PerfCast

Episode 29 marks the last episode of Perfcast that I produce. In this episode, David and I as well as special guest Brad LeClerc discussed the news of the week while also giving props and thanks to all who have downloaded and listened to the show since it rebounded back on August 28th, 2008. If you were one of these people, David and I sincerely thank you for sticking through the thick and thin and hope you’ll follow us on our future endeavors. What will become of Perfcast? I’m not sure, but I won’t be steering the boat.

AD COPY: This episode of Perfcast is brought to you by, the Performancing Copyright Management Service. Our copyright experts will track down websites, blogs, forums and other sites that infringe on your rights as a publisher. We will then give you a comprehensive report with suggested courses of action. Prices start at $300 and for more information please visit services.performancing.com/blog

STORIES DISCUSSED:
The most reliable blog service
How to conduct a great interview
EarnersTalk.com Launches
Is Dad Blogs The Next Best Thing?
Twitter Paid Accounts On The Way?
When do you stop commenting on blogs?

LAST WEEKS POLL QUESTION: Is Social Media An Overused Buzzword?

Out of a total of 51 votes, 33 of you said Yes, 13 of you said No while 5 of you don’t even know what the term really means.

PICKS OF THE WEEK
Jeff – DeviantArt.com – Simply the best site on the web dedicated to awesome art of all flavors. Also, a great site to browse when looking for a new desktop wallpaper.

David – IO9.com – My favorite science fiction/fantasy related blog, run by Gawker media. The blog I’d buy/run if I could afford it.

JOB OF THE WEEK Duncan Riley’s Inqusitr looking for a few more bloggers.

LENGTH OF EPISODE – 1 Hour 6 Minutes

DOWNLOAD THE SHOW: PerfcastEpisode29.mp3

LISTEN TO EPISODE 29 OF PERFCAST:

This weeks edition of Perfcast featured discussions on Digg.com and what it takes to get on the front page these days, fake Twitter premium accounts which leads to discussion how how Twitter may become profitable, five tips for easy to read posts and much more. Don’t forget to listen to our picks of the week as well as the blogging job of the week.

AD COPY: This episode of Perfcast is brought to you by, the Performancing Copyright Management Service. Our copyright experts will track down websites, blogs, forums and other sites that infringe on your rights as a publisher. We will then give you a comprehensive report with suggested courses of action. Prices start at $300 and for more information please visit services.performancing.com/blog

STORIES DISCUSSED:
50 Websites That Control The Front Page Of Digg
Should You Use Your Real Name On Twitter?
5 Tips For Easy To Read Posts
What The Heck Happened To ContestBlogger.com?
April Fools Not Here Yet But People Already Being Fooled
Alltop Launches MyAllTop

LAST WEEKS POLL QUESTION: Have You Ever Attended A Conference/Trade Show For Your Niche?

Out of a total of 24 votes 15 of you voted Yes. 6 of you voted No and 3 of you voted that you can Never Afford It

THIS WEEKS POLL QUESTION IS: Is Social Media An Overused Buzzword?

Results will be read in next weeks episode

PICKS OF THE WEEK
Jeff – OpenWith.org – Have a file you don’t know how to open? Think you need an expensive piece of software to open it? Chances are there is a great free program that’s just as good as the expensive one, and you’ll find it at openwith.org. OpenWith.org provides detailed information about most file extension and links to free programs that can open and create each type of file.

David – WickedFire.com – a forum of internet marketers, web developers, and people that just make money online.

JOB OF THE WEEK Write for CEOWorld Magazine

LENGTH OF EPISODE – 1 Hour 7 Minutes

NEXT EPISODE – March 26th, 2009 at 7 P.M. EST

ITUNES – Click here to subscribe to the show via iTunes

DOWNLOAD THE SHOW: PerfcastEpisode28.mp3

LISTEN TO EPISODE 28 OF PERFCAST:

This Week, David is feeling a bit under the weather while I am suffering from sleep deprivation. Put us together and you have the unique combination of sick and tired! This week, we cover some of the stories that peeked our interests. We also start a new segment of the show this week in that David and I each provide a pick of the week. This could be a website, a service, a program or just about anything we PICK that we believe is worthy of sharing with the audience.

AD COPY: This episode of Perfcast is brought to you by, the Performancing Copyright Management Service. Our copyright experts will track down websites, blogs, forums and other sites that infringe on your rights as a publisher. We will then give you a comprehensive report with suggested courses of action. Prices start at $300 and for more information please visit services.performancing.com/blog

STORIES DISCUSSED:
Will StumbleUpons Share This Feature Get Abused?
Thoughts From Darren Rowse On Blogging Versus Twitter
A Fresh Ning.com
The Problem With Selling Blogs
The Guardian Opens Up
More Conversation Fragmentation

WEEKLY LISTENER POLL: Has The Economy Affected The Way You Blog?

Out of a total of 34 votes, 14 of you said YES, 16 of you said NO and 4 of you said you stopped blogging because of the economy.

NEXT WEEKS POLL QUESTION IS: Have You Ever Attended A Conference/Trade Show For Your Niche?

Results will be read in next weeks episode

PICKS OF THE WEEK
Jeff – VirtualNES.com is the largest website on the Internet that allows you to play your favorite classic Nintendo Entertainment System games online for free. VirtualNES.com is the official home of, and is powered by the vNES emulator by Jamie Sanders. If they don’t have the games in their possession, they can’t have them online. This protects them from threats of litigation, and protects the users from (wrongly) being hunted down for violating copyrights. If you can, please consider donating money, games, or server space to the VirtualNES.com team. – http://www.virtualnes.com

David – iPod Touch joins the Jailbreak Family – http://blog.iphone-dev.org/post/85449850/ipod-touch-2g-hi-welcome-to-the-jailbreak-family

JOB OF THE WEEK Direct Marketing Blogger (Ghost Writer) – http://jobs.problogger.net/view/2097

LENGTH OF EPISODE – 1 Hour 4 Minutes

NEXT EPISODE – March 19th, 2009 at 7 P.M. EST

ITUNES – Click here to subscribe to the show via iTunes

DOWNLOAD THE SHOW: PerfcastEpisode27.mp3

LISTEN TO EPISODE 27 OF PERFCAST:

In this reality check edition of Perfcast, David and I give you the lowdown on IntenseDebates launch on supporting plugins as well as Mashables partnership with Disqus and UberVu to try to bring the social networking conversation back to your blog. We also get the low down on David’s premium WordPress Theme. Stay tuned for considerable changes to the show in the near future.

STORIES DISCUSSED:
IntenseDebate Launches Plugins
Bringing The Conversation Back To Your Blog
David Launches His Own Premium Theme
Great List Of Online Applications
Taste The Social Media Rainbow?

WEEKLY LISTENER POLL: How Many Domains Do You Own That Are Laying Dormant?

Out of a total of 186 votes: 23 voted none, 74 voted 1-5, 37 voted 6-11, 9 voted 12-17, 8 voted 18-23, 35 voted 24 or more.

NEXT WEEKS POLL QUESTION IS: Has The Economy Affected The Way You Blog?

Results will be read in next weeks episode

JOB OF THE WEEK In this weeks edition of the Job Of The Week, David and I have a conversation related to how employers are upping the ante when it comes to even being considered for the writing gig. We also talk about when it is and is not appropriate to ask people to work for free.

http://jobs.problogger.net/view/2064 We’d like you to publish one well written post per week to your own blog, which you will write yourself, based on a press release from our client.

http://jobs.problogger.net/view/2060 Requirement – 2 example articles which have gotten FP’d on Digg or Reddit

http://newyork.craigslist.org/mnh/wri/1060550039.html b5media looking for free content

LENGTH OF EPISODE – 56 Minutes

NEXT EPISODE – March 12th, 2009 at 7 P.M. EST

ITUNES – Click here to subscribe to the show via iTunes

DOWNLOAD THE SHOW: PerfcastEpisode26.mp3

LISTEN TO EPISODE 26 OF PERFCAST:

Episode 25 of Perfcast featured a wide ranging conversation from online advertising to the state of the economy. David Peralty was unable to join me as co-host but a few friends of the show decided to call in and so, I simply recorded our conversation. There is not a lot of talk about blogging in this episode but we did discuss a number of things that are affecting us in the real world such as the economy. We all discussed the various ways in which we are dealing with the situation in terms of jobs and generating revenue. Hopefully next week, we’ll be back on track to talk about blogging and related topics.

LENGTH OF EPISODE – 1 Hour 7 Minutes

NEXT EPISODE – March 5th, 2009 at 7 P.M. EST

ITUNES – Click here to subscribe to the show via iTunes

DOWNLOAD THE SHOW: PerfcastEpisode25.mp3

LISTEN TO EPISODE 25 OF PERFCAST:

What a great conversation this turned out to be. Episode 24 featured a special one hour interview with Jim Turner who has turned into the right hand man for the Blog World Expo conference. Jim is also the guy behind One By One Media which is a blog consulting firm. In this interview we discussed mainstream medias use of both blogging and podcasting, the difficulties involved with hosting and putting together a conference in todays economy, how One By One media was founded and much more. I’ve already labeled this as a classic show and i can’t wait to have Jim back on in the future to talk more about blogging and podcasting.

LINKS MENTIONED ON THE SHOW:
One By One Media
Blog World Expo

LISTENER FEEDBACK – You can give us your feedback by shooting us an email at, [email protected] or leave a comment on this blog post.

LENGTH OF EPISODE – 1 Hour 4 Minutes

NEXT EPISODE – February 26th, 2009 at 7 P.M. EST

ITUNES – Click here to subscribe to the show via iTunes

DOWNLOAD THE SHOW: PerfcastEpisode24.mp3

LISTEN TO EPISODE 24 OF PERFCAST:

This week, David and I continue our blogging series by discussing Content Generation and search engine optimization. We highligh a number of topics such as DoFollow or NoFollow, Social Media, and a whole lot more. Plus, at the end of the show we provide a great list of resources for you to check out if you’re into SEO.

Content Generation
Coming up with ideas
Building a voice
Staying Fresh
Tracking News
Inspiration
Commentary on news, social commentary, posting about something written by a competitor

SEO Concerns
What is SEO?
What are factored into deciding the SEO of a site?
How important is SEO?
DoFollow or NoFollow?
What is Pinging?
Do I need a Sitemap?
How much time should be spent on SEO?
How can you maximize SEO in a blog post?
WordPress Plugins for Maximizing SEO?

Social Media
Building Links Naturally
Site Optimization
About Page
Microformats

SEO Resources
WebCEO – Checking server headers can be a problem, but it’s an essential element to ensure authority is being correctly passed between pages. This tool lets you check your pages and route out those 302 redirects.

SEOBook Keyword Tool – One of the best free keyword research tools available online, this allows you to see search volumes for keywords and suggests alternate key terms.

Compete: There’s both a free and paid version of this onlin tool, which checkjs visitor level and keywords driving traffic to a website. A great way to gain insight.

Site map Generator for Windows – Make XML site maps with a free tool from Google to help get your wevbsute indexed by major search engines

136 SEO Tools – Wide range of tools that covers just about everything you’d need to know regarding your website from an SEO perspective.

Link Analyser – This free tool shows the strength of inbound linkls, the anchor text and how many links to your site users follow

LISTENER FEEDBACK – You can give us your feedback by shooting us an email at, [email protected] or leave a comment on this blog post.

LENGTH OF EPISODE – 1 Hour 10 Minutes

NEXT EPISODE – February 12th, 2009 at 7 P.M. EST

ITUNES – Click here to subscribe to the show via iTunes

DOWNLOAD THE SHOW: PerfcastEpisode23.mp3

LISTEN TO EPISODE 23 OF PERFCAST:

In episode 22, we gave a very broad overview of monetization/advertising as it pertains to blogging. Continuing with the series “All About Advertising/Monetization” David and I cover a lot of ground as it relates to monetizing the actual blog. I have to admit that after producing this episode, I’ve realized that the scope of this topic is huge!

Basic Overview Of Advertising
General Terms (PPC, CPM, REFERRAL, ETC)
Figuring Out Advertising Rates

When Should You Display Advertising
At Launch/After Launch
Should everyone see advertising or limit it to certain types of people

Monetization Methods
Affiliate Advertising
Pay Per Click
CPM
Display Advertising
Sponsorships (“this post was brought to you by”, “this contest was brought to you by”)
Popups and Interstitial

Advertising Based Tools/Services
Perfads
OIO Publisher
OpenX

What it comes down to
Lots of Quality Traffic (from either advertising or search engines)
Leveraging 1% (If you are ranking for a keyword and get 1% of the total searches, and 1% convert through advertising, what is your estimated income?)

LINKS MENTIONED ON THE SHOW
101 Ways To Monetize Your Blog Without Irritating Your Users
The Pitfall Of Tagging Posts
SitePoint.com Has An Opening

LISTENER FEEDBACK – You can give us your feedback by shooting us an email at, [email protected] or leave a comment on this blog post.

LENGTH OF EPISODE – 1 Hour 7 Minutes

NEXT EPISODE – February 5th, 2009 at 7 P.M. EST

ITUNES – Click here to subscribe to the show via iTunes

DOWNLOAD THE SHOW: PerfcastEpisode22.mp3

LISTEN TO EPISODE 22 OF PERFCAST: