Bloggertunities: Good Reads & Resources to Rock Your Blog

This post contains some affiliate links that help to support this site. But I only share and recommend things I use myself and love. Pinky promise.

I’ve got a new list of goodies for you ladies – tips and tricks, good reads and resources, opps and networks, and more. Hope you find some helpful stuff – if so, be sure to pin it to refer to later, and share it with your other bloggy buddies. Sharing is caring, right? :) And if you have any events of your own you’re looking for help with – giveaways to join, linkys looking for more linkers, opps you’re looking for more applicants to – feel free to leave the info in the comments section. I try to tweet those out all week for you guys too. Have a great week!

Events to Join

• Spring Fashionista: If you’ve never heard of this event, you might have been living under a rock. Seriously. It is one of the BIGGEST bloggy events of the year and is a major traffic driver. Learn the details here: Sign up for the Spring Fashionista Event, from Still Blonde After All These Years.
• Giveaway: Now accepting free sign ups for the Aroma 20-Cup Digital Rice Cooker & Food Steamer and $50 walmart gift card giveaway! Cohost spots available for just $5. Open to US, event dates 12/9-12/23. Must have 3k facebook fans to participate. Sign up here: http://tiny.cc/gah16w.
• Free Giveaway: No announcement post needed, open worldwide – Egyptian Cotton Christmas Giveaway. Fill out form here: http://bit.ly/18D7aQe.

Sponsored posts and Making Money

• Content Kingpin: I just signed up to join this, so I don’t have any feedback on it yet. But, you sign up to be a part of Content Kingpin, and get the inside scoop on new sponsored posts, reviews, giveaways, etc. Sounds cool to me – sign up if you want to give it a try too.
• Savings.com: They’re looking for more bloggers to work with. They have an affiliate program, and also offer sponsored post opps. Big thanks to the beautifully talented Daisy from TheItMom.com for sharing this info :) Apply here: http://www.savings.com/coupon-affiliate-program/application/.
• Parents: Need Bloggers with a US Audience especially with young children learning to read or have troubles reading, including educators in preschools to homeschoolers. Learn more and fill out the application.
• Dr. Doormat: This only pays $10 bucks – but it’s quick ‘n easy, and includes no follow links. It’s for Dr. Doormat, and you can see the info on the sign up doc here.
• SheSpeaks: Join the SheSpeaks blogging community – you’ll get opportunities to work on cool sponsored post campaigns, review fun products, participate in Twitter parties, and more.
• Better Sponsored Posts: The SITS Girls has a great post sharing tips on how to make your sponsored content more fun, more interesting, and do better on social media – which will then help you get more and better opps.
• UpShare: I have no clue if this will be good or not – but you can sign up now to be notified when they launch. There’s not much info, just that they connect blogs and brands? Check it out here: Upshare sign up.
• Pet Bloggers: There are a couple of places you can join if you’re into blogging about pets – BlogPaws is a pet-centered online community, and has a places for bloggers to sign up for opps. You can also join the VetIQ Street Team, to get opps to review new products.
• Costumes & Party Gear: Sign up on CostumeReviewers.com as a new blogger, and they’ll contact you about doing reviews of either their costume line, or products from their fun new party supply site – www.wholesalepartysupplies.com. If you’ve worked with them before, and it’s been more than 90 days, fill out the returning blogger section, and they’ll be in touch to work on something new.
• YesVideo: I signed up as an affiliate here, because I have a ton of old movies that I want to have put onto DVD, so will be using their service myself. Why not earn some cash when I tell other people how it works, right? And, you earn a whopping $20 per sale when sharing your affiliate link. Very cool.

Linkys and Promotion

• Gift Guide Promotion: If you’ve got a holiday gift guide that you’d like to help promote, link it up to this Gift Guide Promotion Linky. She’s also pinning each one to her Holiday Gift Guide board on Pinterest. Sounds like a great way to help get it more exposure. There’s more fun gift guide promotion on this linky too – Naughty or Nice Holiday Gift Guide link up.
• Make a Book: This is a really cool way to promote your blog that I plan on doing in the new year – create a book. Blurb gives you amazing tools to create hardcover, professional books that you can use to promote your blog or business, and you can sell them through their online marketplace too. Ideas: How To Start Your Own Blurb Cookbook, create a book filled with fun holiday projects, or a how-to book for DIY on a budget.
• Giveaway Promote: I’ve been using GiveawayPromote.com to help drive traffic to my giveaways for awhile now, and love it. This week, I signed up for the paid promotion – to be a featured listing, plus a Twitter and FB shout out. Holyheck – I totally recommend it. My Favorite Things giveaway is rockin’!
• Homesteading: If you write any type of simple living posts – farm life, gardening, animals, sustainability – link up your posts to this fantastic site – Homestead Barn Hop linky. I always find so much good stuff here.
• Recipes: I have a list from awhile back, with a ton of alternatives to Foodgawker – lots of places where it’s easier to get your recipes featured. I need to update it with a few that have been doing great for me lately – ZipList, Chef it Up, and FOODIE. Another idea is to submit on a site like Duncan Hines. You can leave your link in the description, and if they really like it they’ll feature it on their home page. I’m not sure if it would bring you much traffic or not, since you do have to provide the whole recipe. But it might be cool to be able to show that you’ve been featured there? If anyone’s done this and got traffic let me know!
• WomansForum: Fill out the form at the bottom of the page, providing the link to your site and full contact information. They have a lot of different opportunities for partnership available. I just recently applied, and haven’t worked with them yet, so if you have – please leave some feedback in the comments for everyone.

Tips and Tricks

• Photography: Check out my Take a Better Photo board on Pinterest. It’s filled with tips that anyone can use – even if you don’t have a DSLR. This is one of my big goals for the new year is to learn how to better use my camera, and get my photos rockin’.
• Online Courses: Craftsy has a ton of great photography courses right now – Learn How To Take Professional Family Portraits with Craftsy for FREE!, Family Photography: Candid Moments & Storytelling, Kirk Tuck , Entire Wilton series with Beth Somers, Off-Camera Flash Photography with Neil van Niekerk, Sweet & Savory Food Gifts with Diane Morgan.
• Ebooks: I subscribed a couple of months ago to BookBub – you get a newsletter once each morning, with new free ebooks and discounted books. It’s a great way to stock up on business reading, and an easy way to find free Amazon ebooks to promote for your readers.
• Printable Planners: If you’re looking for a planner to keep your blogging business organized next year, check out this list of Printable Blogging Planners on Multi-Testing Mommy, or visit my Printable Planner board on Pinterest.
• Free eMag: Inside the Jungle is a free eMagazine filled with tips for women entrepreneurs. It’s 48 pages of tips from women earning 6 figure incomes, to help inspire, educate, and entertain.
• QuickBooks: Join Ebates if you aren’t already a member, then look on the homepage for the deal to buy QuickBooks Pro 2014 products on sale for up to 40% off – plus, since you’re shopping through Ebates, you’ll get 7.5% cash back on anything you buy. Very awesome deal.
• Author Rank: This isn’t an official, Google-based score of your rank. But it’s a new tool to help you analyze your author rank. It’s called Virante AuthorRank.
  I got an author rank score of 4.76 – and have NO idea if that’s very good or bad? It’s on a scale of 1-10, and is similar to how Page Rank worked – moving from a 1 to a 2 is much easier than moving from a 2 to a 3. If you check your score, I’d LOVE it if you’d leave a comment with where you rank, to help us all kind of get an idea of where we stand?

Freelance

• iRetreat: Do you have a great idea you’d love to share with other bloggers? Then apply to be a speaker at this year’s iRetreat conference. I was part of a panel there a couple years ago, speaking on how to grow your audience on Facebook and Pinterest. It was a lot of fun, and a great experience.
• Type A: Here’s another public speaking opps – Submit your proposal to speak at Type A Parent Conference in 2014. I’ve never been to this one – but I hear it’s pretty awesome!
• Examiner: I’ve had my two columns on Examiner for over a year now. You choose any topic you want to write about – I am a Frugal Living Examiner, and the Yakima Events Examiner. I use my posts there sometimes to drive traffic back to my blog posts – example: 8 Frugal Recipes for Fall. As you flip through the slideshow, each recipe photo leads you back to the actual recipe post on my site. Examiner is usually #14 or #15 for bringing in traffic to this site, so it works pretty well. Plus – you get paid for all page views on your Examiner article too. Learn more and apply here: Examiner.com.

 Alright friends – that’s it for this week! For more helpful tips you can check out my Blogging & Social Media board on Pinterest, or browse past weeks Bloggertunities posts. Thanks for reading – now go rock that blog!