socialspark

Is it time for a new coffeemaker?  Why not lay it away?  Yeah you remember what layaway is don’t you?  Back before we all had credit cards it’s how my mom bought all of our Christmas presents.

In case you don’t know how it works –  basically, you go do all of your shopping as you normally would but you don’t take it to the normal check out lines.  Instead you go to the layaway counters and they take all of those goodies away from you!  Now now, calm down!  Here’s the think, you pay then a fraction now and they keep your items safe for you.    Then you keep making payments, every two weeks until your purchases are paid off, and they give them to you!  Simple eh?  Much nicer than a credit card.  Now there is a small fee to set it up (currently $5)  but you avoid interest fees (what are those now, like 20 some % anymore?).   You don’t have to hide your Christmas purchases for as long as, hey, they’re hiding them for you if you plan it just right (that’s how my mom always did it).

You can get yourself that new coffeemaker at the current sale price but pay it off over two months, or, ok fine… Buy the kids that must have Christmas toy.  Did they really earn it?

Want to learn more? Click here: Kmart Layaway for the Holidays

Since you can’t drink coffee ALL of the time… Okay, okay you can, but I don’t recommend it. Me? I’m fond of I dunno, stuff like the necessities like water too. Living in California means one has to also think of wine as well. And if wine is one of your addictions and you can pull yourself away from the coffee long enough then you might want to check out CA Wine Club. They offer a wide variety of wines, both red and white, many that you cannot find in stores. Delivered straight to your doorstep. Oh and they’re so sure you’ll love them that they have an offer to sweeten the deal — The first month is on them though you do, of course, pay shipping. Details can be found here. You’ve really got nothing to lose. You can cancel at any time. If you like them you can choose to have wines delivered monthly, every other month, or quarterly. They’ll also send you an issue of Uncorked Magazine and offer discounts of 50% on re-orders of your favorites. The club owners hand pick the wines — as in they visit the wineries, meet the owners, taste test them, and select only the best to sell to you. They guarantee 100% satisfaction.

I think if you need a break from your coffee, this might be the thing that will do it for you… well this and water! Don’t forget that too!

So I found this really great website I want to tell you about and… Wait…. Why should I be writing about it for free? Isn’t my time worth something? Oh, what’s that? SocialSpark thinks it is anyway. What’s SocialSpark? It’s a way to connect with other bloggers and with find money making opportunities both. Wait… no… Not those usual cheesy money making opportunities promising you miracle riches like you’ve fallen for in the past. Nothing that will make you rich, nothing that requires you to join 50 other websites to make $5. Not THAT kind of money making opportunity.

This is different, it’s designed for bloggers. It works something like this:

• Log in
• Browse Opportunities
• Find one that interests you and that you qualify for
• Sign up for it
• Get approved to take part
• Post in your blog
• Submit your post
• Reap the rewards that the opportunity promised you!

YOU control what opportunities you take part in, if none interest you, check back, there are new ones being posted regularly. Some pay you, some offer you a link back (so that their site and yours both get some new traffic), and a few (like some charities) are just there to inspire you to write and to spread the word about good causes.

If you click on the screen shot for a full view, you’ll get a better idea of what I mean.

Like my *cough* beautiful hand drawn arrows pointing out the main features you need to know about? You’ll also notice (hey I ran out of room for more arrows) that there are different types of opportunities. Sponsored posts = what I’ve mainly been talking about here and are the main type of opportunities that you’ll find (aka a blog post, which you’ll be paid for). Blog Sponsorship = a pop up banner or banner ad that runs on your site for a set number of days and is paid out based on the number of days it ran. Sparks = non paying opportunities (like the link back posts I mentioned).

But hey those folks are SocialSpark aren’t sneaky nor are they pushy salesmen/women, they believe in honesty and they want YOU to be honest too. No one is going to read your blog if they think you’re full of it or hiding the fact that you’re being paid for a post. Notice the sponsored by banner at the bottom of this post? They require that! So SocialSpark expects you to be honest about your affiliation with them.

Still sponsored or not you should be posting REAL opinions. As these opportunities are ones that you CHOOSE to be a part of, you should be choosing because you want to write about them. This blog is about coffee, I’d not choose to take part in an opportunity about a website that sells life insurance. But I might take part in one about recipes if it had a really good coffee drink *grin*

Your membership is public, no one can accuse you of hiding that you’re affiliated with them. And it’s 100% search engine friendly!

You really can’t lose. A community that helps get your blog more traffic and makes you new friends. Ideas for blog posts. And opportunities to get paid for blog posts about things you’d blog about anyway.

Why are you still reading? Go sign up already.