This is part two in the series of tips and tricks I have learned by reading the book, Blogging Heroes. After reading the things I learned, stick around for my take aways I've garnered through completeing the book.

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Tonights episode featured a very special guest, Darren Rowse of Problogger.net fame. Within this episode, we discussed with Darren about his book, his new project called Twitip.com, the realities of blogging, monetization, the lessons learned so far in his career, community building and much, much more. This has become a classic show and I encourage everyone to listen as there is plenty of information presented within the episode that is sure to enlighten you.

LENGTH OF EPISODE - 1 Hour 20 Minutes

NEXT EPISODE - November 27th, 2008 at 7 P.M. EST

ITUNES - Click here to subscribe to the show via iTunes

DOWNLOAD THE SHOW: PerfcastEpisode13.mp3

LISTEN TO EPISODE 13 OF PERFCAST:

There is a great thread in the Performancing Hive Forums which is asking members to write 2-3 paragraphs, sharing one professional tip they have learned over the last 6 months. I participated in the thread which is ongoing and filled with a bunch of great tips but I thought I'd share my response with you through the blog.

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I've finally managed to finished a book I've been spending the last few months reading called "Blogging Heroes" which was authored by Michael A. Banks. The book contains interviews with (at the time of writing) 30 of the world's top bloggers. People such as Joel Comm, Gina Trapani, Frank Warren, Peter Rojas, Robert Scoble, etc. offer their stories on how they have become successful through blogging.

This post is the first in a two part series which will highlight 30 things I have learned by reading this book.

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When I was a kid I made friends from school and around the neighborhood and this mostly entailed face-to-face encounters. Most of my classmates knew each other's telephone numbers. And so did the neighborhood guys, but we rarely needed to phone each other because we just lived houses apart.

Those days, kids didn't have mobile phones. You'd be lucky if you had your own telephone line in your room. Social networking meant spending Friday evenings with your pals playing Nintendo. That was just 15 to 20 years ago. Imagine how it was in the time before my childhood years.

These days playing Nintendo with friends means everyone stayed at their own place, playing multi-player games with each other over the Internet. Phone calls have given way to text messaging and instant messaging. Sure we have video conferencing, but does anyone bother?

In this age of social networking, many of us have become lazy connectors and shy communicators.

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Yuwanda Black over at BloggingTips.com published a great article about why you shouldn't worry about your subscriber count, at least not in the first year. Her article hits a number of spots, especially regarding the first year of blogging and how your focus should be entirely centered around how many subscribers you have.

I remember when I started blogging seriously, I had no idea what a subscriber count was. I also remember browsing around to the various blogs and seeing that they all had this Feedburner chicklet which let the world know essentially how popular their blog was. When I really got into blogging, I ignored the subscriber count and I didn't really care if people subscribed to my blog or not. The only thing that mattered to me was the fact that I had a blog to publish things that I thought were interesting.

Within Yuwandas article, she said something that really struck a chord with me.

If you’ve thoroughly researched your niche; put all of the behind-the-scenes elements in place for success; and work you tail off; subscribers are most likely going to come anyway.

How true that statement is. I'll say that when I noticed that my subscriber count was increasing and the blog was starting to become a success, my focus of what I was trying to accomplish immediately dropped. My focused turned into "how do I increase my subscriber count". This is the situation that Yuwanda explains how to avoid and it's too bad I didn't read a post like that back in my hay day of my own blog.

For a full index of all the posts related to nextMEDIA, check out BrandingDavid.com where I will be updating everyone on various sessions.

Another panel session, the second one before lunch on the first day, including an eclectic group of people. Trevor Doerksen from MoboVivo, David Purdy from Rogers Cable Communications and Missy Suicide from Suicide Girls.

The microphone on Michael Barry wasn't working well, though I was able to hear him, he was rather quiet. He started with Missy, and asked her how she started.

Started in 2001, with the simple idea of bringing people together to have people thrive. They created a subscription model by adding community features and working hard on branding over the last few years.

"What better than hot, beautiful people to bring people together" - Missy Suicide

The next one up in questioning was Trevor, who had to fend off the fact that video portals aren't a valuable offering online, and actually leech off others.

They thought of themselves an enabler for content producers to get their video online, but traditional media wasn't interested, and so they built out their portal by getting whatever content they could license.

They purchased premium content and turn it around to be a two or three dollar per episode sale system, and are working on the marketing aspect of the shows, which is the difficult part.

"Women are actually willing to pay for things, and us men are morally corrupt or something..." - Trevor Doerksen

David Purdy was next to answer some questions on Rogers Canada, a television and media company.

"If you call yourself just a TV guy, you'll be gone at some point in the future" - David Purdy.

Rogers is realizing that customers want to watch what they want, when they want, and where they want, and they are trying to get projects approved quickly to do that. It is difficult sometimes but they have to innovate.

He compared Rogers to Bell quite constantly, and continued to say that Bell was smart in getting out there early with online offerings and PVR products for television, but have made some mistakes in how they run and organize it.

What will happen to pay-per-view in the future? Well, David Purdy thinks that only the Adult industry and multi-cultural content will do well, and most people will move to the on-demand services.

Aaron Brazell who heads up Technosailor.com has once again published a top 10 list of things to know regarding the next version of WordPress (2.7). These articles have become a regular series on the blog and are always worth reading to get a top down observation of why the next version of WordPress matters. This particular post highlights the history of how the 2.7 backend rebuild came to be, new features and more. If you've been out of the loop with regards to WordPress and the developments that have taken place for 2.7, this post will catch you up in no time flat.

Upon reading an article published by TheRecord.com (Blogging courses gain momentum) out of Vancouver Canada, I thought it was interesting that teaching people how to blog is turning up in course books across universities and college campuses.

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I've been writing for Performancing since the beginning of June 2008. Since then, I've created a sizable chunk of content for the site. Some of the articles I have written have been wildly successful while most have not. For the most part, I've stayed away from discussing monetization tips, strategy, what works and what doesn't. Back in July, I let you know that change was on the horizon for Performancing.com but since then, not much has changed at least in terms of the site itself. There have been quite a few changes behind the scenes, specifically dealing with personnel. If all goes well, Performancing will sport a new look soon, and many structural changes will be taking place. The forums will be revamped and the massive archive will be much easier to browse through.

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Back in September, I created a poll that asked if you would still comment on a blog if the URL field from the comment form was removed. 36 of you said yes while 27 of you said no. I followed that poll up with a post explaining what I believed to be the pros and cons of the URL field. At the end of that post, I described an experiment I would do on my personal blog to see what would happen and this is the result.

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Some bloggers probably have no qualms about just typing away at any computer and publishing blog posts at any time of the day. But there are some of us who have some habits or practices that we just can't do without. Perhaps most would at least need to be using a certain piece of equipment or software in order to be productive when writing. Perhaps you need a big LCD screen? Or how about a netbook for portability and the ability to blog anywhere?

Ryan showed us his blogging rig a year back. Much like Ryan, I'm fond of a multi-computer setup. I like it how I can write an article on one computer, and then do research and reading (or chatting with colleagues) on another.

On my desk, my main work machine is my laptop, and in the periphery are my two netbooks.

My laptop and netbooks

I usually carry one netbook in my bag for those times when I need to get work done while out of my home office. As backup connectivity, and for away-from-office connectivity when outside of WiFi hotspots, I use my 3G/HSDPA modem. This runs on a prepaid account, so I don't have to worry about needlessly paying for an unlimited account that I don't usually get to use anyway (and sometimes the faster 3G/HSDPA signal is spotty so one has to settle down for slow GPRS).

HSDPA modem

When I need to get some graphics-related work done, I use my Mac Mini, which is attached to a reasonably-sized (19-inch) LCD screen.

My Mac Mini

And then there's for those cases where I really need to get connected while mobile. I used to use my Nokia E51 exclusively, but when I got a SonyEricsson Xperia X1 for review, I'm finding myself using that one more often for writing emails, moderating comments, and even writing short posts while on the go.

Show us your blogging rig!

Now it's time for you to share with us what your blogging rig looks like. Do share a bit why you like your blogging setup that way, and how it helps you be productive. Or perhaps, if you don't feel your blogging rig is good enough, tell us how you'd like to change your blogging setup to help you blog better.

To help you in blogging productivity, we're giving away Pro pMetrics accounts to four lucky folks who post their blogging rig photos on the comment threads. Accounts are good for one year, and valued at $59.99. With the premium Pro account you get detailed tracking, such as per-visitor tracking, conversion tracking, data export and the like. The Pro account also supports up to 10 sites instead of three for the free account.

I'll select one submission in random each Friday of the next four weeks. I will announce the winners, and get in touch with the comment author. So please register for an account so I can directly contact you through your Performancing account (and the email registered therein).

Not much happening this week with the job board side of things.

PR 3 Site Available

Real Estate blogger needed

If you are looking for a blogging job or you're an employer looking for somewhere to place your job ad, be sure to check out the Performancing Job board. There are no fees for publishing jobs.

If you've ever wanted the chance to ask Darren Rowse a question in real time, next Thursday will be your opportunity. The problogger himself will be appearing for an hour on Perfcast next Thursday to discuss problogging, the success of his co-authored book, monetization, blog networks, the state of advertising, community, what it's like to be a blogging rockstar and much, much more. This episode is a week away but it already has 'classic' written all over it. If you'll be unable to participate in the show live, you can email your questions to perfcast@gmail.com or you can leave a comment on this blog post with your question. It may or may not be asked on the air but it's worth a shot.

The show will air live on Thursday November 20th, 2008 at 7 P.M. EST on Talkshoe.com.

If you would like to know how to participate in the show, please read the How To Participate In Perfcast Live guide I put together which explains everything you need to know.

Ahh, today is Friday. The day in which most Mon-Fri 9-5 workers enjoy the most. After Friday, the weekend rolls around offering ample opportunity to get things done or to just take a breather. However, for bloggers, freelancers, and online entrepreneurs, the weekends have become part of the work week.

Back on November 8th, I asked readers if they could relate to a statement that I saw come across my Twitter stream. The statement identified the fact that weekends used to mean no work but now, they have been relegated to days in which you stop working on the things you don't want to do, and work on the things you want to do. I also asked our members of the Hive to share their thoughts on the matter and this is what you, and others had to say

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