Some Needs Improvement Areas for IZEA Services
I am a big supporter of IZEA as a company that helps match bloggers with advertisers and earn money with their blogs in a legal and legitimate way. IZEA has always been pro disclosure, and whether you are a blogger who uses one or more of their many services they have something that anyone can find appealing. I have written several articles on SocialSpark alone including my tips for using SocialSpark to help bloggers get a head start in the system and accelerate their path to being eligible for blog opportunities.
IZEA offers SocialSpark, PayPerPost, InPostLinks, Sponzai and SponsoredTweets currently and I use all of the services but rarely actually do anything with InPostLinks.
Each of these websites and services has had a few posts on this blog and several of these are included in my Top Companies To Earn Money Blogging article that I wrote a few months ago. (A highly recommended read if you want to know which companies I have tried and what works the best for me).
I have been accused of writing nothing but positive and favorable reviews of IZEA services and wanted to write this article to show people that I am not blind to areas that need improvement to make bloggers lives a little easier and help them earn a little sooner. Below is Dragon Blogger’s top 5 items that IZEA should improve upon with their network of blogging services.
#1 – Combine all Earnings Into a Single Paying Site
IZEA reports only a single 1099 to bloggers from all of their sites, yet they treat each site separately forcing bloggers to have to earn $50 on each site before you can collect and pay out. This is inefficient and has left $41 dollars waiting in my Sponzai queue for months now where I have no access to cash out those funds. SocialSpark, Sponzai, InPostLinks, SponzoredTweets and PayPerPost should all deposit funds into a single master payment system so that your funds from any of the services can collect and pool. This way if you make $10 from each service you can cash out your $50 from the single source. This will allow bloggers to collect their earnings faster and reward bloggers for trying the services that don’t do so well and leave them with just $9 or $10 in earnings per month so they don’t feel that their time is wasted and they will never reach the $50 mark. IZEA already reports 1099 as a single company they should change the earnings system to match. There is no reason a database or system couldn’t be put together on IZEA.com that housed all the earnings and information from the other sites and consolidated this data and coordinated payouts and such.
#2 – Redo InPostLinks Again
InPostLinks was supposed to be a great idea and site where companies purchase backlinks from bloggers instead of reviews. Instead I am finding most advertisers are doing the “Backlink” purchases on PayPerPost which is a simpler and easier to use system. The InPostLinks system which is based on the old PayPerPost 3.0 is kludgy, slow and has the worst habit of not showing you what keywords the advertiser wants you to use until after you accept the assignment. This is horrible because you can get a terrible keyword for what looks like a product or service that would be a good content match for your blog. Top this off with the fact that payouts are from .50 to $1.50 it takes more time to accept the opp and submit it than it does to write the 50 word article and embed the keyword. IZEA should have started the new year by shifting everything on the InPostLinks system to PayPerPost or redesigned the system to be as simply and easy to use as PayPerPost. I understand that the Leads/Offers isn’t really designed for these type of opportunities but at least make the system easier to accept posts and show the keywords the advertiser wants before you force the blogger to accept the opportunity.
As mentioned many advertiser are just purchasing embedded keywords on PayPerPost now so it makes InPostLinks seem much less valuable. My prediction is that the system will eventually retire as every time I login weekly I see very few new opps and links offered.
#3 – Enhance Sponsored Tweets
Do you know how SponsoredTweets can be more valuable to local businesses? Allow location based services so you can find bloggers easily in Geographic locations and have them tweet your company information. Many Twitter users follow people in their local cities and states so Local Business can benefit from targeted advertisements based on location. Of course gigantic companies can have anybody blog about them, but a small time local business would have no benefit to broadcast to someone with 20k followers in New York when their business is only located in Arizona and doesn’t have a major web presence (like a local restaurant or pub). It would be a massive undertaking but taking a twitter account, scanning all of their followers and seeing what “location” their twitter account reaches could be hugely valuable as a marketing tool.
Thinking as an advertiser who runs a local business in say “Mesa, Arizona”, I wish I could purchase an advertisement and target all people who list “Mesa, Arizona” as their location to perhaps entice them to come out to my establishment. This geographical targeting is done on Google, Facebook, Myspace and virtually all other CPC program based sites, there is no reason why SponsoredTweets shouldnt implement as well. It could bring them more business and help bloggers in local markets make a little more from their twitter accounts because they may have high amounts of followers in certain geographic locations.
#4 – Expiring SocialSpark Opportunities
SocialSpark has one problem of leaving some opportunies alive in the Opps area indefinitely even if there is a wait status or the advertiser isn’t accepting or hiring any bloggers. This is especially true of Spark Opps. SocialSpark should implement some sort of expiration automatically of any opps in the marketplace which have not “hired” any bloggers in say 30 days, not approved any requests…etc. They should automatically be expired from the marketplace and advertiser has to create or “re-activate” the campaign again for it to show up. I think the market place is cluttered with opps from months and months ago, some of these opps are to promote holiday specials from last year which have no place being listed in the market place anymore.
#5 – Leverage RealRank Statistics for Sponzai and PayPerPost
Lets Face it, not every blog is a high pagerank or high Alexa rank but some blogs get more viewers and have a higher reach even with a lower pagerank. Sponzai and PayPerPost are very focused on PageRank, Alexa Rank and # of backlinks, but don’t really display what your site’s stats as far as visitors to advertisers. As an advertiser myself, I would rather see how many pageviews a site is getting rather them having a PR4 with only 25 visits per day. I would take a PR0 with 400 visits per day unless I was strictly in it for the PR juice backlink.
I know the benefits, you don’t need the IZEARanks ITK Script installed on your blog for PayPerPost and Sponzai like you do for InPostLinks and SocialSpark, but most bloggers are using these services in conjunction with the ones that require the ITK Script so you mine as well put more information into the fingertips of your bloggers. This also opens up advertisers to see the “top” categories and such on other sites like SocialSpark and helps advertisers find popular sites in these categories based on viewership not intangible site metrics.
Summary:
In summary I have listed my 5 top improvements I would make to some of IZEA’s services if I were in charge of development for the applications, but there are others of course and you can submit feedback and improvement requests to IZEA on GetSatisfaction which I have. For other users of these services what other areas would you improve upon, what are your biggest peeves with the IZEA blogging services?
Update:
- Crystal over at Just A HouseBear writes about what she would change with SocialSpark and other paid blogging platforms, and I do agree that opening a support ticket is a little cumbersome with SocialSpark compared to some other sites.
- You can also read over at Prowler Loves about their improvement idea’s for SocialSpark and PayPerPost.
-Dragon Blogger
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well, i've been with izea for the past 4 years now, since the original ppp (or inpostlinks as they call it now) - they were all great back then, with TONS of opps available, and i used to fire up my ppp account and diligently wait for advertisers to 'drop' these opportunities at the marketplace.
and since ppp became izea, and underwent countless of changes more than a year ago, everything went downhill every since - couldn't even make a decent income from any of the platforms. and to make matters worst - 2011 is the WORST YEAR ever, as there aren't any decent opps available at all!
and you are RIGHT - why the hell would IZEA have countless of separate platforms, which makes checking out the $$$ super inconvenient. wouldn't it be wiser if they could integrate everything? When PPP was at its peak 2-3 years ago, the platform has everything - sponsored posts/sponzai/link only, and they spoilt everything by creating separate platforms, and now they are rethinking to re-integrate everything?
perhaps ted should do more thinking before 'implementing' these big changes (and then taking all the trouble reverting/re-integrating the platforms – if it ever materializes)? or is he just another capitalist who thinks nothing more of making $$$ for his investors, and in the pretext of ‘caring’ for his bloggers/dedicated advocates by holding flashy events like IzeaFest?
Well, I’m done blogging for izea and will never promote this company to any of my peers ever – unless they come up with something better…..
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