There have been a lot of paid opportunities on my blog lately. These are all sponsored by Social Spark, as you can easily tell by the banners in each post. I apologize if they’re a little frequent and I hope to balance them out with more review content (I hope you enjoyed my last review) so here’s my review of Social Spark which will also explain why the posts are so common.

When I first started paid blogging, I signed up for a few services. I wasn’t always accepted and, when I was, the work wasn’t always consistent or even really worth the time I would spend writing the posts. PayU2Blog became my default service and I knew what to expect. I’d get 3-10 opportunities every week–on subjects that I could not choose–and they almost always paid $5 each. It wasn’t going to make me a millionaire but it was consistent and I only had to work the links into my regular posts, which I still liked.

In April or so, PayU2Blog suddenly stopped sending me any work and, although I contacted them, I never heard why. As far as I know, I wasn’t breaking any rules but I had begun to do more paid blogging for Social Spark and PayU2Blog is not a fan of Izea services. After being apart of the site for well over a year, opportunities were slowly trickling in. I have had no qualms writing for Social Spark for a couple of reasons.

• Social Spark usually pays at least twice as much per job as PayU2Blog. On average, I get almost 3 times per single post than I did with PayU2Blog and I’ve had some pay as much as $25 per 200 word post.
• The post subjects are much more interesting. I’m not just sticking random links into my posts about acne products; I am posting exclusively about some company, product, service or event and Social Spark gives helpful talking points so bloggers have an easier time writing posts. That’s kind of the point, though: bloggers help to create buzz about specific things.
• Social Spark emails me when I quality for an opportunity. Then, I can choose if I want to write it and reserve it. With PayU2Blog, I had to make post for all jobs, no matter the content. That was just the policy. I also love that, with Social Spark, I can reserve the opp and take a few days to write it.
• Social Spark requires a disclaimer, which is okay by me. It feels a lot more honest. PayU2Blog made me feel like I had to lie about my writing. It’s not a company that seems to have a lot of integrity. In fact, they’ve sent out a couple rounds of messages instructing bloggers to remove previous links from posts. I often got the feel that someone from PayU2Blog had a problem with some website that had purchased links and this was a passive aggressive way to get back at them. Whatever the issue, it should have been resolved without thousands of bloggers having to remove links.
• Social Spark has a better website. The design is more proffesional. It loads faster. It’s a more complete system. Bloggers can also become advertisers which is pretty awesome, in my book and there’s an internal blog rating system. You can vote or comment on others’ blogs and add friends, too. You can easily update information or add or delete blogs.
• Izea, Social Spark’s parent company, has a hardcore web precense. There are blogs and Twitter accounts that folks update frequently. Getting ahold of anyone at PayU2Blog is and has always been a pain in the ass. This is especially important when your system does not allow its users to automatically make changes to account details.

So, is there anything that’s less than stellar? Yes. While you can reserve opportunities, there doesn’t seem to be a page to access these opportunities if you navigate away. You must return to the opportunity page and request it once more. It would be nice to have a page to reference these reservations.

Additionally, while PayU2Blog pays bloggers every other week, you have to hit a $50 payout on Social Spark and actively request payment. Originally, this was an issue because I was only getting one opportunity every few months. It’s slightly less an issue with the frequency of opps I’m getting now. In addition to this, earnings are not eligible for cash out immediately after post approval.The cash is released 30 days after the blogger submits her post.

Initially, I was a bit confused about this. The account overview page display several different numbers. The Current Account Balance, denotes money that the blogger has earned and has been through final approval–after the 30 day period.Lifetime Money Earned its the total of all money–within the blogger’s account and previous payments–that has been through final approval. Finally, Pending Payouts denote money from opportunities that have not yet passed the 30-day mark. Thus, the account balance is part of lifetime money earned but pending payouts are not.

Bloggers can also see the values of their taken opportunities in the account section. Any posts that have reached the 30-day period will appear as “paid” but this does not mean that payment (via PayPal) has actually occurred. Opportunities that appear as “approved” in this list are still waiting the 30-day period and correspond with “pending payouts” on the finance page. Finally, opportunities that appear as “pending” have not yet been initially approved and do not appear on the finances page at all.

I type this as much for your benefit as for mine because part of my goal when writing this review was to better understand how things work myself. Social Spark is not a perfect system, as I think my post details, but it’s still leaps and bounds better than PayU2Blog in both function and money.