I once read somewhere that if you plan on launching a site within a niche, it's a good idea to hang around the various sites that already exist for at least six to twelve months. Comment on those blogs, make connections with the owners of those blogs and if possible, write a guest post or two. Why is all of this important?

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While last weeks show contained a number of depressing news items, this weeks show provided the upshot. Venture Capitalists are still investing in companies with hefty amounts, a hosted blog service disappears, what happens to companies when they don't pay for their advertising campaign, growing your blog on minimal time, and a model who sells Google are all topics of discussion this week. We also answered a listener email and announced that David and I will be starting a series on the show where we cover the various aspects of Starting, Maintaining, and Exiting a blog. We'll start from square one and go through the rungs in detail.

Next week is the first episode in this series called 'The Blog Prelaunch'. Things you should do or think about before you decide to create a blog.

STORIES DISCUSSED -
JournalSpace Disappears

VC Funding Still Happening
eFresh.com nails 5.4 million bucks
Evernotes Nabs 4.5 million bucks
JibJab Gets 7.5 million bucks

Model Sues Google For Information on Snarky Blogger

Non Paying Advertisers

Twitter Accounts Phished

Growing Your Blog on Minimal Time

LISTENER FEEDBACK - In this episode, we answered a listener email. You can give us your feedback by shooting us an email at, perfcast@gmail.com or leave a comment on this blog post.

Sent by ConorP - What is the best way to get more visitors to a new blog. For example: I write a good blog post and don't get any comments.

BLOGGING JOB OF THE WEEK - Found thanks to Freelanceswitch - Independent Mac Apps Blogger

We’re launching an experimental blog about independent mac apps and need a part-time blogger to review and write about mac apps like these ones: http://freelanceswitch.com/working/35-absolutely-essential-mac-apps/

You’d be writing about 5 – 10 posts per week, a mix of short news posts, reviews and occasional round-ups.

You’ll need to have some experience blogging and be a mac fan with lots of knowledge of mac apps.

LENGTH OF EPISODE - 1 Hour 9 Minutes

NEXT EPISODE - January 15th, 2009 at 7 P.M. EST

ITUNES - Click here to subscribe to the show via iTunes

DOWNLOAD THE SHOW: PerfcastEpisode19.mp3

LISTEN TO EPISODE 19 OF PERFCAST:

Jade Craven who runs the blog, The Prolific Writer published an awesome list of tips the other day on how to get a guest blog post on an A-List blog. Her tips are bookmark worthy. I can verify that her tips on Waiting For An Opportunity as well as having prior contact with the A-List blogger work. I used most of the advice she provides in order to write guest blog posts for Problogger.

Definitely give this one a read and save it for future reference.

What happens when you've finished writing a blog post and hit the publish button? Well, for one, your blogging software will publish your article for all the world to see. But there's something that's not as obvious. The moment you hit publish, you now own the copyright to that particular post, unless you explicitly state otherwise.

Most bloggers are unaware of this. Or most of us simply don't care. Until some other site automatically republishes our post in full, that is. It's called scraping, one of the ugly cousins of splogging. Worse, they probably have AdSense, text links and other affiliate links slapped on their sites. Where's the link back to your blog, you ask? In all likelihood, it's not there. Or if there's a link, it probably just adds to the insult.

You become a victim of copyright infringement.

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Performancing.com has been around for at least five years now. In that time span, many bloggers from all walks of life have shared their tips, tricks, and techniques. Based on what I've seen while writing for Performancing, many of you are either monetizing websites or are wanting to do so. I find myself in a good position to become one of those who are monetizing websites as I am currently working on my own project. However, I have never monetized a site before let alone dealt with advertisers. So with that in mind, I'll explain what I plan on doing with my project and then I'd like you to chime in and help me decide how to monetize this site.

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The new year has come, and among some bloggers' resolutions include being more environment-friendly. Sure, oil prices have plummeted, partly because of the worldwide economic crunch. But this doesn't mean you shouldn't start being more efficient in your energy use. TIME Magazine's latest feature tells us that there is a renewable-energy resource that is perfectly clean, remarkably cheap, surprisingly abundant and immediately available, and it is not some new-technology power plant or biofuel, or whatnot. It's simple: energy efficiency.

I've actually tried to start a blog about becoming more green, but the idea of becoming more eco-friendly seemed a bit trivial to someone like me who spends almost all day in front of the computer (and so the blog has not had much activity for some time now). But then it hit me--being environmentally friendly should start at home, or better yet for a blogger, right at your fingertips.

And so I've thought of a few ways to reduce one's carbon footprint, specifically from blogging. First and foremost, we define carbon footprint as the greenhouse gas emissions caused by your activities, whether directly or indirectly. So with blogging, this is mostly related to your use of energy or electricity.

You can either reduce consumption altogether. For instance, you can limit yourself to just a couple of hours of online activity every day. But that would only result in conservation and not efficiency. That's doing less with less. What we want is to be able to do more with the same amount of energy, or even less.

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In a technique that has mostly been confined to email has now spread to micro blogging services such as Twitter. In a post published in January 3rd on the official Twitter blog, the service warns users:

If you receive a direct message or a direct message email notification that redirects to what looks like Twitter.com—don't sign in. Look closely at the URL because it could be a scam.

Ever receive an email from Ebay or someone claiming to be your bank asking you to confirm your username and password? Those are phishing scams. So how does this particular phishing scam work as it relates to Twitter?

This particular scam sent out emails resembling those you might receive from Twitter if you get email notifications of your Direct Messages. The email says something like, "hey! check out this funny blog about you..." and provides a link. That link redirects to a site masquerading as the Twitter front page. Look closely at the URL field, if it has another domain besides Twitter but looks exactly like our page then it's a fraud and you should not sign in.

For tips on how to avoid this and other phishing scams, read this article that was published on Fraud.org. If you find yourself a victim to this phishing scam, Twitter recommends you immediately click on the RESET PASSWORD link for your account. The reset password email will be sent to the address on file allowing you to change the password to something you know and reclaim your account. If that doesn't work, try contacting their support team.

I've been chomping at the bit to write a post like this for quite awhile but haven't been pushed enough to do it. That is until I read Jack Humphreys post containing his biggest pet peeves of all time, some of which are related to blogging. He lists a couple which I whole heartedly agree with such as:

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As David and I discussed on the latest edition of Perfcast, Google performed one last PageRank update before the end of 2008. This was confirmed by Matt Cutts on his personal blog on December 31st. Via my SearchStatus FireFox extension, looks like my personal site has remained at a pagerank of 5 while Performancing.com is still at a pagerank of 4. I asked those on Twitter if they noticed a change in their pagerank and this is what they told me:

patrickd88 @jeffr0 PatrickSays.net is still a 3. PatrickTalksTech.com moved from unranked to 1.

ajaydsouza @jeffr0 Still at 4 for techtites.com and ajaydsouza.com

lenire @jeffr0 according to grader.com my google rank is 2, is that right?

bgardner @jeffr0 PageRank on BrianGardner.com is still an 8 - can't seem to get past that one

itsananderson @jeffr0 PageRank of itsananderson.com is still 2. If David is right that means I have less than 1k backlinks

kimparsell @jeffr0 Mine is at 4.

jdhartley @jeffr0 I am at 3. Was at 2

What about your site? Did your pagerank go up, down, or nowhere?

Its been awhile since David and I had the opportunity to discuss the news and various happenings across the blogosphere. In this action packed, somewhat depressing episode of Perfcast, David and I reflect back on 2008 just a little bit and then proceed to dive into the news which their was plenty of this week.

STORIES DISCUSSED -
Is That Comment Spam?
Podango Bites The Dust
B5 Media Made 1.3 Million Dollars In 2007 (David actually clears up some confusion related to this post)
Consumers Union Purchases Consumerist And Defamer Goes Up For Sale
More Bad News About 2009 And Online Advertising
Monetizing Doesn't Seem To Be Getting Any Easier
Success And Post Count
Google PageRank Updated For The New Year

LISTENER FEEDBACK - In this episode, we answered a listener email, read two comments related to previous episodes of the show and read and email from a new listener. You can give us your feedback by shooting us an email at, perfcast@gmail.com or leave a comment on this blog post.

BLOGGING JOB OF THE WEEK - Found thanks to Freelance Writing Jobs - Entertainment Industry And Technology Columnist

I'm looking for a freelance writer passionate about the entertainment industry to contribute a monthly column about Technology from the perspective of being productive or successful in the entertainment industry.

Topics Include:
Marketing on twitter
Myspace Marketing Tips
Expanding your fanbase with Ning
Email Dos & Donts
DRM issues
Website reviews

LENGTH OF EPISODE - 1 Hour 10 Minutes

NEXT EPISODE - January 8th, 2008 at 7 P.M. EST

ITUNES - Click here to subscribe to the show via iTunes

DOWNLOAD THE SHOW: PerfcastEpisode18.mp3

LISTEN TO EPISODE 18 OF PERFCAST:

Taking the cue from Dee's post at the EatonWeb blog I think this start of the new year is a good time to come up with goals and resolutions for 2009. I know new year's resolutions are usually difficult to keep, so I'm thinking of these as goals that I would like to work on rather than promises that might end up broken.

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Darren Rowse of Problogger has published the results of his two month long poll asking his readers how much income they make by blogging. You can view his post to check out the results but here is something that stuck out to me:

So to this point we can say 70% of those who make money from their blogs make less than $500 a month and 30% make $500 or more.

I know Darren has a huge audience of bloggers and most of them are looking to make money online but it seems pretty bad that only 70% of those who voted are making less than $500.00 per month. Just that statistic alone makes me realize why Make Money Online blogs are so popular.

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In an email exchange I had earlier today with another blogger, he said something which struck a chord with me. He told me that those who pay people to write for them are not only purchasing immediate value, but are also purchasing value that will increase with time. In essence, you publish a new article today and it holds immediate, near term value. As that post falls deeper into the archive, people are still finding that page by means of search engines or social media traffic. Therefor, if you were paid $25.00 to write a list post for whatever niche that site was within, chances are good that the site owner will make that money back and then some. Makes perfect business sense doesn't it?

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Taking the cue from a post on Copyblogger a while back, I now wonder what we should name our RSS subscription link in our site redesign. On the Blog Herald, Lorelle reinforces the view that using the term "subscribe" might turn away people.

True--"subscriptions" usually cost money. And folks are attracted to free stuff. While we do have a premium subscription site, the Hive, the main Performancing.com site content continues to be free, whether you read on-site, via email or your RSS reader.

So saying "Subscribe to Performancing" might come across incorrectly as Perf being a pay site.

Lorelle suggests you use clever ways to name your subscription links. For instance, a blog about cats can say "Track this cat," and a blog about health or medicine can say "Get a daily dose ..." But generic ones will work, too.

For Performancing.com, we need a catchy line for our RSS subscription link. If you can give us good suggestions, we will give the top choice a free year's pro pMetrics subscription and a free six month membership to the Hive.

What do you think we should put up there on the RSS link?