A Public Service Announcement from Blackmarket Pies

Hiya, folks - you may have noticed that little bar at the bottom of your browser when you visit Blackmarket Pies these days. You may have even gotten a full-page ad that covered most of the screen, exhorting you to visit the web page for the Bloggers' Choice Awards. DO NOT PANIC. This is an ad that I have added to my humble little blog here in order to earn a little bit of cash to help me pay off some debts. The ads are courtesy a service known as SocialSpark, a service run by the company called Izea, whom you may have already heard about going under the name of Payperpost. They, incidentally, have sponsored this here post.

Whoa, whoa, whoa, you might be saying, hypothetical Keanu Reeves - what do you mean "sponsored?" Like, they paid you to write this? In a nutshell - yeah. Oh, don't look so offended. I would never compromise my integrity by posting about something that I did not agree with or support.



Social Spark is a site that pays you to draw people's attention to another's services via your blog. There's a bunch of services out there that will pay you to write a blog entry about a product or service. A lot of these are designed dishonestly - they will pay you to express a positive opinion, whether you've actually used their product/service or not, and they'll request that you refrain from telling people that you're advertising for them. Social Spark isn't one of those. Social Spark has a "Blogger Code of Ethics" that sets it apart from those other sites, ensuring that by using their service, you are not resorting to dishonest tactics, nor are you alienating your readers.

As you can see, Social Spark offers you a couple of options when it comes to turning your blogging hobby into a few extra dollars. I've chosen to go with "Blog Sponsorships" for now - those would be the full-screen ads and the bottom bar - because it is the least, shall we say, "touchy." Sure, it's right in your face, but if you're annoyed by it, then the bar is easy to ignore, and the full-screen ad is easily minimized.

Know this one thing, gentle reader: if you see a sponsored post on Blackmarket Pies in the future, know that I would never post something that I did not agree with. If you've read some of my posts in the past re:Steve Ditko, you might have noticed that I share his code of values. I will not compromise the integrity of my site by lying to you, my readers, about a product or service. Not these days. If the majority of my readers express a displeasure with the idea of paid-for posting, then I will have no choice but to keep it at a minimum, or to refrain from it altogether. But I hope that this little "Disclaimer" will allow you to continue to read, and by extension, support my site, even if you might see a "sponsored by" line affixed to any article. A blog cannot survive without readers, and so I put you ahead of any advertiser.

And, hey - if you're a blogger, go ahead and give Social Spark a whirl. You're bound to find something to help you out over there, whether it's blog sponsorship like I've used, sponsored posts for services that you'd like to support, or even just idea for posts - what Spcial Spark calls "Sparks." They might have paid me to post this, but they aren't paying me for referring you. And that's FACT.



So, Social Spark - transparent, tastes great, and less filling. We'll return to examining who's got more awesome power, Blue Devil or Speedball, tomorrow folks - stick around, I promise I won't sell-out completely.