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List Your Ten Favorite Blogs

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Today I realized that I don’t read enough blogs. In fact, I hardly read any blogs. That’s pretty bad for someone who blogs about blogging. Haha.

So what I need is for you to tell me what your 10 favorite blogs are. Not the ones that you promote. Not the ones that you write. Not the ones that you’re *supposed* to like. I’m looking for 10 really freakin’ good blogs that I should start reading yesterday.

Let me know in the comments section so I can update my feed reader. Hopefully we can point each other in the direction of some good, non-spammy stuff.

The Single Biggest Challenge To Building Equity On the Web

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My strategy for making money on the web has been to pursue long-term equity in several money-niches. What exactly is long term equity? It’s the value that a thing acquires over periods of time and it is typically associated with the amount of profit that the thing is able to produce.

While many people make plenty of money flipping blogs, or pursuing short-term high-value income in short-life niches (the hottest tv show), my preference is to avoid the roller-coaster ride and massive startup effort, and instead own web properties that will make more and more money each year.

Having been successful in building some strong income-producing equity fairly quickly, I do have a few lessons I’ve learned that I’d like to share with the Performancing community.

The human brain often takes the current moment or “state of affairs” and projects it onto the future. The naive assumption, that everyone is naturally prone to make because of human biology and the brain, is that what works today will work tomorrow.

By and large, most things stay the same. Human beings love to communicate with each other. That will probably never change. However, what has changed is the medium of communication. So a company that bets on “communication” as their business offering will be much more successful then the company that bets on the analog phone.

Well, I should qualify that last statement. Let’s take a look at Verizon Communications. The two companies that merged to become Verizon became billion dollar companies because of dominating the local and long distance phone service in huge markets.

From what I understand, both companies had the foresight and the capital to adapt to new communication technologies (not easily or painlessly though). Even today, Verizon is slowly unleashing a wide-scale Fiber Optic network that’s been on the back-burner for over 20 years. The point isn’t the delay, but that a massively successful, multi-billion dollar company has been forced to confront change and not sit on their ass while the world passed them by.

The fact of the matter is that Verizon, and it’s ancestors, were forced to put a whole lot of money and a whole lot of work into adapting to change: a changing communications market.

The long-term equity investor normally desires to identify and stick with “what works” over the long haul. But a long-term thinker like myself can be blinded by the naive operating assumption that what works today will work tomorrow.

The world is not a static place. It is constantly changing. Especially on the Internet. Long-term equity investors like myself need to take change seriously. So how do you take change seriously? By thinking about it and preparing for it.

  1. Predictive Intelligence: Manage change by focusing on forms of content and content delivery that are not likely to be short term fads
  2. Contingency Planning: Be intentional about the future and the fact that change will happen. Develop strategies for adapting to both minor and major changes both in product demand and delivery infrastructure
  3. Experimentation: Dabble in, but don’t get overwhelmed by, new ideas and approaches. Dedicate a subset of your resources towards “experimenting with the future”
  4. Diversification: As you experiment, pick out the things that work and consider expanding upon them. In doing so, make sure to diversify in product offering, revenue sources and delivery method

I still believe that a long-term approach towards acquiring Internet equity is the best, most consistent way to gain wealth on the net. But I also admit that I was a bit naive when I first started and assumed that as soon as I identified something that worked, I could simply dig and allow it to keep working. That was a mistake.

EatonWeb Blogger Wanted

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The EatonWeb Blog Directory is looking for a part-time blogger who knows a thing or two about SEO and blog submission.

The blogger will be responsible for regular updates at the EatonWeb Blog: http://portal.eatonweb.com/ewblog/

The position will pay $100 per month for any of the following services:

A) Four 800 word columns
B) Two 800 word columns and four 400 word columns
C) Eight 400 word columns

This is a great opportunity for anyone looking to establish a strong, notable voice in the SEO space.

To apply, either PM me or send me an email to [email protected]

Does Persistence Always Pay? What to do when a virtual economy is on the verge of collapse

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In case you haven’t noticed, the latest Toolbar PR rollout has been abnormal and slow. In the grand scheme of things, Toolbar PR is close to meaningless (Argument From Absurdity: it tells us that Performancing is more important than the DrudgeReport).

Yet as things go, hundreds of thousands of bloggers and website owners are attached to the hip of this stale, useless tool. Why?

Simplistically, the story goes like this.

Google literally came out of nowhere (a garage) to dominate the search space. The reason? They filtered search results not just by on-page text but by off-site “voting” in the form of links.

PageRank is the term that Google invented to describe their “importance” metric. While their filtering systems have changed dramatically since their emergence into search dominance, PageRank is a simple icon of Google’s successful formula.

Despite the fact that Toolbar PageRank is often 3-9 months stale, and despite the fact that Google now intelligently buffers the importance of raw links based on a number of smart factors, Toolbar PageRank is still the king of the hill…the center of gravity for thousands of web publishers and seo artists.

Because of this, a massive virtual economy has built up around PageRank in the last half-decade. Some web publishers make upwards of 5 (and for all I know, even six) figures per month simply by selling this awkwardly valuable commodity.

Rightly so, Google sees the buying and selling of PageRank as a negative manipulation of their once innocent metric. In reaction, Google has implemented a number of temporal buffers to deter the text link ad market. So far, they have not been successful.

But as rumors build that Google is either completely dropping or radically altering the way they tabulate, update and display PageRank, lots of people are scrambling to adjust their web publishing business models. Whether its site consolidation, ad diversification, or complex SEO subtleties like anchor text variation, deep-linking or post-level link buying, it is clear that Google has succeeded in stirring a whole slew of people from their slumber. And that should be expected. We are, after all, talking about people’s livelihoods.

Having set the stage, I now want to address the two issues I raise in the title of this article.

1. Does persistence always pay off?
2. Preparing for the busting of a fairly silly virtual economy built around a meaningless metric

The answer to these questions isn’t as simple as yes and no. After all, persistence does not pay off if you’re trying to dig a tunnel from California to China. But what about persistence in web publishing and monetization? Does persistence always pay in this domain? Yes and no. Yes if you’re open to adaptation and strategical re-evaluation. Yes if you focus on the fundamentals and forget the fads. Yes, if you focus on building long-term equity. In other words, persistence pays if you’re smart and you know what you are doing.

But persistence does not pay over the long haul if your long-term plan is not fundamentally sound. If you build your entire web publishing business around a lot of ephemeral PageRank, you are doomed. That doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t pay attention to PageRank. You should, but only as one among many indicators of a site’s quality. The point is that instead of PageRank, you should be looking to build Authority. And Authority is built by becoming part of strong, quality niche neighborhoods. This is a fundamental fact about SEO and linkbuilding that will never change. Even if the TLA market collapses.

This brings me towards an answer to the second issue. How do you prepare yourself for the collapse of an economy that’s not built on strong fundamentals? Well, the answer is to start focusing on fundamentals. Quality. Branding. Niche Marketing. Niche Networking. Web publishers who focus on these 4 fundamentals will be building a solid foundation for the future. Those who continue to go down the PR only route, might be successful in the short-term, but are destined for longer term failure…

…Unless…

Here’s a tip for those of you, like me, who enjoy a nice chunky TLA check each month. Take the money you make from TLA each month, and instead of padding the personal bank account, or perpetuating your addiction to PageRank by buying more links, start focusing on the four fundamentals: quality, branding, marketing and networking which all work together to build long-term equity and an attractive target for diverse advertising sources.

Tell Your Readers To Vote.

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Unless your crowd is a bunch of social media hounds, putting those little social media icons at the bottom of your posts doesn’t achieve much of anything (accept maybe some PageRank leakage).

Want to run successful social media campaigns that involve your readers? Then tell them to vote. Again and again and again. You should even have a “Voting FAQ” that explains how your readers can get involved. Spell it out. Give them a cause to fight for. Make it simple. And soon you just might have a social media army.

In fact, the same goes for almost any action that you want your readers to perform. You’re looking for subscribers? Then don’t just put up a little orange icon. Give your readers instructions such as “Subscribe to this blog” – maybe even have an entire page dedicated to explaining exactly what subscribing is. You’ll get more subscriptions when you give instructions.

The same goes for affiliate sales. Tell them over and over and over how good hosting company X is, and some of them will listen to your advice.

The same goes for donations. Ask them to buy you a beer, or your favorite Starbucks drink… in every post … and you’ll get some.

But if you’re like me, you’ll probably just slap up some icons, but a banner in the sidebar, and pray to the God of Automation.

Unfortunately for me, the God of Automation doesn’t answer very many prayers these days.

Revolutionary pMetrics WordPress Plugin Released

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Those of you who are just looking for a great way to display blog stats in your WordPress Dashboard, read no further. Sign-up for pMetrics and then download the plugin.

But connoisseurs of innovative technology take note. Performancing is today releasing what we see as a major step forward in WordPress plugin technology. The innovation that we are introducing is at the level of fundamental architecture and can be generalized for numerous applications. We demo the technology in our 1.0 pMetrics plugin release.

Several months ago over at College Startup, I wrote a post over at College Startup entitled Open Source Priority #1: One Click Updates. The general idea behind the post was that we should move beyond the old-art of software updates (deleting, downloading, unzipping, re-uploading). The old-art is especially problematic when running dozens or hundreds of blogs.

After making that post, I realized that I should do something about it. Enter Sean Hickey from Headzoo. I explained my ideas to Sean and asked him to execute this new software architecture, using the pMetrics API in the hopes of killing two birds with one stone: 1) making a killer demo and 2) giving pMetrics users an expandable, auto-updating plugin

In a nutshell here’s what the pMetrics plugin offers:

1. Auto-updates (this option can be toggled on and off)
2. One-click installs for added functionality
3. One-click removals (deletes files off the server)
4. Blog stats in your WordPress dashboard
5. Latest searches display
6. pMetrics rank display
7. Auto-installation of pMetrics javascript code

Coming Soon

8. Auto-installation of affiliate banner in sidebar
9. Blog sales page with detailed pMetrics statistics
10. Feedburner integration

and much more…sky’s the limit.

Download the plugin now

Selective (Back) Networking: Kiss A Little Ass

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Debng recently wrote of the importance of social networking. It’s true. Successful probloggers are the ones who find ways to engage their readers, and enter into long-running conversations with the greater internet community (rather than spitting out monologues).

I want to suggest that there’s another form of networking that most bloggers don’t know the first thing about or completely ignore.

I call it selective (back)networking and here’s the idea: the internet is just like any other human network. There are hierarchies of authority. If you want to be successful, you need to move up the hierarchy.

That probably sounds a bit disconcerting to some of the “democratic nature of the web” idealists out there, but there is no denying that power gets collected and wielded on the webernet. So how much power do you have?

See, what Deb says in her article is so very true. You need other people to be successful. But your network should not be an egalitarian one. Not all internet friends are created equal. Don’t deceive yourself.

The key to building a (back)network is to intentionally and selectively seek out people who 1) have power and leverage 2) are smart and capable and 3) are fair in their online relationships. By building up a social “backbone” of good friends in high-places, you’ll be able to execute your plans a lot faster, realize profit a lot quicker, and avoid burn-out a lot easier (ten shoulders are better than one).

“But Ryan Caldwell, you’re already successful. What about those of us who are just getting started?”

Suck up and kiss ass.

That’s it. That’s how you get into my good graces. Start doing me favors and I’ll send some love your way. Ask me to do you a favor before you’ve proven your worthiness to me, and I’ll ignore you. Completely and utterly ignore you. But if you’ve got something to offer me, something that I truly benefit from…then you’ve got a friend.

That’s how things work. I hate to speak the truth when it hurts a little. But it’s gotta be spoken. People use each other. That’s a fact. But this setup can be mutually benefitial and mutually rewarding.

The trick to building a selective (back)network is to identify people that you want as part of your social backbone. Bend over backwards to show that you’ve got something worthwhile to offer. And pretty soon your load will be lightened. You’ll be in good company.

So if you’re just starting out here’s my advice: kiss a little ass. The payoff is huge.