Heather from BC gave me this fancy smancy green IZEA tee while in the blogger’s lounge at last month’s Affiliate Summit in NYC*.

IZEA is a social media marketing company and the world leader in sponsored conversations. They operate a network of over 250,000 bloggers and 25,000 advertisers around the globe.

SocialSpark.com, my favorite IZEA property, is a blog marketing network that connects advertisers with bloggers through an online marketplace. I personally have taken several “opportunities” that include Pay-Per-Click (can be promoted via Twitter and Facebook),  Sponsored Websites (that put hover ads on your websites), and Blog Posts (that I fully disclose are being sponsored).

I think Social Spark is not only profitable, but fun (and I wish they had an affiliate/referral program).  Yesterday I took an hour to review a few opps and ended up writing two blog posts about what I learned on those sites. Most posts require 200 words which isn’t hard to come up with.  Considering the price paid for post varies from $5 to $300 per post (mine were both somewhere in the middle of that), it turns out to be a pretty good hourly rate!  Plus I added new unique content to my sites, so it was a double bonus.

Check out BenSpark.com’s SocialSpark Saturdays for great insight on how to most of out of SocialSpark. You can join me on his “I’m Not A Famous Blogger” Crew.

Recently IZEA also released Sponsored Tweets that matches tweeters with advertisers.  This is the best “get paid to twitter” program I’ve seen thus far as you can review and accept or reject the tweet that that the advertiser would like to send out.  Some advertisers even let you write your own tweet. I will decline a tweet if the “ad” doesn’t fit my audience, as I don’t want to risk losing valuable followers if they think I’m spamming them. But if an advertiser wants to advertise a shoe sale via Twitter to my @shoeaholics followers, everyone benefits! Sign up at SponsoredTweets.com.

*I also got to meet Ted Murphy, Founder/CEO of IZEA, while in NYC.  Watch for a “Famous Tongue Photo” in an upcoming post!

Eric Nagel did it.  Joe Sousa did it.  Did what you ask? Recap their Affiliate Summit East experience in New York City last week. So I thought I’d put together a post of my own of a few highlights as well.

Saturday

Didn’t get into NYC until evening, but when you stay up until 4 a.m. in the morning, you can still pack in a lot of fun!  First stop was the Buy.at party atop the Empire Hotel followed by pizza, pubs and private parties.

Ken O'Donovan, Jon Levine, Kim Rowley, Pat Grady, Adam Reimer at Quality Meats

Sunday

Luckily I got to sleep in for a bit to heal my self-induced headache. I bounced back in time to hit the first session: Getting Noticed FAST Session. The panelists (Lisa Picarille, Michael Buechele, Trisha Lyn Fawver, Jen Goode and Stephanie Lichtenstein) did a great job, even if they did use some embarrassing pictures of me in their slideshow.

The afternoon was spent carousing the Meet Market. I was happy to volunteer my time at the Affiliate Marketers Give Back booth to raise money for breast cancer awareness.

Kim Rowley & Melissa Salas - Photo courtesy of Warren Corpus

Next up was the Market Leverage Yacht Party which ran us late getting to the ShareASale “Under the Stars” Party.  Brian Littleton always plans the perfect parties! I actually hit the bed early at 1:30 a.m. knowing I needed some beauty sleep.

Monday

I enjoyed the keynote with Chris Brogan and Julien Smith. I wish I would have brought along my copy of their new book Trust Agents: Using the Web to Build Influence, Improve Reputation, and Earn Trust to have it autographed.

My favorite session (as in most notes taken and I’m smitten by the guy) was with Wil Reynolds. He was kind enough to type up his presentation with links for us all: SEO Tools You Can Use Today.

There were so many parties scheduled Monday night that I couldn’t possibly hit them all. But I couldn’t miss MarketLeverage’s Pizza Party as pizza is my absolute favorite food!  I also made appearances at Linkshare’s Unofficial Affiliate Summit East After Party at Johnny Utah’s (I did not ride the mechanical bull this time), the Drop.io Party at the SoHo House, and the GTO Management Bowling Party.

Bowling & Beers with GTO Management! Photo courtesy of Karen Garcia.

Tuesday

I was anxious to see the keynote with Peter Shankman as I’ve always been a fan of his HARO – Help A Reporter Out newsletter.  He proved to be just as motivational live in person.

I skipped the afternoon sessions to take a subway to Canal Street in Chinatown. I considered this “work” as well since my main sites are shopping related!

I missed going to the Yankees game (thanks for the invite Jason Rubacky) in the new stadium as I had to fly out Tuesday night.

I got to meet a lot of internet celebrities that I had never personally met (ie Gary Vaynerchuck and Ted Murphy) that I plan to blog about individually in upcoming posts.  I also met several non-internet celebrities that you can read about here.

Thanks to Shawn Collins and Missy Ward for putting on yet another phenomenal Affiliate Summit! Can’t wait for #asw10 in Vegas!