Idea

The other day, someone got in touch with me and told me I should do a post on how to conduct a good interview. The reason? This person has just been interviewed and the questions they received were so bad, they told the interviewer to redo them and try again. The questions were better the second time around but still lackluster.

I’ve already performed my fair share of interviews both by audio and text. I’ve found that written interviews are much easier to produce than audio. I believe it’s because you don’t need to be on top of your game in front of a live audience. I conduct my shows live and off the cuff which means I better have some sort of clue as to what I’m talking about or I’ll look like an idiot.

This leads me to the short and sweet point that RESEARCH is your number one key to victory for producing a quality interview. The best interviews I have ever conducted have been with people or on topics which I know quite a bit about. There are a couple of reasons on why research is so valuable to an interview. For starters, it builds confidence. Secondly, it helps to generate natural conversation. Interviews sound so much better when they don’t appear to be manufactured or based on a script. Being well researched enables you to ask questions that are somewhat related to the topic at hand without sticking to one talking point. Last but not least, the more research you do, the more interesting and informing your questions SHOULD be. All of the easy to answer questions which are just a Google search away should never be asked during an interview.

In fact, there are quite a few questions you need to stay away from when conducting an interview. Here are just a few.

• How much money do you make?
• Personal questions.
• Questions which require no thought.
• If the interviewee does not want to answer a specific question, let it go. Don’t continue to harp on them until they answer.

These are general rules and observations I’ve made with all of the interviews I have conducted. Now of course, these don’t apply across the board as some people exist to play hardball with others, asking the tough and not easy to answer questions. That’s ok if the topic/person leans towards that type of interview.

So in the end, the best thing you can do when it comes to interviewing or being interviewed is research. Knowledge is power and if you have the knowledge, everything else becomes gravy!

In these tough economic times, I’m sure winning $200.00 is not such a bad thing. WPWebhost which is a webhosting company specializing in hosting WordPress powered sites is holding a contest of sorts. They will be giving away five different awards for specific site design categories. The categories are, modern and elegant, clean and minimalist, retro and vintage, grunge, and hand-drawing style.

Your website must be WordPress powered with an original design or a completely original modification of a free or premium theme design. And here’s how to join:

1. Write a blog post (or announcement) about joining the Best WordPress Design Award (and mention which category you are joining) in your website.
3. Submit your URL in the comment form here. (trackback works too)

Deadline is on 22nd March 2009.

Prizes include a badge to place on your site, $200.00 to be shipped right to your paypal account and a life-time hosting sponsorship. Sounds like a good deal if you ask me. Considering many of the Performancing audience has WordPress powered sites of their own, I figured I’d pass this contest along.

I came across a 2007 interview on TIME about the film Lions for Lambs. The movie starred Tom Cruise, Meryl Streep and Robert Redford, who were all part of the interview. The interviewer noted that 2007 was perhaps a year of franchise films, which were mostly not star-driven, and asked if this marked the first non-star era of Hollywood. I found Tom’s quick response quite profound and interesting, and particularly relevant to the business that I’m in today.

I don’t agree with that, because it’s the stars who are promoting those pictures, that get people interested to see those pictures. You’re neglecting the value of that talent.

I would agree that the value of actors and actresses is not just in the on-screen presence, but is also evident in their marketing pull. Sure, you can find a lot of actors out there who are more of actors rather than stars. These guys could probably provide even more depth of experience and passion in acting than many of the superstars we know. But to the mind of a moviegoer, star value still matters, or at least it helps win a potential viewer’s initial impression of a movie.

Perhaps it’s the same with blogs.

If a rockstar blogger were to announce that he’s launching a new blog, then his reputation would be one big factor in helping tip the scales toward some success in terms of traffic and readership (and even money, if that is the goal). Or if a rockstar blogger were to guest post on a relatively unknown blog, then he might be able to pull up readership there, both for the duration of guest-posting and in the longer run.

I would even go further to say this also applies in other aspects of blogging. How about design? Rockstar designers do have their own following, and people would not miss the chance to download the latest, greatest, themes from their favorite designers, even if it involved paying money for subscription or purchase. How about blog software and plugins? Rockstar developers do have their own following, and people would gladly download new software releases, as if these little pieces of code were sent from heaven.

I’m not much for the rockstar mentaliy. A bit conservative, I usually go for a more modest approach, talking to people, building relationships, and trying to find value in the ordinary.

This probably makes me a movie director who only films for oneself. Or an indie producer who doesn’t care what the world says–or the box office for that matter–just as long as he or she cuts that masterpiece fit only for the eyes of a worthy few. But hey, maybe one day I’ll get to win that coveted golden statuette.

Mr. Cruise, if you’re reading this, how’d you like to guest post on Performancing?

Just a few days ago, I conducted a poll to see how many domains you owned that were just laying dormant. That is, domains you purchased but simply were not doing anything with. So far, the results point to most people having between 1-5 dormant domains just laying around. I have a few domains myself that I don’t want to pay for anymore but instead of letting them go gracefully, here are a few ideas for putting those domains to good use.

• Use As A Prize – Hold a contest and use your domains as prizes. Domain transfers are usually a painless process

• Flip Them – Domain Flipping is the process of buying a domain or website, fixing it up and selling it for a profit. So if you have a somewhat good domain name, slap on a CMS, add some relevant content for a niche and then try to sell the site.

• Auction It Off – Domain registrars such as GoDaddy have an entire auctioning system for auctioning off domains. Let the domain go to the bidder with the highest amount.

• Outright Sell It – If you know a friend who could use a domain name or if its relevant to their niche, offer to sell it to them for a discount price. This is how I obtained a domain which so far, I’ve put to good use.

• Redirect Them – Instead of having the domains publish a parking page from the registrar, configure the domain to redirect to another domain of your choosing.

• Park And Monetize – Create your own HTML parking page with your own advertising on it such as AdSense and monetize the domain.

• Aggregator – You can use plugins such as FeedWordPress which will update your blog through RSS Feeds essentially creating an autoblog or an aggregator. However, this method requires caution as you certainly don’t want to be looked upon as a splogger.

• Just Keep The Domain And Do Nothing – If you can afford to keep paying the registration fee, you can always keep the domain in safekeeping until an idea hits you in the face

• Lifestreaming – Almost the same as creating an autoblog but this time, the content that you aggregate onto the site is yours. You can aggregate your Twitter account, Facebook, or anything that has an RSS feed into this site to create a one stop shop of your activity on the web.

Domain Auctioning/Selling Services:

Moniker
Sedo
GoDaddy Auction House
Bido
SitePoint Marketplace
Webhosting Talk Advertising Forum

Conclusion:

The ideas and list of resources doesn’t have to end here. Add your thoughts and ideas to the comments below. I’m particularly interested in hearing about your experience in selling domains through any one of the services I mentioned above.