J Angelo Racoma

Performancing Jobs Now Online

October 9, 2009 by J Angelo Racoma

Briefcases The Performancing team is proud to announce that the Jobs board is now back.

Since the migration of Performancign from Drupal to WordPress, we’ve had to momentarily drop a few things that were heavily reliant on Drupal, such as the forums and the job board (which is actually a thread in the forum), among other things. Just recently, we’ve installed a plugin that can support job listings from right within WordPress.

Do check it out at performancing.com/jobs.

Submissions are free, and each entry will stay online for seven days. For better visibility, though, you can subscribe to a premium listing for $20, which will be displayed at the top of the list for 30 days.

The job board supports listings for jobs and offers for writing, blogging and related services.

If you have an opening for a writing or blogging job, please feel free to add it to the list. Same goes for freelancers who want to offer blogging services for a fee. Be sure to include your contact information and even links to your existing portfolio, to make application easier. The plugin usually asks for a location, but we understand that most blogging jobs are probably virtual office or freelance in nature. Still, some blog networks or employers might want to hire writers or bloggers as in-house staff, so this is still applicable.

Good luck with finding the ideal job, or the ideal blogger, as the case may be.

Image credit: flickr/foreverphoto

Splashpress Media Launches Donation Drive for Philippine Typhoon Victims

September 29, 2009 by J Angelo Racoma

As posted on the Splashpress Media blog, we’re running a fund campaign in aid of typhoon victims in the Philippines, particularly in Metro Manila and neighboring areas. Anything you can do to help would mean so much. [Read more…] about Splashpress Media Launches Donation Drive for Philippine Typhoon Victims

How Long Does It Take to Proofread a Blog Post?

September 21, 2009 by J Angelo Racoma

Magnifying glass Justin recently wrote a post about proofreading tool After the Deadline. True enough, it makes sense to check your draft for misspellings, and mistakes in grammar and punctuation before hitting the publish button. If you’re using web markup, it also makes sense to check the draft for any unclosed or misplaced tags.

But aside from these simple mistakes, it takes more time to actually check a post if it does make sense. First, you have to check if your argument is reasonable. Then, you have to check if you got your facts straight. Then you need to check if your sources are valid, and if your post does point to the original (or at least the best quality) source of information. And there’s also a host of other things I’d like to check before hitting publish. Here would be a short checklist.

Check spelling.
Check grammar.
Check for clarity. I like using precise language. For instance, “hard” can mean many things. So I prefer to use “difficult.”
Check for conciseness. Usually, during proofreading I remove unnecessary sentences and even paragraphs.
Check for readability. I like to divide my posts into easily-digestible paragraphs. Better yet, I use headings, for easier scanning.
I do a logic check. Does my reasoning really make sense? Sometimes I rearrange paragraphs for better buildup.
Check categories and tags.
Check the site URL. With the many blogs I write on, I might be writing on the wrong site!
Preview the post to see how it looks like as a finished product.

I often find myself reading and rereading a draft before finally publishing. If it’s a feature post, proofreading often takes about 150% to 200% of the time I spent drafting the actual thing (or even longer). If it’s a news post, I’m more concerned with the timeliness of the article, so the time spent editing could be significantly shorter.

I think I may be too much of a perfectionist that sometimes i even scrap a draft if I think it won’t cut the grade in terms of quality and applicability to a blog. Sometimes I decide to move the draft to another site altogether, if my writing and editing results in straying away from the original intent or idea.

Either that, or perhaps I’m afraid of criticism.

My point here is that for me, I think readers deserve shorter, clearer blog posts that make an impact, rather than a post that just rambles and rambles and isn’t even clear on what the author wants to say. It’s more difficult to edit than write. But with more effort put into editing a post, it makes it easier for your readers to understand what you want to say, and this makes for better writing.

How long does it take for you to edit and proofread a blog post?

Image credit: flickr/data_op

What Do You Do When People Turn Your Blog Into a Forum?

September 14, 2009 by J Angelo Racoma

Don’t you just love it when your blog ranks #1 on relevant search queries? I do. Of course, the drawback here is that when a blog post becomes sticky in the number one spot, sometimes you tend to get too many visitors who are not too familiar with the format of your site being a blog. They turn the comment section into a question-and-answer forum.

Take for instance my post about Filipino economists dated four years back. It is, by far, one of my more best-read posts. It just consists of about four intelligible sentences. Thing is, that particular post has been getting dozens and dozens of inquiries from students asking for help with their assignment. It goes as far as these folks asking for the finished product itself!

I’ve actually updated the post to point prospective researchers to better resources, but many just ignore the note and ask ahead. Perhaps the presence of a comment thread and message box makes it seem as if it’s an online forum, which can be one good way of seeking feedback and posing questions online.

But what do you do when things get out of hand and people treat one particular blog post as a forum? Here are a few things I can think of.

Close the comment thread. Things could get out of hand, and comments might tend to be off-topic anyway. So you an always disable feedback for this particular post. Or, you can run a plugin that closes comment threads when a post reaches a particular age.
Participate in the conversation. This can be particularly useful if the post is about a hot topic, and if the discussions are still highly relevant even after dozens and hundreds of comments. Why not enjoy your post’s popularity?
Update your post. If people are looking for information, and others contribute in the comment thread, then you can update your post to include these relevant information. You could then hope that readers will get the idea, but of course users who are too lazy to really read through an article will still keep on asking questions even if the answers are right in front of them.

On my posts that get this much attention, I usually try a combination of these. But of course, I still get a ton of comments in which the reader is asking for something that is already there.

Will Online Micropayment Systems Help Save Newspapers?

September 13, 2009 by J Angelo Racoma

Newspapers are not dead. Even with the Internet providing free content on just about anything, people still do read newspapers for a variety of reasons. These days, though one big challenge faced by newspaper publishers is how to bring their mainstream business online while still being profitable and sustainable.

Newspapers–and other periodicals–are said to have a three-pronged approach when it comes to revenue streams. It’s comparable to a tripod, in which if one leg fails, the whole thing collapses. First is the subscriptions: the good number of businesses, establishments and individuals who pay a subscription fee to receive copies of a paper or magazine regularly. Second is advertisements: sponsorships are a lifeline of the publishing industry. Third is newsstand sales: these are people who are not regular subscribers, but buy off the stand anyway.

The argument here is that the three-tier revenue scheme provides a good check-and-balance system for the focus of the publication’s editorials and content. If one only relies solely on advertisers, then a newspaper stands to lose editorial integrity. If one relies only on subscribers, then content tends to be monotonous. If one relies only on newsstand buyers, then you tend to focus on sensational news to get people to buy each issue.

The challenge with bringing content online is that users tend to prefer “free,” and so a publication is therefore effectively taking out the newsstand revenues from the picture. There is therefore a heavy reliance on advertisements, and to some extent regular subscriptions. If newspapers find a way to bring the newsstand to online readers, then this might bring back the balance to its revenue streams. In a proposal by Google to the Newspaper Association of America, they propose a micropayment system that will allow users to purchase content.

Fast Company discusses the implications of this proposal.

As newspapers seek to generate new revenue channels by switching to online publishing, there’s a fabulous business opportunity opening as the provider for their payment systems. The micropayments system will apparently share revenue in a similar fashion to the iTunes App Store, and Android Marketplace, so it’ll be a profitable system for Google as well as the newspapers. The upshot for Google is that it will remain at the core of the process (a position it loves to be in) and able to monitor its user’s habits in the hope that it can glean more information about them–useful for tailoring its own operations, selling advertising and so on.

Google, after all, has been digitizing content for some time now, and therefore it is not new to the game of bringing us content from books and even old newspapers. But to the end-user, what makes this different from existing checkout or subscription systems, such as those powered by PayPal and the like? Perhaps it’s the trust factor that the Google brand brings in. Perhaps it’s Google’s ability to aggregate content from various sources and bring these together under one portal (think Google News).

And so with a system for bringing the newsstand right at your fingertips, do you think this will help newspapers thrive in the ever-competitive world of distributing content online? To me, if it’s a matter of paying a few cents to access a newspaper or magazine issue, then it will be all right. But the clincher here is whether it will be an easy enough process, and whether the price will be reasonable enough.

Then there are the pros and cons of having all your content in digital format. First, there are the green implications. Less paper means less trees cut down, less ink used for printing, and less material to recycle. Being fully digital also means I can access the content from anywhere–my computer, my smartphone or even an e-book reader. Content is now also more easily searchable than physically printed material. On the other hand, paper is sometimes more convenient to use, and there are people who prefer the actual feel (and sound, and scent) of paper.

For now, I’m still content with buying my weekday paper from the newsstand each morning when I drive the kids to school. I still read my share of online news from various sources. This means I get a mix of digital and print content in my daily consumption of information. The question is how easy will it be for me to fully make the move to digital?

Image credit: flickr/inju

Avocado Theme for WordPress

September 11, 2009 by J Angelo Racoma

Avocado Theme

Green is the in thing today. We do want to save the Earth and the human population from a radical change in climate. The Avocado Theme reflects this philosophy, both with the green-themed color scheme, and with how the editorial and design team of Performancing strive to be green in the way we live and work.

The Avocado Theme uses a three-column layout with rounded corners. The green-dominated background and sidebars are highlighted with orange headers and icons. The theme is optimized for use with WordPress 2.8 and above, and supports various features like threaded comments, post classes, image captions, galleries, and drop-down menus.

We have included in the theme ZIP file the Photoshop file and font used for the header, should you wish to use the header image for your title or logo.

The Avocado Theme is a classic theme release from Performancing Themes for WordPress, and is another collaboration with designer Sophia Lucero, who has likewise designed other themes, like Too Newsy and Rubidious.

Download Avocado Theme

Download the theme file here.
See a live demo here.

Why Forums Have Stood the Test of time

September 1, 2009 by J Angelo Racoma

Forums pre-date blogs, microblogging services, social networks and other social mediums as we know them. I remember the first forums I joined in the mid 1990’s, which were about mobile phones. The bulletin boards are still up today. I’m not as active, but I got to meet some new friends (face to face) from those forums.

If you aren’t strict with the software or method of content distribution, I can even say forums pre-date the Internet as we know it. For my part, I was active in bulletin board services of old–where you manually login to an online service by dialling in to the host computer, and with interfaces that command-line junkies would surely appreciate.

These days, I still visit my favorite forums, with topics including cars, notebook computers, social media, and the like. I especially like how passionate some forum members can be about the topic. Here are a few reasons why I think forums will last the test of time.

Community

Forums are usually about topics that like-minded individuals love to talk about. Be it mobile phones, netbooks, social media, marketing, or just about anything, people will flock together. And it’s not just about sharing the same passions that makes a community. It’s also about genuinely extending a helping hand to those in need. I’ve experienced a few times when I had real-world troubles, and posted my problem on the forum, and just a few minutes later responses came trickling in. Some members would even be willing to physically assist you when in need!

Longevity

Forums usually stand the test of time because of the rich archive of content they have. And forums are not personality-driven like blogs are. Forums are not friends-driven like social networks are. As long as the topic is still interesting, there will always be people who will carry the torch. Even if founding members, moderators or even the owner tire out, other people will be willing to continue managing the community.

Social structure

Forums usually have social structures. There are the managers or moderators. There are the “senior” members. There are the newbies. Forums have rules, and everyone is encouraged to contribute positively. Sometimes, it’s not just the metrics that give a member credence and seniority. At times, it’s the quality of your contributions to the community. And bad eggs are usually weeded out. Even if a recalcitrant user can just come back using different aliases and IP addresses, forum members usually police each other, making sure that everyone is acting good.

Return readership

Most blogs have about 40% return readership or so. Most would have 80% of its audience coming from the search engines, and many of these are just one-time readers (looking for some information, perhaps). Forums, on the other hand, are often checked by its members for new posts. And members often stay online for hours at a time, just to be part of the active discussions. Sure, this can be bad for monetizing through pay-per-click campaigns, but it can be a good way to earn from brand advertising.

For more than a decade, perhaps it’s the software that has changed form and functionality. In some cases, “bulletin boards” have also taken the guise of usenet groups and even e-groups. But the concept of online forums has remained the same. And as long as there are people who share an interest in any particular topic (and there’s someone willing to manage and maintain the forum), then these will go on and on. Do you think other social mediums will stand the test of time in a similar way?

Skip links