My Blog Engage Bonanza

It is with both sheer joy and a bit of sadness that I must announce that I will not be playing in the giveaway world as much as I have been for the past year.  The reason is that I’ve been offered a position on the staff at BlogEngage.com.  Though I’ve known about this bit of awesomeness for a while now, I wasn’t able to announce it until the site owner, Brian Belfitt, made it official on the site.  The new Staff Announcement went live today and I am now the Chief Editing Officer and Content Manager for the site.  I’m as happy as a catfish in a mud hole.  LOL

But, with this being a pretty big deal, I’ll be spending a lot of time one the site.  This isn’t just some site needing someone to keep up with things, this is an actual paying gig that requires me to do some actual work.  I can dig it.  That means no more playing around with the giveaway girls, or at least not as much.  I’ll still be checking out some of my more favoritest places and of course, keeping up with the book stuff and talking about fiction.  I still have a book to finish for Heather Cashman, which by the was has made me cry 3 different times and I just over half way done.

For those wh0 have never heard of Blog Engage, it’s an amazing place where bloggers come together and check out each others posts.  Blog posts are submitted to the site and other members vote on them.  If a post gets 11 or more votes, it becomes a published piece and that’s where everyone wants to be.  It’s fun and it can bring a lot of traffic to your blog.  The site also has their own blog, which is where I’ll be doing my thing.  There’s a lot of valuable information on this site, all geared toward helping our fellow bloggers.

And don’t worry, I won’t be giving up on giveaways altogether.  I would have a meltdown if I could enter a book giveaway or 2.  I’ll keep you all up to date and I still have my own sites to run.  Won’t be giving up on those either.  So stick around and see what we can cook up.  This is going to be a fun and bumpy ride, but that’s what makes it so interesting.

Get Paid To Write At Bukisa

I found a new site where you can write for money.  The site is called Bukisa, and it seems pretty good so far.  It’s a lot like Helium, as you get paid based on the number of views to your work.  However, through this site, your earnings are also based on the site’s rating index.  For example, if the site’s index is at 4 and you’re content receives 1,000 unique views, you receive $4.

There are a lot of different topics to choose from, as well as different publication choices, such as text articles or videos.  Text articles must be at least 250 words in length, but no more than 1500 words.  Videos should be no more than 100mb in size.  If you’d rather add an audio clip or a slide show presentation, these options are also available.

Due to the fact that this site is still rather new, there are still some bugs that need to be worked out here and there.  For the most part, however, I’m pretty happy with this place.  I have read some negative press about Bukisa, like you have to give up your rights to your work once published on the site.  According to the site’s CTO, Simon Gelfand, this simply is not true.  Everything you post on the site remains your property.

Minimum payout is set at $10, and is paid through PayPal.  Payments are sent within 30 days of whatever month you reach payout level.  Basically, it means that if you reach payout on the 14th of December, you’ll get paid by the end of January.  Site revenues are made through a wide array of venues, including text ads, banner ads, and email marketing, just to name a few.

I can’t say whether this site is going to last or not, but from what I’ve seen so far, I’m pretty excited.  I’ve published 2 different articles on the site and have already had quite a few views.  As time goes by and I add new content, I’ll be able to tell if this site is worth the time or not.  For now, I’m happy with everything I’ve seen.