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Scribefire

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As most of you know, Performancing Firefox, our free blog editor for Firefox, will be rebranded, and relaunched under a new name in 2007.

That name is Scribefire.

With well over 400k downloads on Mozilla alone, Scribefire is an awesome project, and one I take particular pride in, having been privilged to shape it’s development over the last year.

We’re looking for developers and designers to join the new project, so if you think it would interest/benefit you to be involved, please email me at [email protected]

thanks everyone, and happy new year!

Performancing and PayPerPost

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No doubt many of you will have heard the good news that PayPerPost have agreed to aquire certain parts of Performancing.

There appears to be some small confusion over what parts of Performancing the guys at PayPerPost have agreed to aquire, so aswell as posting this on my personal blog, i’ll reiterate here so that everyone is as clear as can be.

This does not include the Partners ad network, and does not include PFF, our free blog editor for firefox. Details will go out shortly, but the bottom line is that we’ll be moving those parts of Performancing to new domains and new brands.

We’re all very excited about the deal. It gives Metrics a chance to truly flourish, and the community an opportunity to grow and continue to discuss the business of blogging.

Clearly there’s a ton of stuff to do to make this all go smoothly, so do excuse me while i rush around like a madman trying to do it all in time….

Your thoughts on Auto Pricing

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Of all the features of the partners blog ad network, Auto pricing, the mechanism we use to determine a blogs monthly charge for advertisers, seems to cause the most contraversy and support posts in the forums.

This doesn’t necessarily mean it’s a bad thing, but I would like to find out your opinions on it as Im rather inclined to do away with it and set a flat rate for every blog unless the blog owner edits it to suit themselves.

Let me know what you think. The decision hasn’t been made so if it’s important to you, take a moment to influence it by sharing your opinion…

Partners CPA Test Now Finished

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The recent CPA beta test we ran across the Partners network is now over. It was a great success in terms of it’s purpose: To determine if CPA ads as backfill for unsold ad space was a viable option for publishers.

The answer is YES.

There were many lessons learned in this brief test, cheif among them being that targeting needs to be sharper, and we’re very appreciative of our publishers help in both testing the ads, and providing awesome feedback.

With that feedback, and the knowledge gained from running the test, we’ll be looking to run phase 2 shortly — it may not be what you think, but it will be interesting, and hopfully lead to a more rewarding program for publishers.

Those that have earnt money from the test will be notified on the next payment run.

Thanks again everyone, I hope to have a similarly productive conversation with the next phase of testing as we strive to make Partners work for as many publishers as possible!

Partners Network CPA Ads are Online!

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We’ve just finished inputing the promised first round of CPA (cost per action) ads into the beta “Network Ads” program to backfill unsold ad space across the Partners network.

Right now they are very broad in topic, as this is simply a test (but a test with the aim of making you money..), but presuming all goes to plan, we’ll roll out more creatives and more specific targeting in coming days.

The ads are geo targeted, so if you’re outside of the US, you may not see too much, but visitors in the US will see ads targeted to them. Again this is something we hope to work on if the beta test goes good.

I have to pop out, but do leave your comments and i’ll answer any questions when i get back in a few hours.

Performancing to beta “Network Ads” this week

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As reported by Darren over at Problogger, we’re to beta “Network Ads” next week. This is to address the challenges many publishers face in securing those all important first paid ads.

Network Ads are very simple. They’re CPA (cost per action) ads that fill your unsold ad space untill a regular advertiser wants that space for herself. Initially the creatives will be limited to around a dozen fairly “universal fit” brands/products to test the system, and help us fine-tune targeting for categories, and in some cases individual blogs in the Partners network.

How they work

  • Network Ads will appear on your site in place of “empty slots”, but below paid slots.
  • Network Ads are CPA – Cost Per Action. This means that you get paid if a reader clicks through on the ad, then buys something from the destination site
  • Much greater detail on creatives and payouts will be available next week at launch.
  • Payout is the same as for regular ads. A simple 70/30 split between publisher and Performancing.
  • Initially, ads will be “universal fit” so that we can run the brief test across the entire network — we’ve chosen the best performaning ads, but more accurate targeting will come in the next beta phase.
  • Again, initially, features will be very limited. We want to collate some data first to help us determine what kind of features we need to put in place ot help our publishers profit from this. Please bear with us for a few days…
  • There is no guarantee you will earn money. If your site is very low traffic for example, this may not work well for you. All the normal traffic building tips you can find here and at Problogger.net and other sites apply 🙂

How to opt-out

If you really don’t want to participate, then we’ll be sorry to hear that, but have provided an easy means for you to opt-out of the system entirely — Just go to “my blogs” and edit your blogs to say no to network ads.

Questions and comments welcomed

Though I think I’ve managed to cover most of it, if you have questions or comments they’re most welcome so please drop them in the comment box below.

Thanks everyone!

November payments finally out, apologies for delay

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Though I’ve no doubt there will still be some work to do (see below if you have not received payment..), payments finally went out last night to those of you still missing November cheques.

My sincere apologies for the delay. We had some ‘paypal issues’ that were out of our hands but appear to be finally resolved.

If you think you’re missing your payment

First, please double check your emails (payments are made to the email account in your performancing profile). If you really think you’re missing payment, then please comment here, or email [email protected] and let us know and we’ll giet it fixed for you today.

On a happier note…

Im pleased to say this was our biggest payout to date, good job guys, and good luck for December!