Sphinn, pronounce it “spin”, is a social media network focused in the topic of Internet Marketing News. It’s designed to search and meet marketers, to allow you to share and discover news stories, read and take part in discussions, discover events of interest and network with others. It works very similar to digg, if you see a new story or discussion you like, you can vote for it using the blue Sphinn icon. Just click on the words “Sphinn It,” and you’ve cast your vote — the words will change to “Sphunn” to indicate that your Sphinn was registered. Voting — called Sphinning here — is also an easy way to keep track of stories for future reference, since everything you Sphinn for is automatically recorded within your profile. Want to know more about a story? Click on the number in the icon, and you can see a full description about it plus any comments.

The topics are either news stories that have been submitted or discussions that have been started by Sphinn members. To view topics, select the “Topics” tab at the top of Sphinn pages. By default, you’ll see Hot Topics, but you can switch to What’s New view. More about these views:

• Hot Topics : These are the most popular topics as voted by Sphinn members over the past three days. If you want, just the “Sort items by” links on the right-hand side of a Hot Topics page to narrow Hot Topics to today, yesterday, the current week or for the entire month.
• What’s New: These are topics recently submitted by Sphinn members. Like one of them? Click on the Sphinn button to vote for it. Topics that get enough Sphinns can move to Hot Topics.
• Greatest Hits: These are all topics submitted to Sphinn over time, listed in order of how popular they are.

You can also find those and more topics by categories, you’ll see categories listed in the top of Sphinn’s pages, such as “Yahoo” or “Searching.” Select a category to narrow topics to just those areas. Each category also has subcategories, allowing you to focus even further.

And as every social media network, in Sphinn you will find a Network section. The Network page is where you can search for people in addition to finding them through news stories and discussions. When you find someone, you can establish a relationship with them, you can have one of three relationships with other members. These are:

• People You’re Stalking (Stalkees): See someone doing something interesting and want to keep track of them? Stalk them! Why bother? For one, it lets you send private messages to them, handy if they don’t publish their regular email. For another, they’ll see you’re stalking them — which is a first step to them possibly making you a friend.
• Stalkers: These are people who find you interesting. It’s a one-way relationship, at this point. But you have the option to make it two-way. Use the “add as friend” option listed for any stalker to transform them into a friend.
• Friends: These are people who you’ve either stalked and he/she decided to make you a friend, or who were stalking you and you decided to make a friend. In the future, we plan special ways for you to share things with your friends. For now, just feel good that you can have some. Go make some!

Tools & Toys

This is a community specially focused on bloggers, and thats why they have a series of tools for all us!. In the tools page you will find some tools very useful to you, no matter what platform you use. Those are the tools provided by Sphinn to your blog:

• Sphinn Live!
• Sphinn: Submit Via Bookmark.
• Sphinn Button For Your Site.
• Sphinn Custom Buttons For Any Blog.
• Sphinn Buttons Especially For Wordpress.
• Sphinn Buttons Especially For FeedBurner.
• Sphinn For Facebook.
• Sphinn For Macs.

Sphinn is a good social media network, and its better if you blog about the Internet Marketing niche. In addition, this community is very young, that means you don’t need to have thousands of sphinns to get listed in the Hot Topics list, just with ~50 sphinns is enough to be the first in this list, something impossible in digg.

If you are not in Sphinn you can join here!

BlogsVertise is another way to earn cash and generate extra income from your blog. Their Advertisers want YOU to mention and talk about their websites products and services in your blogs and journals. They want the publicity, the exposure, the Buzz! that online bloggers and internet journals can generate for their web site products and services. In exchange blogsvertise pays YOU in paypal per task/blog entry, for writing / talking about / mentioning their website in your blog.

Something the most of people skip when they sign up in a program are the terms of service. I will be honest, I joined to BlogsVertise within reading the terms and I was thinking that BlogsVertise could be scam. Why I though BlogsVertise could be Scam ? Thats because I posted some campaigns the last year, ending November and Starting December more and less, and in about 2 weeks I get that posts approved. So then I read the terms and I found this:

• Blogsvertise payments are made after 30 days your assigned task has been approved.

I pissed when I read that but I wait the stipulated time. Do you know when I received my payment? this week!! just like they say “payments are made after 30 days your assigned task has been approved” I received an email from paypal just 30 days after the posts were approved.

Sign up to BlogsVertise!

Moral: BlogsVertise is not scam, it’s just another program to get an extra income from your blog but is not the fastest on the payments. If you want quality and speed on the payments, you can consider joining to Smorty.

Yesterday I was dropping some E-Cards when I found a nice contest on Road 2 Blogging dot com. The contest it’s about what you have learned in 2007 that will help you to reach a higher blogging level on 2008. I found this contest useful and I think you can be interested to join:

The Prizes

• 5 125×125 ad banners throughout the month of February on road2blogging.com

• 1,000 EC Credits

• $30 cash

How To Win

• 1 entry – Subscribe to the blog’s RSS feed by email (current subscribers entered)

• 3 entries – put up a post on your blog writing about what you’ve learned the most from blogging in 2007 and how this will help you for 2008.

Deadline

The competition will run until midnight (EST) on Monday the 28^th January – so you have just under two weeks to enter. The winners will be drawn on Tuesday afternoon on the 29^th and announced in a blog post. Winners will be chosen at random by random.org.

What I learned in 2007 and will help me in 2008 in my blogging level?

The last year was great for me, principally because I became a blogger. When you decide to create a blog in addition of the will, you must to have the determination to keep it up to date. Many people who want to be bloggers and have no such determination, write as crazies the first week, even the second. But the passage of time, when they have 1 or 2 months, stop writing with the same frequency. Gradually they bore what they do ( perhaps because they blog for money or just do something anyhow not fascinated ) and they sets aside the blog and ignore it completely. Last year I was learning about marketing, seo and blogging tips, and actually I keep doing it, this world never stop. However I was posting everything I learned and I will continue doing it, thats the point .

I learned the importance of posting frequency and that will help me to write better posts depending if I’m animated or not, I could take day free of blogging and accumulate the content to write the next day with more quality.

The last year I was a little far from social media networks, I considered it a waste of time. Big mistake! ending 2007 I learned that social media can be a powerful way to expand your network and get tons of readers. Once I created this blog, I was using social media networks and I’m getting good results of them and I think I can improve that results with more dedication.

There is some many things I could quote from the last year and you can find it in every post I wrote. Everything I learned I posted for you to share ideas, and I hope continue providing you my learnings and experiences in the blogging world.

Today I sign in my Bidvertiser publisher account and I saw a new option…Do you remember the topic about the ads on feeds by bidvertiser? well they developed a plugin for Wordpress allowing you integrate the BidVertiser CPC ads in your RSS/ATOM feeds.

This plugin is only available for BidVertiser’s Publishers and it includes unique identification info for each publisher. This plugin should only be downloaded from your BidVertiser control panel, after registering your feed address.

Installation:

1. Download the file BidVertiserFeedAds.php & copy it to /wp-content/plugins
2. Activate the plugin through the ‘Plugins’ menu in WordPress
3. Watch the ads display in your feeds.

Note - to avoid unwanted updates by the various feed readers, the BidVertiser ads will only be displayed in feeds that will be posted after the installation date of the plugin.

Also, they are developing tools for FeedBurner and Blogger. To Feedburner they are developing a solution to allow you to keep your Subscribers Count and feed address. To Blogger will be a solution to embed the BidVertiser ads in your feed’s footer.

If you do not have a BidVertiser publisher account, click here to open one.