I have been trying to figure out why some bloggers do not participate in their own comment area.

Today I posted over at Blog Herald saying one of the things I like about Performancing is the bloggers like and support each other. I think there may be something related between the two ideas, see what you think?

On the one hand, most people say it is about time. Yes, answering comments does take time. But consider this, we all do stuff that takes time but we make time because we get something out of it. Why is it ok to drop commenting but ok to spend the same time on Twitter?

I do post on other blogs other than my own that do not provide emails when someone comments so I get caught up and distracted with other business. For this I need a better system to remind me of where I have posted and what about so I can go back and check comments. If I make this mistake myself then I guess I really ought to forgive others ;)

On your own primary blog though I think there has to be an element that if you are not motivated to answer your own comments then there is a problem. Perhaps you are not interested in what your readers have to say? Is the topic becoming boring for you? Do you only see profit in blogging, nothing more?

If this is the case then there are a couple of solutions:
1) Make friends with your readers. If you see commenters as friends you are less likely to ignore them
2) Re-invigorate your interest in your niche, even if that means drifting your topic focus towards areas that still hold your fascination

I'm interested in hearing your thoughts on this. Am I off base here? Please do share your thoughts in the comments ...

I was halfway through part two in my series about monetizing blogs when I became sidetracked with a forum conversation. Without bringing in a lot of unnecessary details, I was visiting my favorite forum for work at home moms yesterday when I came across a thread from a blogger who was rather upset when a commenter disagreed with her. He wasn't being disrespectful, though she felt he was, and she closed comments for that post because she didn't want a debate.

I read all the posts with interest. I was very disappointed to learn many of my fellow WAHMs were trashing the person who disagreed and even going to his blog and leaving heated comments. After reading the entire thread I posted about how blogging is about building a community. About how discussions are supposed to happen and people should be allowed, no, encouraged to disagree. Debates do happen and as long as people act civilized, there's no reason to close comments.

What I found most interesting was that a couple of people didn't exactly agree with me. Neither of them realized blogging was about community. They felt is was more a marketing tool and comments weren't really necessary. This goes against everything I believed blogging to be. Am I wrong?

So let me put it to you, Performancing community. Since the majority of you are bloggers, probloggers or wannabe bloggers, what is a blog to you? What is the purpose your blog? Why do you do it and how important is community?

Thanks for indulging me.

Ryans message brought home to me just how important community is.

People make a site such as this work, not technology, and certainly not "page rank", "traffic" or "search engine rankings".

There have been numerous cases where I have been so grateful to people who have supported me through the many ups and downs of my blogging career. Some of which happened on this very site ;)

I can't stress enough how important loyal readers are. If you are going to focus on one thing, serving your audience has to be it.

The real value is in loyalty. Traffic without engagement is meaningless. Forget about SEO tricks, gaming social media, community is where it is at.

That folks, is why I am still here, 2 years and 2 weeks later :)

I've been thinking about adding forums to a couple of my more successful blogs. The thought is that while blogs allow for commenting, they aren't ideal for reader-generated content.

My worries about introducing forums are:

1. Too much moderation work
2. I've had too much experience with forums that get overridden with spam
3. Unlike with choosing a blog software, I don't know the killer app for forums

So let me ask you the following questions:

1. What forum software do you recommend for both its ease of use and its rock-solid security?
2. How do you handle moderation?
3. Do you think that discussion forums can compliment a blog and help create a larger regular readership? Or do the blog comments suffice? Is there too much overlap in functionality?
4. Do you think that adding a forum is worth the effort for bloggers? Some of the time? All of the time?

Ok. Let's keep this simple. Over the next month, I'm going to be heading up an effort to monetize Performancing. I'd love your help, especially if you can think of creative ways that both Performancing *and* our community members can jointly profit without crapping the site up with junky ads.

While you brainstorm in the comments section, keep in mind our 2 main services right now, pMetrics and WordPress Themes. There may be ways to monetize them *in addition to* the main Performancing site.

So without further ramblings:

If you ran Performancing, how would you monetize it?

Hi Leute,

Nach langem Hin und Her probiere ich hier aus, ob das mit dem Blog auch für mich machbar ist. Ein gutes Übungsfeld dafür gibt der Wunsch im Herbst ein Sozakfest zusammen zu bringen her. Mal sehen, ob dieser Blog eine Konkurrenz zu einer eigenen Festl-Homepage oder der Datensammlung über www.klassentreffen.at sein kann...

Jedenfalls lade ich vorerst mal alle Menschen hierher ein, die jemals mit mir studiert haben oder zumindestens ihr Studium in der BAS Grenzackerstrasse absolviert haben.

Schau ma amoi...

Following Scoble's link blog, I ended up in this excellent post by Tris Hussey, "Is Pay-Per-Post better than having your own blog?" After discussing the pros and cons of having your own product blog v/s paying others to write a review (PPP, B4H, ReviewMe), Tris concludes:

Why not have your own blog and pay for reviews? Sure you might get flack for the PPP and ReviewMe stuff, but you can talk about why you chose to go that route on your blog.

Ahh, Tris! You hit the nail on the head! But, not hard enough. You missed a small, yet important aspect of the process. Something that Brian over at Copyblogger has drilled into his readers, time and again:

Make it Viral.

First, reviews are better because, someone else is talking about your product. Paid reviews might come at a price, but that's still better: Low cost, high ROI.

Second, a product company with smart marketing departments have its OWN blog, PAID reviews, and independent VIRAL reviews, generated as a result of the other two.

Third, when it comes to 'endorsements,' we have a mental block that seems to tell us:

Only celebrities endorse, normal people share reviews.

So we share our reviews. And if someone is willing to pay for it, it becomes an added bonus. That's how a normal blogger might look at the financial aspect.

We share a weird sense of morality, when it comes to blogs and such content. As long as there are no explicit financial motives involved, we happily assume that the content is 'true' and 'unbiased'.

Oh, really?

Technorati Tags: Paid Content, PPP, B4H, ReviewMe, Tris Hussey, Controversy

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I have written a couple of posts about Web 2.0, early on in my blog.

I've had various conversations revolving around this concept across the years. A comment I wrote on the 9rules community was the best explanation I could generate for such an abstract concept.

To many people out there, Web 2.0 is just a buzz-word. For quite a few, it is about AJAX and flashy effects on website. And very few really understand what it means.

The other day, one of my friends directed me to a YouTube video titled "Web 2.0 ... The Machine is Us/ing Us." And suddenly, a few more pieces of the jigsaw fell into place.

The title was intriguing enough. :) Go watch it yourself...

Web 2.0 ... The Machine is Us/ing Us.

I urge you people to check out the video. It is one of the simplest, best and most explanatory videos I have ever seen.

And what's more, it's Web 2.0!

Everywhere I register online I am always me. My username is always a variation on "Chris", "chrisg" or "Chris Garrett". Right back to my BBS and Usenet days up to now. The only time I can think of where that has not been true has been Digg.

I have nothing against nicknames, people use them for a variety of reasons, not least because their real name is already taken. That said many people have pseudonyms on Digg because they want to stealth-promote their websites for the traffic boost. The idea is you can seem an impartial third party who just really finds the viagra-pr0n-ipod blog particularly fascinating. This is bad for any number of reasons but I realised it could be killing Digg by removing trust from the community. If you take trust out of any activity surely you are in danger of destroying the social fabric of that activity?

I think Bloggers especially are in danger of killing the goose that lays the golden eggs. So many of us are hooked on the sweet sweet Digg traffic high that we are using Digg for what we can get out of it and the whole system is being subverted. We need to stop this Diggaddiction before we all become junkies.

An addiction in itself is not necessarily that damaging. It's the side-effects of that addiction that trouble me, the ever-increasing desperate attempts to recreate the initial Digg-effect hit. The manic dependency on the high and the temptation to create an army of sock-puppet Digg accounts. The eventual Digg meltdown where half the "people" you meet on the site are fake.

From now on I am going to treat Digg no different to any other online community. I have registered as chrisgarrett (feel free to friend me). I will Digg up your stories if I find them interesting.

This is not me being all fluffy-bunny-blogger-transparent for the sake of it! Of course I am saying all this for completely selfish reasons. I enjoy Digg immensely and find it incredibly useful as a resource. Several times a day I check in with Digg to see what interesting new sites have been posted up and to take part in the discussions. The entertainment and research value of Digg would be incredibly damaged if the promotional aspect gets too much influence.

I just don't want to see Digg full of spam.

A while back, a deal between Pay Per Post (PPP) and Performancing (Perf), caused quite an uproar over at the Performancing Community Forums.

Perf Members denounced it left, right and centre blaming Perf for all sorts of things. Some even went to the extent of threatening to close down their accounts, which I found weird. Nobody ever said that to Writely. Or YouTube. Or del.icio.us, for that matter.

I think Nick, Chris and all the guys at Perf are a fantastic lot. I would doff my hat off to them, if I was wearing one.

And then, the deal was called off. Performancing went through a roller-coaster of a ride, and things seem to have stabilized.

Hmm, lemme see:

Ads on Blogs - GOOD
Pay per Post - BAD

Premium Content - GOOD
Pay Per Post - BAD

Community Reviews - GOOD
Pay Per Post - BAD

Summing it up, as long as you are not associated with explicit financial motives, whatever you do is ALWAYS good. That's a thin red line there, methinks.

Weird sense of morality we have, eh?

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Note:
This post is not intended to revive old wounds, but it's just my $0.02 worth. Maybe I am wrong there, but I'd love to know your views on this one...
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With partners about to be turned off, it's amazing that at least one Performancing member would want to show his support for the community regardless and modify our house ads to display a kind of "community badge" -- See the right hand side near the top on the link above.

Thanks Kirk!

I've had a couple of dealings with Tony Hung, and found him ot be a thoroughly decent chap -- with a damn good blog. Mike Arrington just nice profile of Tony that talks about his "day job" as a student doctor.

Interesting stuff, and good to see Tony getting a bit of added exposure for his work (both night and day heh..).

Darren Barefoot is asking the question and it is one I would like to know the answer to

Why do you blog? Why do I blog? Why does anybody? As the medium enters its pubescence, it’s a question that I wonder about all the time. I’ve talked about it with a lot of different bloggers, and everyone offers a different reason.

In February, I’m giving a talk called “Why We Blog” at Northern Voice here in Vancouver. In preparation, I’m launching this ad hoc survey to gather more opinions and voices from the blogosphere.

If you have the time please go over and complete his survey - you might win a prize but more importantly Darren might publish his findings so we can get a picture of why people are blogging right now. Interestingly he has gone for free text replies so I am not sure how the survey results will be formulated.

In my experience there are many reasons people blog ...

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Communities need their own rules and of course anyone who wants to be part of a community has to understand that. I can't call myself part of the Digg community so perhaps I have no place to comment. Never stopped me before. That said, for a while I have worried that Digg is losing its way.

Nick points to Muhammads List Of Sites Banned From Digg.com - not the first of its kind apparently. I'm sure people who follow Digg closer than I do will have seen some surprisingly popular domains banned from Digg. It doesn't matter if this is caused by competitors, abuse of the system, if the bans have merit, whether anyone agrees or disagrees. Any successful property inevitably builds a backlash. Either way, if Digg is meant to point people to hot web content then banning popular domains is potentially counter to their mission ...

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Towards the end of last year there started a growing trend. More blogs were adding community features such as MyBlogLog or forums to their offering. Some had off-site forums, such as Flickr, others such as Darrens Digital-Photography-School and the mighty Techcrunch chose full forum software.

Blogs are a great focal point for ideas and with comments there is some opportunity for conversation. Real vibrant exchanges require a bit more.  Firstly people need to be able to start their own threads, blogs tend to be "I speak then you reply". Second with forum software people can contact each other and make connections reader to reader using your community as a conduit but not necessarily as a venue.

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