your link. I know it looks plain at the moment, just not enough hours on the weekends. Let me know what your link is and I’ll up-grade you to sponsored status for free. I totally started a fresh database without the old links so I want to build it quickly.