SocialSpark 2.0 with Google Analytics Integration

Written by: Justin Germino

July 12th, 2010 3:06 pm - 21 Comments

SocialSpark has been my favorite IZEA service for over two years and has just undergone such a major revamp of the application that it looks and feels like a whole new application all over again. Out of all my favorite ways to make money online, SocialSpark has earned me the most on average per month and per year consistently over the past two years by allowing me to do honest product reviews and be compensated for them.

First of all the best and most welcome feature change of SocialSpark: No more ITK Toolkit required, SocialSpark will now directly integrate with your Google Analytics account to track your site stats and report to advertisers so they can be sure they know what traffic your site gets when they advertise. Everyone who is a member of SocialSpark will need to login right away and sync their blogs with their Google Analytics accounts as well as do some other updates below in order to get your blogs relisted and active again in the system:

In addition to getting SocialSpark sync’d with your Analytics, you have to edit your “Direct Publishing” settings on your blog. With each blog you need to setup your PayPal Account, as well as selecting your blog platform (this is required):

You have to enter tags and a description to help advertisers find your blog and know what its about to determine if they want to advertise.

SocialSpark also now uses the same point system as WeFollow which is another service from IZEA where 1 point = 1 cent. You have to specify how many points each blog post is worth.

When you click next things get very different!

In previous versions of SocialSpark bloggers would have to write their own posts and insert the disclosure badges inside the posts, with the new SocialSpark 2.0 you actually grant SocialSpark access to “ATOM RPC Publish” directly to your blog so that when you write a paid opp, the SocialSpark service will directly insert all disclosure information and publish your post. This is both good and bad, this means the moment a post is published it is approved (no waiting up to two weeks for your paid opps to be approved after you already have them published). This also means that you are trusting SocialSpark to have “Publish” capability to your blog and can be a little scary and potentially jeopardize security if you are not careful.

The new version of SocialSpark completely craps the “blogger to blogger” social aspect of the system and does away with any ability to see other blogs registered in the system like PayPerPost does. There is no props, no dropping by and messaging other bloggers and the system is now just simply raw blog listings and advertisers having the ability to find and contact the bloggers to do paid reviews. This is a little sad for me honestly, I had amassed over 9,000 friends on SocialSpark and met many bloggers on SocialSpark who I helped assist and who have helped me when I first started. I did use SocialSpark as a little bit of a blogger networking site and that void will have to be filled by another site (I will mention what other sites I am now a part of).

Also SocialSpark seems to be shifting away from “taking opps” to making it to where advertisers contact you if they want to hire you. I don’t know at this time if there will still be an open opp market, but I do hope that there is. I also don’t think SPARKs will exist anymore in the new SocialSpark Version 2 and this again is a little sad as they are doing away with the service to bring bloggers together to network.

I do applaud IZEA for announcing that they will start weeding blogs out of the system and only allow quality blogs to stay active in the system however.

Right now the new version of SocialSpark is only open to bloggers and not advertisers just yet, they are working to add advertisers to the system and convert all open opps over to the new SocialSpark platform. You can read more about the SocialSpark 2.0 release from IZEA’s blog.

I can’t say I am not a little afraid of how the new system will work, SocialSpark has been my highest income earner for my blogs for two years and I am worried that the new system will cause my blogs to get less opps and not earn as much. This would be a huge hit, but it could go the other way as well, the new system using Google Analytics which has my site showing more traffic than their ITK Tools may help my blog qualify for more opps. Time will tell if the new SocialSpark 2.0 will be more profitable or less profitable than the old system for my own blogs.

What do my bloggers think about the new SocialSpark platform? As I don’t know much about the WeRewards application (I don’t have an iPhone, I can’t speak to the point system to say whether or not it is a good thing) Will iZEA give you the option to purchase things with points? That would be cool potentially, but as long as points translate to paypal cash it doesn’t matter if its points or cash in my book.

I also hope that IZEA retains the ability to donate some of your proceeds to charity, this was a very good feature of SocialSpark.

-Dragon Blogger

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Article Written by Justin Germino (1581 Articles Published)

Working in the IT Industry for over 10 years and specializing in web based technologies. Dragon Blogger has unique insights and opinions to how the internet and web technology works. An Avid movie fan, video game fan and fan of trying anything and everything new.

Follow Justin Germino on Twitter @dragonblogger

Shelley

I am a fairly new blogger and I am totally confused about all of this???

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Crystal

My blog is only just over 2 years old. I'm worried that the new system will not allow me to take as many opps as I am currently. SocialSpark has been my top money maker since I signed up just a few months ago. However, the system that IZEA was using to rank my blog didn't work at all - it showed that I had zero visitors per day! Maybe with correct traffic tracking I will get more opps? Only time will tell.

dragonblogger

That is the hope, that Google Analytics will provide better search metrics. What I miss is that you can't apply for Opps anymore just by meeting qualifications, advertisers have to come to you. I am hoping it shakes out well as I too really make alot of my blog earnings from SocialSpark.

Udegbunam Chukwudi@Make Money Online Nigeria

I created an author account for them only. That way they can only publish and manage their own posts ;-).

I've having issues locating the link to link Google Analytics with Social Spark. Can you help? :-(

It should be right under your homepage when you go to http://app.socialspark.com under your blog listed. There should be a sync to Analytics link. You can't see your analytics after you sync from SocialSpark, that is for advertisers to see your traffic.

Thanks man. I've found this. With regards to direct publishing, you forgot to link to http://izea.com/socialspark-2-0-direct-publishing/.
Cheers

I did link to the Direct Publishing post in my laster post about Direct Publishing, this post was created prior to that post being written.

Luqman @ Domain name registration

I just had about SocialSpark 2.0 in you blog today and it sound interesting, I am going to sign up for an account today.

The Pit

I absolutely hate Spark 2.0. It takes away my favorite aspect of the original SocialSpark (meeting and interacting with other bloggers, like you), and it looks like I might not have made the cut of "quality blogs". I've been with them for over a year and they don't even give suggestions on what I could do to be approved in the new system. That is screwed up.

I will miss the interactivity of bloggers, but now will be more active on other sites instead.

benwaynet

Why not create a separate wordpress user account for social sparks to publish as and set it as something other than author.
Then you have the ability to set those post in a pending state before they get published?

I was considering this, but this would basically "isolate" out sponsored posts and may be something against ToS, also since the new system is supposed to auto approve I imagine it would have to see the post live immediately to be able to approve for payment ,if it defaulted to payment it would put a delay or gunk up the approval process since it can't be confirmed live until the post is published.

BlazingMinds

Got the SocialSpark email earlier, looks pretty good, as with most people, I'm not too sure about the Direct Publishing, but as and when it goes live, they may add some more updates to make it a little more secure!

Dave Lucas

Thanks for the update! It's sometimes hard to keep up with changes being made to blogger's services and the various widgets and thingies we like to avail ourselves of!

Paul/ Entertainment tonight

I just receive their email today morning. I never really used them before.

Rebecca

I love SS and have been with them since the beginning. However, they want CONTROL over my blog?!?!!? NO WAY! I tried to sign up, but handing over my WP username and password is over the top. BAD MOVE.

I am a little bit concerned over how this works myself, I mean this clearly gives SocialSpark control to manually publish posts to your blog, so under abuse they could publish posts on your behalf. I know the reasons are to inject the disclosure badges, but this also may give less control for bloggers to disable plug-ins that might display ads on their blogs. I will try to contact IZEA and see if they can shed some more light on this.

Patrick

Thanks for the post. I've never really used Social Spark. I'm confused at to what is "Direct Publishing"? How does it work?

Don't worry! Found the answer on Ted Murphy's Blog at Izea.com.

IZEA Answers SocialSpark Direct Publishing Questions | Dragon Blogger says:

February 7, 2011 at 3:06 pm

[...] Ted Murphy the CEO of IZEA creator of SocialSpark, PayPerPost, WeRewards, InPostLinks, Sponzai and SponsoredTweets among other programs very quickly released an update on IZEA’s website to address the Direct Publishing questions people had about the new SocialSpark 2.0. [...]