Ongoing changes, and progress at Performancing

In line with recent comments on design and content at Performancing, we’ve taken blog posts off of the menu — ie, we’ll be focusing entirely on the support and community forums here.

This doesn’t mean that you won’t be able to post on the loose topic of blogging and related subjects here at Performancing, just that we’ll be using the forums for that purpose instead of a mix of content types — For those looking for a new hosted blog, I’d recommend Wordpress.com over Performancing anyday.

Other News

I’ll take this opportunity to catch you guys up with where we’re at currently. The advertiser section of Partners though operational (with some publishers receiving their third ads yesterday i saw…), remains with work to be done but is very, very nearly complete.

We’ve also been working hard on some new Partners features which should be announceable early next week, and the majority of kinks in the publishers section have been ironed out.

All in all, community response and participation in Partners has been astonishing. The good will of the professional blogging community is much appreciated.

As we slowly shape Partners into what it deserves to be, an advertising network with publishers at its core and their income as prime consideration — a network that brings publisher and advertiser closer, a network shaped by its community, we are much in the debt of our members, and appreciate your efforts to make this a success.

Phew, what a mouthful…

Your suggestions, and feedback as always are most welcome.

Thanks everyone, and have a great weekend!

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Above vs below the fold ad pricing

Today we set in place a way to detect Partners blog ads that were showing “below the fold”. The term comes from print advertising and literally means below where a newspaper is folded, making it a less valuable position. The object was to better price Partners ad spots.

From around lunchtime today (european time) we’ve been detecting ad blocks placed below the fold and adjusting their price accordingly. The figure we came up with as a starting point was 50% of what an ad above the fold would be worth, and if you’ve had a dramatic price drop today, then that’s almost certainly why.

How to Stay above the Fold

We judge position based roughly on a 1024×768 resolution, so of course adjusting your resolution and checking your ad placement is one way of making sure your ad is correctly placed. But by far the easier method is just to take a look at where you’re putting your ads from an advertisers perspective. Is your adblock placed where it will be seen by all?

And what if you dont want to be above the fold?

Ad placement below the fold is fine, it’s just not as valuable as above the fold. And if you disagree with the auto pricing of your ads in relation to position or anything else, you can always switch it off and choose your own price.

The goal of AP is to set the optimal, fair price for an ad on your blog, but ultimately you decide the price right?

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Design and content changes at Performancing

In order to better reflect where Performancing is going, and in light of the launch of the Partners blog advertising network, we’ve rolled out stage one of a new site design.

One of the main design gripes we’ve all had at Performancing for some time is that it’s just not clear what you can do here, and what we’re all about. Hopefully the restoration of the body widgets on most pages will help give people a clearer idea of what Performanicng is, and give existing members a fast, more obvious route to major destinations in the site.

Changes yet to come…

Over the coming days/weeks you’ll see more of the site slowly change and improve, but also you’ll see more concentration going into the blogging and support forums and the phasing out of member blogs. The forums seem to work best for us, and what you’ll see on the homepage from now on will be 99% company/product blogging, leaving the general blogging tips/tricks to the forums where even now, some of the better contributions are found.

As always, you’re opinions are most welcome, so do tell….

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Partners Template Code Update

If you go to your Partners blog list and hit “Get Code” you might notice the template script has changed slightly. Since launching to bloggers we have had quite a bit of feedback so today have implemented suggestions.

The most outwardly noticable difference is now you can choose the alignment of the ads in your sidebar, left, right or center, if you want to. By default it is centered and if you like it that way you do not need to touch a thing. If you do want to change the alignment just look for the part of the code where it says

var align = 'center';

.. and change ‘center’ to read ‘left’ or ‘right’ as appropriate.

Blogger Beta users will also find implementing the code far easier now. Grab the code then in your Blogger control panel go to “template”, “page elements” and add a “html/javascript” element. You do not need a title if you don’t want, just paste the code.

Thanks for all the comments so far and do keep the feedback coming.

Tracking your partners referals

Quite a few of you have asked about how to track how many users you’re refering to the Partners blog advertising network. So many in fact that we re-prioritized a little just to release this new code a bit quicker.

If you’re in the Partners program, you can see how many Partners you’ve refered by visiting: your referrers reports page which is a new subsection under reports in the main publishers section.

How referals work

The Partners program was conceived and developed by folks with a fair bit of experience in web publishing for profit. We’ve tried to build this (and indeed, are still building it) with publishers at the very heart of the system. Without you we cant do this, and our commitment to you on referals reflects that beleif and attitude.

This is from our pricing policy page

we pay a further 5% of either publisher earnings, or advertiser spend, to the partner that referred them to us. Not only that, we pay it for as long as the referree is actively displaying our ads, or buying them.

This allows you to build a strong base income independent of your own blogs advertising sales over time. The longer you’re a partner, and the harder you work to promote the program to others, the larger that residual income base will become. Good isn’t it?

• We pay 5% of either publisher earnings or advertiser spend
• An advertiser is considered your referal until they stop buying ads *
• An publisher is considered your referal until they stop showing ads *
• There is no limit to what you can earn. The more you make, the more we make
• Only publishers displaying ads are elligible for the program, once your account is inactive for 90 days we wipe the slate clean, and any remaining advertisers or publishers revert to the ‘house’.
• * account inactivity for 90 days

How to refer pulblishers or advertisers

It’s dead simple:

• Make sure your partners code is on the page you link to us from.
• Link to any part of the performancing.com site
• When a user adds their first blog, or makes their first ad buy, the referal is recorded and the deal is done.

Linking to the partners home page, publishers page or advertisers page is probably your best bet, but the mechanism works provided the partners ads are shown on the page you link from. If a reader clicks your “advertise here” button, it will also count as a referal, and indeed you can even link to that same page if talking to potential advertisers.

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Performancing Partners Launches!

We were going to keep this quiet just a bit longer, just between us and 25,000 close friends you know? But the cat is out of the bag.

The Performancing Partners Blog Ad Network is open to bloggers in BETA.

Darren and Marshall have the most complete writeups and I recommend reading them if you want good unbiased opinion on what Partners is all about.

If you want totally biased, proud-father-esque stuff, you can keep reading

Performancing Partners offers publishers a new, smart way to get paid for blogging. By placing the Partners code on your blog you open your site to a wide variety of advertisers whilst being free to concentrate on what you do best: Blog…

Adding your blog is quick and simple, and if you need it, you can get help in the publisher forums.

Revenue share and residual income:

The revenue split is very simple with Performancing Partners, and it’s geared toward rewarding publishers that stick with us, and refer others into the program. The main points are these:

* You take 70% of advertising revenue your blog generates.
* Performancing takes 30%
* You take 5% of income generated by any publisher or advertiser you refer to us

Partner payouts for referrals continue indefinitely providing both you and the party you referred are active in the program. This allows publishers to build up a strong residual income over time independent of their own blogs.

Enjoy for now, much more detail over the coming weeks!

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Proof, as if we needed it …

Friend of our blog Darren has a great post up about how long it takes to get into the Technorati 100.

While I would never encourage someone to put their efforts into getting into a list (building a great blog that happens to get into a list is a far nicer goal, heh), his research proves (in an unscientific way) what we have said for a while.

For your blog to be successful you need to stick with it.

Half of the blogs in Darrens study have been around two years or more. I would say give your blog a year before expecting big numbers (traffic or income). It can take a good few months to get noticed by other blogs, maybe longer to get them to link to you for more than one-off posts.

Sticking with it means keeping up with the posting for the long haul. Don’t take the easy route of just re-posting stuff you read on other blogs, put in original or hard to find material too. Make friends. Be generous, link out and help people in forums. I really do believe what you give you get back tenfold and it has never been more true when it comes to links.

One of the benefits of having a long term view is the pressure is off to be a success today or tomorrow, you know the work you are putting in is money in the bank to be paid back with bonuses at a later date.

Think of each post as a couple of dollars in a high interest account. The future you will thank you for it.

Predicting Success

The talent for knowing when some venture is going to be a success or a failure is a valuable thing to have. Most of us don’t have it so either end up failing a lot (in order to get that one out of ten success) or don’t risk trying things. While we work on Performancing Partners this is something quite prominent in my mind when my brain isn’t occupied by lines of PHP code.

Yesterday Dilbert creator Scott Adams posted another wise article to his blog about “knowing when to quit“. His story about his failed TV show attempt really rings true. Why did it fail? Because everybody “liked” it.

The reason that a product “everyone likes” will fail is because no one “loves” it. The only thing that predicts success is passion, even if only 10% of the consumers have it. For example, I’m willing to bet that when the TV show Baywatch was tested, 90% of the people rolled their eyes and gave it a thumbs down. But I’ll bet 10% of the test audience had tents in their pants. Bingo.

That is so true. Have you noticed some of the products that go on to be massive have that “love it or hate it” thing going on? Now think about your blog, do people love it or just like it? How can you turn the passionometer up to 11? Well, that is the real trick isn’t it? Heh.

So with this in mind, our job with Partners is to create something people will not just like or accept but truly love with a passion. A tall order but for it to be successful, has to be done …

Graphic Designer Wanted for Performancing.com

We’re looking to hire a talented graphic designer to work immediately on Performancing.com projects such as the main site, our forthcoming ad network and other odd bits and pieces when they come up.

The job itself is ‘ad hoc’ — no retainer, no fixed fee, just a commitment to forward regular work your way provided you can always fit our jobs in, and have the time and skill to get them done quickly for us.

Ideally you would…

• Be able to take jobs when they occur and quickly turn them around if small (the odd buttun/pic etc) or fit us into your schedule quickly with larger jobs.
• Have a proven track record for good work — must be able to show examples.
• Have worked on relevant projects — ie, have a good idea of what works with blogs and web2.0 applications
• XHTML/CSS skill would be a bonus, but not essential.
• Preferably be a member of the Performancing community — we’d prefer to hire someone we know, but it’s not essential.

I’ll discuss rates with you, and you’ll start on a trial period to see if both parties are happy working together.

Ultimately, we’re looking for an additional member of the performancing team, but just do not have enough work to offer a permenant position as yet.

All applications should include the following:

• Your website/blog url
• Examples of your work
• References, or links to happy clients if possible

Please email, or PM at nick@performancing.com

Intel Does Blogs

My cousin Darryl just dropped me a line to say Intel had launched a new corporate blog. We don’t normally cover corporate blogging to any great degree but it’s Intel right? Kind of interesting to a few folks I reckon.

I like the meet the bloggers page, they all have wonderfully long and incomprehensible job titles — very spiffy….

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