Grow your blog – Monetize, find new leads and blogging opportunities, and get the best tips too… Hi all! Welcome to another weekly Bloggertunities post, a round-up of the best blogging tips, tools, leads, opps, and events of the week. I hope you’ll find some helpful stuff – and if you do, be sure to share it with your networks too!

“Cheers to a new year and another chance for us to get it right.” – Oprah Winfrey

Well, we all made it through the crazy-hectic holiday season. Hooray! Unlike regular moms, blogging moms not only beautifully gift wrap their well thought out gifts, create delicious dinners and baked goods from scratch, and decorate the house with perfectly coordinated ornaments and such – but we also photograph it all along the way, write up tutorials and recipes, tweet, Instagram, Pin, and share all of those great accomplishments too. {Right? Your season was that perfect too? Lol.} So – congrats on getting through it all – and cheers to an {almost} new year on it’s way! It’s time to start really thinking about your new years goals. If you’ve got a list – share it with me in the comments! Until then – here are this week’s tips, leads, opps, and reads to help inspire and motivate. Enjoy!

Events, Hops, and Linkys to Join

• All About Owls: I am super duper excited about this one! It’s a giveaway hop that starts mid January. There are no big requirements – except one BIG one. Your prize must be owl themed. How fun is that? I think that this could be super popular, and was one of the first to join! Sign up here: Give a Hoot Giveaway Hop Sign Ups.
• New Year’s Resolutions: Join this great giveaway hop from Makobi Scribe, to help promote some awesome products to help meet your goals in the new year! Learn more, and join up here: New Year’s Resolutions Sweepstakes Hop.
• Mom Solutions: Join the Mommy Club: Share your resources and solutions in this awesome linky! I find SO much cool stuff here each week, and see great traffic when I link up too!
• Blogathon: Join the Blogathon excitement – and sign up as a mini-challenge host!! It’s a ton of fun {see an example, my post from last time: Monetize Your Blog in 5 Simple Steps}. Read the details, and join the Blogathon today!
• Recipes: This is a great list of recipe linkys you can add your posts too – and it’s a great way to boost the traffic to those great recipes.
• Kindle Event: Join this new giveaway event – really low prices to add your links, and you’ll be part of a fantastic event to give away a new Kindle! Sign up here.
• Foodie Conference: Ok, this is a brand new, first-time conference event for foodies. The ticket prices are super low, and all are welcome to attend. Next year they plan to make this a BIG conference event, so join the excitement now!
• NaBloPoMo: Have you ever participated in the National Blog Posting Month with BlogHer before? It’s a great way to challenge yourself, meet new people, and get new traffic. I have a lot of fun with it.

Freelance Writing

• Interact: I just joined Interact Media this week – but there are TONS of opps available here. The payouts are per word, and you choose your topics, payout amounts, and jobs you want to take. They update each hour with new projects that you can take. You just write them and submit them -they don’t need to be posted to your site.
• Examiner: You know how much I enjoy my Frugal Living column on Examiner.com – and the way it gives me an extra way to connect with local businesses, and get media credentials {I’ve talked about it many times.} I’m earning a much steadier income with this now, that I’ve put a little more effort into it all. And now the Mister of the house is starting a column too – on local Racing. If you’re interested, and are an expert on a local topic, apply to be an Examiner of your choice of topic today.
• Hire My Mom: This is a great site whether you’re looking to pick up new freelance work – or are interested in finding some reliable to outsource some of your current work to. Join or submit a listing on Hire my Mom.

Good Reads & Resources

• Facebook Fraud: We’ve all talked about it – how Facebook has changed things up too much, doesn’t show our own fans – who have chosen to follow us – our posts. How promoted post seem like a joke. Well – I find this little experiment really interesting, with some of the bs that Facebook is pulling. What do you think? Leave me a comment if you’ve noticed some of this stuff.
• Ebook: Check out the Work at Home Woman website, for loads of great tips and information. Then take a minute to check out the info on her ebook – I was really impressed with it. Click here to visit The Work at Home Woman. {And it motivates me to get my butt in gear and finally finish up MY ebook too!}
• Pinterest Group Boards: I know that a lot of you have been wondering too – what’s the deal with group boards on Pinterest? How do they help you? Do they help you?? Well, this post shares a little experiment that shows exactly how they work, love it.
• Kindle Fire: Did you get a new Kindle Fire this holiday season too? If you need some cool tips on using it, and getting the most out of it – Get this awesome free ebook, Mastering the Kindle Fire. {I have been totally loading up on free blogging, social media, and business books!!}
• Free Images: This is a great way to quickly search for free images you can use with permission on your blog. All you have to do is give credit at the bottom of the post. Try out PhotoPin.com.
• Free Keyword Tools: This is a great post from Blogelina, on how to use keywords correctly to increase your search traffic. And she includes links to two different free keyword search tools.
• Work from Home: This post has some great tips for different things to think about when working from home, and how to find new opportunities.
• Facebook Tracker: This is a cool tool from Handmadeology {one of my fave sites for smart tips and tools} – it’s usually $8 bucks. But for now, as a Christmas gift, it’s available totally free! Get the Facebook tracker here.
• Geek Squad: I had thought about getting this for years, but wasn’t sure if it was worth it. Well, lemme tell ya – If you’re online all day, and can’t afford to lose a single minute when things go wrong – this is SO worth it! They remotely log-in, tell you to relax with a glass of wine, and go to work either just doing a basic clean-up {which made my PC SOOOO much faster!} or will fix any issue you have. Any time. On up to three devices in your house for the same price. Read more – it’s awesome.
• Copyblogger: Get the best of Copyblogger in 2012 – a list of their most helpful, informative, and entertaining articles, all in one place. LOVE this stuff.

Networks and Opps to Monetize and Grow

• SponsoredReviews: When a brand or business wants to Buy Reviews – meaning, you write a post featuring their product, service, site, or new infographic, they pay SponsoredReviews to run a campaign, and they hire bloggers to write the posts. It’s very easy work – just make sure you’re choosing posts that are relevant to your readers. I average about a $100 per post here, and have worked with them for months now.
• LinkVehicle: This is very similar – and again, just be sure you’re being choosy about which opps you accept, so you’re not compromising the integrity of your site. I get a few opps a month here, but remember – the amount they quote you, you only get paid half of that. So make sure it’s worth it. It usually is, since they’re simple posts to write up. Join LinkVehicle.
• Be Featured: Do you want to show people an example of blogging as a profession? Parade Magazine is looking for more entries into it’s annual jobs issue. Fill out the form, and possibly have you and your blog featured.
• Step2: This is one of my FAVORITE kids toy brands, and we’re planning a bunch a few purchases of the cool outdoor toys for this summer, to help make our house “Staycation” worthy. Well, right now they are looking for a great team of bloggers to partner with as ambassadors for the new year. Apply here.
• Candy: Want to try out a new healthy candy alternative with your local group of moms? If you’re not a member of Mom’s Meet yet, you’ll need to go through the quick application process first. If you’re already a member, simply fill out this one page questionaire to apply to sample these goodies with your group. I’m always happy with my party packages, and sometimes they are crazy-generous. There is minimal work afterwards – they just want to hear you and your groups feedback in a survey, and maybe see a snapshot or two.
• Reynolds Mom: Are you a total kitchen ninja? Then apply to be a Reynolds Mom! This is only open until the 28th, and you’ll need to do some videos to apply. But there are some CRAZY amazing prizes and opportunities with this. {Although, fair warning, it does involve some fan voting stuff.} But I’m going to toss in an entry on Friday if I have time – sounds super cool!
• Escalate: Great offers to promote, good payouts, and you get payout each month really quickly. This is such an easy network to work with. I don’t even post offers often anymore – but still see an income from stuff I posted last year when I did more frugal content – I earned over $100 last month on this one 10 Ways to Earn an Income from Home, same with this one, The Free Money Tip You Can’t Afford to Miss  –  Join Escalate.
• Integrate: I absolutely love these guys. They always send out little cards and thank yous – things like Starbucks gift cards, or Amazon gift codes. {Got a $100 code recentely just for helping out with a survey. Rockin’, right?} A couple of my recent fave campaigns are the Seven Slings free baby stuff {which I actually got myself, a few years ago when I was pregnant with Abby, and loved.} And the Bake Pops {which I really wanted, and just got for Christmas, lol.} Learn more about getting started with Integrate in a post I wrote a while back – or join here.

Randomly Awesome Stuff

Geek Glasses: I’m dying over these – If you’re a geek like me, working from home all day on your laptop, why not accessorize appropriately with a pair of these pixelated Computer Nerd Geek Glasses? They’re only a couple bucks on Amazon, and totally crack me up. Ordered two pairs :)

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{Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. But all opps and leads listed are things that I trust, and have used myself. I only share what I love with ya’all! Photo Credit.}