Finding Content by Blending Tag Feeds

My webzine,loadedpun, is dedicated to finding out the latest information in online video in all of it’s forms. It’s an arduous task. Like most bloggers, I follow hundreds of blogs and sites in my RSS feeder, skimming for content that catches my eye and sparks an post idea.

One of the problems with this approach is that I tend to rely too much on just a few sources. How do I find the information that few are writing about? I’ll tell you how I get around this.

I use tag searches. In del.icio.us, I use my inbox to search for tags on relevant topics. The inbox queries are then made into a feed which I follow in my RSS reader. These are good for skimming to see what others are tagging in the area I’m interested in. If a particular user name keeps coming up in the results, I know that they are interested in the same things I am and I add them to my inbox search.

Many social bookmarking sites have feeds that are tag specific and you can often find things that don’t come up in del.icio.us although they may not be as prolific. For these, I utilize FeedBlendr.

With FeedBlendr, I can combine several tag feeds into one which I can then label with the tag I am searching. I have a feed for “videoblog”, for example, made up of tag feeds from magnolia, furl, blink, etc. I can also mix in variables, combining searches for “videoblog” and “vlog”.

The best place I’ve found for doing this type of feed search has been Technorati. Most bloggers tag their posts with Technorati tags so the feed I get comes directly from the people producing the content rather than readers who choose to bookmark and tag it. Think of it as going to the source.

If your site is specific to a particular topic, try out these tips and let me know how they work for you.

-Anne

Call for Performancing Authors

We’re in the process of revamping some of the site, mostly to make what you can actually do here more obvious. One of the things I think many miss is that each member has their own blog here. Subject matter is limited to the very broad subject of blogging, and things that affect bloggers, but it’s a great way to get some exposure for your ideas to a large audience.

We have a few good authors here regulary going to the homepage, but I’d love to see more. You can write a post for Performancing in three ways:

1. Simply hit “create content” and choose “blog entry” and away you go..
2. Use Performancing Firefox to post to your Performancing Blog
3. Email me at nick@performancing.com if you would like to have relevant posts from your blog syndicated here

We’re pretty open to ideas, and would LOVE to see more women post, as well as a more diverse section of the membership in general.

So do let me know if you’d like to be a featured author on Performancing.com, and feel free to ask any questions in this thread.


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Google Desktop Meets Performancing Metrics

We’ve spent all day today in a thread discussing a very cool new use of the Performancing Metrics API. A neat plugin for Google Desktop.

You can download and try gdPMetrics here courtesty of Performancing member geniosity. There’s also a whole bunch of screenshots on there aswell.

Do let us all know what you think, and if you create cool things with the Metrics API, be sure to let us know. Next week sometime we will put up a dedicated page that will point to all the things folks make!

Well done, and thanks geniosity!

Weaning Myself from Adsense

Yes, you read the title correctly. A self-described Adsense junkie has decided to seek help. Step 1: Admitting you have a problem.

For me, that problem was having a sizable portion of my income come from one company. The problem was the constant worry of a click attack and getting booted without warning. The problem was no good backup plan to monetize (YPN? could make up maybe 20%). And the problem was not understanding the details of how and why I get paid how much I get paid (smart pricing).

Now, don’t get me wrong. I looooove Adsense. It’s by far the best way to monetize content on many niche topics. But, looking back, I should never have invested so much in business models that have the above problems.

The other option

Now, I don’t want to paint an overly rosy picture. I’ll give it to you straight. Affiliate marketing is hard. And most blogs do not lend themselves to be monetized well with affiliate ads.

From my own tests in the past, I knew about these challenges in monetizing blogs with affiliate links. Affiliate links just didn’t fit most of my sites.

So I started from square one. What type of site would work well with affiliate monetization? The answer (and I’m not saying it’s the only answer, but it’s the answer I found) is to build sites around the buying cycle.

Compare:

1) A blog about trends in VoIP, including security issues, industry news, regulatory news, etc.

2) A blog about VoIP products for consumers, including reviews of the latest VoIP wireless phones, headsets, routers, etc.

#1 is a dream for Adsensing. I get ads for VoIP, which pay well, and who cares if they ever convert? But if I put up affiliate links, the revenue is terrible. I don’t see conversions. Most of my visitors are enthusiasts or geeks who want news. They aren’t shopping.

At any given time, the vast majority (98%?) of people on the Web aren’t shopping for something. And getting a conversion out of those people is extremely hard, since you have to get them over the first step (“what is this product? do I even want it?”).

Now, if you can get a lot of traffic from the 2% — the shoppers — your job is easy; they know what it is; they know they want it; so show them their options, and let the merchant take care of the rest.

Newfound confidence

So let’s revisit the problems I had with Adsense:

1. having a sizable portion of my income come from one company.
2. the constant worry of a click attack and getting booted without warning.
3. no good backup plan to monetize
4. not understanding the details of how and why I get paid how much I get paid

With affiliate marketing, I get:

1. income coming from many different merchants
2. no worry about click fraud — no conversion, no revenue
3. plenty of backup plans (I won’t bother in a market if I can’t find multiple affiliate programs)
4. I understand how each and every affiliate relationship works. It’s spelled out in the contract terms and the payout is predictable.

Yes, it feels pretty sweet.

But it’s not for everyone. If you can’t (or don’t feel like) creating content that’s geared towards the buying cycle, you’re going to find it much harder to get conversions. And if you have an established, respected blog, the thought of starting a new one in ‘the buying cycle’ might make you tired just thinking about it. But if this stuff is feeding your family (or yourself), my advice to you is to get on it, and pronto!

p.s. Sorry I didn’t give more concrete examples of sites/niches, I normally like giving examples… I just didn’t want to reveal my niches But if you want some examples of blogs geared towards ‘the buying cycle’, you can check out Manolo’s Shoe Blog or Digital Photography Blog.

p.p.s. the alternate title for this blog entry was: “Affiliate dollars… they just taste sweeter”

10 Ways To Lose RSS Subscribers

I have just been trying to get the new Attensa update working (yes, it has stopped working for me again, it is great when it works though) and have taken the opportunity to trim down my OPML. As I worked through my list of feeds I realised there were certain things that were guaranteed to make me drop a subscription, I thought I would share my reasons here.

While this is by no means an exhaustive list, and the examples have been changed to protect the guilty, each point is based on one or more real blogs. I trimmed over twenty blogs from my feeds just this morning, I am sure there will be more when I go back over them.

Here are the top ten reasons why I will drop your feed:

1. Hardly post and when you do it is to apologise for not posting – I don’t mind an irregular posting frequency providing when you do post it is something worthwhile and valuable. We all know people have other priorities in their lives, and an apology is obviously well meant, but please include the apology as a PS. on the end of a worthwhile post. And do not post three apologies in a row.
2. Re-post boingboing or some other popular blog, or copy and paste press releases – This one really gets on my nerves. Original material is what we want, or at least your own opinions on other peoples stories. If I wanted to read BoingBoing I would subscribe to it (I do), if I wanted press releases I would look on the PR sites, tell me why I should care, pull out the juicy bits, link to more than one site.
3. Only ever write when in a bad mood, drunk or have nothing to say - It startles me how many people seem to post in a bad mood. We have discussed recently the “trollish” behaviour of some bloggers and comments so I won’t rehash it here. I guess this is no different to shock-jock DJs who go on air just to rant. Someone must like it, not my cup of tea I am afraid. Hmm .. is this post making me look hypocritical? heh
4. Constant unrelenting negativity – This is related to the point above but is wider in that it includes people who have a blog just to moan. I don’t mind blogs as therapy but when it is advertised as a “photography blog” or a “gadget blog” and it is full of depression and moaning I think I am justified in dropping the subscription.
5. Bang on about the same old gripe day after day – OK, you feel like the a-list, Microsoft or Google have something against you personally, we heard you the first thousand times, move on already!
6. Talk down to your audience like they are idiots – Thankfully this doesn’t happen all too often but I guess that is one of the things that makes it so surprising when it does happen. Obvious lies also stand out as incredibly insulting.
7. Be incomprehensible – Fill your feed with cryptic post titles and snippets that don’t give any indication of what the post is about. Have navigation that is designed to cause your audience pain. Yup, that would work.
8. Be elitist - Exclude a large part of your audience with in-jokes you never explain and only reply to clique members comments
9. Be needy – Constantly suck up to the A-List, name dropping people you have never met as if you know them. Again, once in a while yeah this is ok, but on an ongoing basis it soon gets old if your every post contains “names”.
10. Constant irrelevance – Remember Nicks 8020 rule – don’t spend two weeks posting about your cats flea problem on a technology-oriented blog

Ok, that is my list, what things do bloggers do that get right up your nose and cause you to drop their feed? Let us know what we might be doing wrong!

Bitchy Blogosphere

A friend just started reading blogs after years of me talking about them. After drifting out of the tech theme into more general blogs he came back to me shocked at what he saw. “I thought you said this blogosphere of yours was a friendly place”, he said.

Like in real life, the bloggers argue, agree, fall out, kiss and make up. It seems a never ending circle of “he said she said”, gossip, backstabbing and shifting allegiances. I had never heard of the word “snarky” until the last year or so then it seemed to be everywhere. “Snarky” was all the rage (and caused a good deal of rage too).

Why is negativity and bitchiness so popular? I guess these types of posts and bloggers get noticed. If you are in this for the attention or the links, sniping is going to get you lots of both. While constant negativity isn’t going to be great for the reputation it will get you known at least.

Lately there seems to have begun a backlash against “snarkiness” and negativity. Scoble wrote about the mob out on the attack against Dave Winer. Bloggers who made their names by being snarky seem to be turning their back on the approach.

Ordinarily I would be all for this move, I tend towards pushing for people to be respectful and positive. I am worried though this backlash against negativity will turn popular bloggers against daring to be critical. Already we see themes of cheerleading where a topic or new web2.0 startup appears and everyone has to bandwagon the thing to death.

If you are worried about offending but feel you need to argue against someone it is quite simple. To critique without offending you just need to

• Don’t be personal – Comment on the creation not the creator
• Be factual – Opinion is fine providing you can back up why you think the way you do
• Have a point – Attack is fine providing you have a reason other than just to hurt someone else
• Empathise – Try thinking from the other point of view, does it have validity?

You don’t need to be vicious, hurtful or sarcastic, but I think we need to keep criticism alive. We have talked before here about how important feedback is. Blogs have an important role to play, we can say things the mainstream press can not get away with for fear of offending more straight laced audiences.

So I say keep making waves, the blogosphere needs the boat to be rocked occasionally.

Tell a Good Story

Blogging can take many forms but looking around the web the most popular still seems to be the journal/diarist style. There is no reason why this type of blog can not fall into the “pro” category, indeed this is the way many pro bloggers have cut their teeth. Also the “I, me, my, let me tell you about my life” style of writing is often put to good use by bloggers talking about everything from gadgets to marketing. I feel the one element that seperates the good from the blah is the quality of the story telling. Here are some tips for telling good stories.

We here at Performancing tend towards the tutorial type of post. When we talk about our lives or what we are up to it tends to be just to illustrate a point. Other blogs though have the bloggers experience as the whole point. In those blogs you will not get very far if you impart the news like you are telling your spouse or parent what you did that day, a good story telling technique is vital.

Not all these points will be relevant. If your story is about a new client win you might not want to make it a laugh riot, for example. You might find though a few ideas how you can enrich your next story post and attract a deeper readership.

• Do start with a good title – the title, being the first thing the reader will see, is the advertisement for the whole story, it can succeed or fail on this one detail
• Do give a taste of what is to come early to draw them in – after the title you need a great first paragraph. A well written intro will mean the reader can not leave until they have read the whole thing.
• Do bring the story to life with rich, colourful writing – with an article or tutorial you can more often get away with “just the facts”, with a story though your writing needs to be more lively. You need to paint a picture in your readers mind, evoke sounds, smells and emotions.
• Do show conflict, tension, suspense and finally resolution – while it isn’t necessary to have complex interwoven sub-plots your story does need to have some sort of action, have your story go somewhere
• Do inject humour – we can’t all make our readers fall about laughing but on the other hand if you can raise a smile you are more likely to have your reader warm to you
• Do write about people and their actions – people like reading about people, and people doing things most of all. First though your reader needs to care what happens so illustrate the characters in your story well.
• Do include details (who, what, where, when, how) – stories that miss out important details can be frustrating, important details also set the scene and context.
• Don’t include unneccessary details that slow the story down – not all details are necessary. The precise brand of breakfast cereal you ate this morning will probably not have a great bearing on the stories outcome.
• Do have a point and get to it – while your writing might be completely captivating your reader will not thank you for wasting their time.
• Do have just one point, deal with one issue at a time – simple stories often work best, start out with one idea that you want to get across and just do that.
• Don’t just write the facts, it’s a story not a list of data – it doesn’t have to be shakespeare but on the other hand it shouldn’t read like a shopping list either
• Do engage the readers emotions – even if it is just a retelling of a joke you heard, the best stories tug at the readers emotions
• Don’t give it all away in first paragraph – in general it is best to keep the twist or punchline to the end
• Don’t use bland descriptions and cliches – readers find cliches distracting, once you have written your post go over it to see if you can spot any cliches then jettison them
• Don’t reproduce rumour or myth as fact – if you do not know something is 100% true do not represent it as anything other than “something you heard”
• Don’t assume your reader knows all the history – it is easy to assume your reader has read your blog from the beginning or is as knowledgable about your subject as you are. Give them a little background.
• Don’t assume your reader cares about the subject as much as you do – you might well love your cat/software/company/car/etc a great deal but your audience will not necessary agree. Give them reason to care.

I know a couple of people who despise story posts, they are of the opinion these sorts of posts ought to stay on livejournal and never be seen on a “respectable blog”. Personally I love a good story told well, in fact my favourite books on management were written in the story style.

Do you like story posts and what makes a good one in your opinion?

Can You Afford Not To Blog? Maybe.

Scrivs posted today that he was surprised by the amount of freelancers who don’t blog to promote themselves. On the one hand, I agree. Blogging can be a great way to position yourself as an authority in your service market. On the other hand…

1. Are you a natural writer? Most people… aren’t. There’s little point in blogging unless it’s going to make you look better. Say you have bad grammar — or even if you have perfect grammar but are boring or can’t express your ideas clearly — is writing really going to help you look better? Could it possibly make you look worse? I don’t know about you, but I think 9 out of 10 blogs positively suck, and if you’re not gonna be in that top 10%…

2. Do you expect your plumber to do your taxes? (disclaimer: this doesn’t apply to copywriters) So you’re a designer and I’m thinking about hiring you… I don’t give a HOOT if you can write something interesting. I want to see your homepage’s design, and your portfolio. If you’re a programmer, I want to play with something you’ve built, and know what technologies/languages you’re good with. What does your blogging ability have to do with it?

3. Vacuous time waster If you have a lot of down-time, then maybe blogging is a good (and cheap — main cost is your time) way to build your business. But then, once you GET those new clients, and suddenly you ARE busy, you’ll probably either a) not have time for your blog anymore, and let it site around looking ‘dead’, or b) get the bug and spend too much time at it, and not enough on ‘real work’.

Now, take this all with a grain of salt because a ton of people have built profitable businesses off their blogs (Scrivs included)… but I don’t think it’s a no-brainer.

And I also think we should mind the standard FTC disclaimer: Past performance is not a guarantee of future returns.

Avoiding The Quick Fix Curse

Last weekend some of you noticed we were having some issues with processing data — it was an embarrassing cock up on our part, the processing engine wasn’t restarted after a reboot of all the systems and we failed to notice for like 10hrs! But, as I hope you also noticed, as soon as it became apparent that something was amiss, it was all hands on deck, and eventually we got the system fully functional again with no loss of data, and began back processing to catch up.

This went ok as a “quick fix”, but some longer term planning has been the top priority for some days now, as quick fixes only go so far, and the overall stability of the system is more important. At the end of the day, a quick fix here would be like most anywhere else, just the illusion of “fixed”, and not truly very helpful.

The optimization of queries, processes and several seriously heavy duty servers take a little time, so this post is just to let you guys know that if you’re seeing a few oddities in your reports over this week, it’s all in a good cause, and no data is being lost. While we have over eight million records being logged every single day though, the optimization process has to be handled very carefully, so will take a little time.

Optimization was always the plan, we just need to do it now, not later…

We always expected to have to optimize the system when we had real data running through it, and it was always part of the plan. We just didn’t expect to have to do it quite so soon after launch. With over 5000 blogs being tracked, we’re about 3x as far ahead as we expected to be at this stage which is cool on one hand, but a bit of a pain on the other as resources need to be moved around a reprioritized accordingly.

I hope that answers a few of the questions im seeing in the forums, and that you’ll bear with us for a few days while we get some long term solutions in place as opposed to quick fixes.

My apologies for any inconvenience, you will of course be the first to know when things change.

Discovering the Hidden Details in Your Blog

We have mentioned a couple of the big things you can find in Performancing Metrics, there are other seemingly smaller items though that pack a big punch collectively. Sometimes you can make a lot of progress by gradual tweakage and if you are lucky your stats can work like your own psychic hotline to your audiences thoughts.

Obviously the best way of finding out what your readers think is to ask them but you can tell a great deal from your Metrics and they are especially good for seeing trends over time. The better you understand what people want the better you can serve your audience.

Here are some things to look at occasionally to make sure you are on the right track.

• Length of visit vs outbound link clicks – how long people stay on your blog is a good indication of how interesting they find the content. Many blogs are practically designed to send their traffic away as soon as they arrive by using a “lots of links” posting style or by pushing the advertising. Longer posts might help but then again they might not necessarily be the solution, it could be a problem with your navigation – how easy is it to navigate to other posts or the homepage from deep in your blog?
• Popular Posts and Number of Comments – these are the best indicators of what your visitors are interested in. Visitors that are arriving from the outside are coming because of your promotion skills, those from the inside were attracted by your headline writing skills usually (although there are those who just click down from top to bottom looking at everything). The number of comments is also a decent measure of interestingness but you need to be aware that not all posts are “commentable” and as Nick likes to say, people like talking about themselves and will jump at any chance.
• Referrers – your referrals are people to keep happy and warmed up. You need to keep consistent sources of traffic very happy indeed by both commenting on their blog and linking back. It is not a bad idea to see if there are trends in the sort of content they like to link to and throwing them a post that matches their taste on occasion. Links out are similar, if your audience likes a certain type of link then make sure you give them what they want. Don’t worry about losing traffic, they will like to return to get more of your great links.
• Browsers – not one to get too sweaty about but worth a glance just once. Not so much for what browsers your audience are using but for which they are NOT using to view your blog. Most blog templates are very cross browser friendly but you would be amazed how many I have seen that have major glitches in IE, Firefox or are unusable on a Mac.
• Timing – you need to aim to get your best content up every day before the bulk of your visitors arrive. You might also find that there is a best day to get linked, a slow news day or a day where you get the majority of your comments.

I am not for a minute suggesting you spend lots of time on this every day. The occasional drill down your stats though could make a world of difference in understanding what your audience want from you.

What are your Metrics telling you?