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Why Community Matters

Ryans message brought home to me just how important community is.

People make a site such as this work, not technology, and certainly not “page rank”, “traffic” or “search engine rankings”.

There have been numerous cases where I have been so grateful to people who have supported me through the many ups and downs of my blogging career. Some of which happened on this very site 😉

I can’t stress enough how important loyal readers are. If you are going to focus on one thing, serving your audience has to be it.

The real value is in loyalty. Traffic without engagement is meaningless. Forget about SEO tricks, gaming social media, community is where it is at.

That folks, is why I am still here, 2 years and 2 weeks later 🙂

Downtime apology and explanation

Please accept our apologies for the pMetrics downtime this week. We had an unexpected but serious database corruption that took a long time to fix, much longer than anyone anticipated. We should have been more vocal about this, as we have in the past, and will try to do so next time. It kept seeming like it was almost fixed, and then something else would happen. Time flies and here we are two days later.

But things are finally back to normal again… well, except for the fact that you have several days of traffic missing. But don’t worry, we still have it, it just hasn’t been processed yet. Being that pMetrics is more focused on the present than the past, we are giving your new traffic priority. The traffic that’s missing should show up in your account within several days.

Making It Through Troubled Times and the Will to Persevere

The last few days have been really hard on me. Emotionally. Physically. Spiritually.

I’ve been putting in 18 hour days almost completely focused on getting Performancing back up to speed. Admittedly, I did very little of the sweat work. About four others were doing the hard stuff.

But the whole experience has really worn me thin.

Fact is, I love Performancing. While there were moments over the last few days when I just wanted to quit and walk away, I knew I couldn’t. We have something too good going here for me to let it go.

Thanks for your patience. Mistakes were made. Hopefully, hopefully, hopefully lessons have been learned.

I’m shot.

Off to enjoy myself with a sweet game of Flyers’ hockey tonight (Rangers don’t stand a chance). Catch you tomorrow. And let’s hope that the trouble is behind us.

EatonWeb To Devalue PageRank… What Are Your Thoughts?

The EatonWeb blog directory, which attempts to order blogs in each category by “importance” according to a variety of metrics, has decided to devalue the role of PageRank in its algorithm.

The basic argument is this: PageRank no longer serves as a reliable indicator of importance. If EatonWeb wants to be a reliable indicator of importance, then it needs to devalue the role of PageRank in its algorithm.

So what are your thoughts? Is this a smart move? A bad move? A reactionary move? From an objective standpoint, does it make sense to start ignoring PageRank in favor of other more reliable indicators of blog value?

ReBlogging: The new pest

Have your articles been reblogged?
Are you aware of the copyright rules here on p.com?
You know that using ads on a site makes that site ‘commercial’?

Stop automatic reblogging of your articles!

Or better: Go ahead and tell Google to stop indexing those sites.

The case

Today I was alerted that my name is showing up on some website. I checked the page and could see that my p.com feed is reblogged. Some others, like Darren Rowse are also hit.

  • The site: article words .com
  • The issue narrowed in : Google Blog Search (GBS) BlogBridge to monitor my name and links to my sites. Those search feeds show up in a guide called ‘MM Blogs’ and give me an immediate feedback. BlogBridge offers so called ‘smart searches’ which make it very easy to get those results. In other feed readers you will have to set up those searches by copying & pasting the appropriate RSS sources.

    It is no big deal to set up such an automatic monitoring to search for good or bad usage of your content!

    My reaction

    I simply sent the above GBS address and search term to make them aware of the website. A stronger weapon would be to file an AdSense DMCA Complaint.

    This is a reminder to follow your traces, may they be good or bad…

Clue 5 In the Performancing Treasure Hunt

Better late than never. Performancing has been encountering some terrible server issues over the last 3 days…catastrophic issues that we simply could not prepare for in advance. That’s our excuse. Take it or leave it. But please do send us your sympathies for 72 hours worth of massive “what the hell” headaches.

Back to the treasure hunt. We’re now four clues into the Performancing Treasure Hunt where you can win up to seven great prizes. For the last four days you’ve been searching around for Clue 4. Hope everyone has found it by now;-)

Before introducing Clue Number 5, let me just put in a huge plug for Brian Clark’s Teaching Sells program. I’ve heard so many good things about Brian’s program in the last month or so, that I’ve stopped counting. Suffice it to say…if you want to learn how to build a membership based site, look no further than Brian’s guide.

Now you all know that I love Brian…right? So let’s get on with the clue:

Clue #5: “Brian Clark teaches wannabes”

What? “I thought you just got done saying that Brian’s program was top notch…now you’re insulting him?” Nah…I’m a Brian Clark wannabe. I personally think that Brian has had the single most positive and lasting influence on the blogosphere through his site Copyblogger….period. I think everyone should want to be a Brian Clark wannabe.

Ok. So what are you supposed to do with the clue?

Well, here’s a 4 step algorithm for how to use the clue.

  1. Do a Google search on the exact clue phrase.
  2. Visit any page on the Internet that shows up in the Google SERPS for that phrase.
  3. Once you are on the page, find only the *outbound* links in the article.
  4. Write down the first letter of the domains of any *outbound* links.

So that’s how you get started. The earlier you start searching, the better, because the less chance there is of SERP corruption by mischiefs;-)

Once you’ve collected all the letters for a clue, try to unscramble them into a word.

Each clue represents one word. All the clues together will represent a phrase. The first person to identify that phrase wins the grand prize.

If you need confirmation that you’ve found the *official* pages of the Treasure Hunt, send me, Ryan a private message.

Sponsor Performancing’s December “Tis The Season” Holiday Theme

The holiday season is right around the corner and we at Performancing are glad to share in the holiday spirit by releasing the ‘Tis the Season theme for WordPress on December 1st.

‘Tis the Season uses the popular red-and-green color scheme that is very much in tune with the holiday seasons. The theme uses a fixed-width layout with a basic two-column structure featuring well-proportioned column widths.

We are officially opening this great new WordPres theme to sponsorship, with bids starting at $250. Theme Sponsorship allows you to not only support Performancing’s monthly release of free, high quality WordPress themes but to also gain exposure for your own site or product.

So let the bidding begin!

View a preview of the theme.

Why I Like Working With Girls Better Than Most Guys

I’ve been working online long enough to have learned a few lessons.

Lesson Numero Uno: Girls, on average, are much better working partners than guys.

It’s as good as a scientific law. I’ve worked with enough people (hundreds) to feel confident in my conclusion.

Now this doesn’t mean that there aren’t some good guys out there. My friends Chris, Raj and Ahmed are three of the best people you could imagine working with. But for every Chris, there are nine lazy-ass guys sitting around trying to suck away your money. It’s a fact. A law of nature.

So here are three reasons I like working with girls better than guys:

1. Girls are more dependable.

Ask a female for a favor (no, not that kind sickos), and if she says yes, it gets done, done well, and earlier than you expect. Not so with most guys. Just an observation. But I bet you know what I’m talking about.

2. Girls do it more thoroughly

Aside from the rare perfectionist beast like Chris Pearson, I’ve found that most girls just do the job more completely. I get a more polished product from the average girl, then I do from the average guy. Just an observation. No need to flame me.

3. Girls are more willing to take suggestions

Whether it’s because they don’t have egos the size of Texas, or because they just want to do the best job possible, I’ve never had a girl act offended or defensible from a suggestion. And revisions…they do them with joy.

Most guys I’ve worked with…drag their feet, and mumble some incoherent nonsense when asked for improvements. Just an observation. A fact, that’s as good as a law of nature.