PerfCast

In episode 20, we covered the various things you should consider before launching a new blog/website. Continuing with the series “Launching The Blog” David and I cover a lot of ground as it relates to getting the site off the ground. When you listen, be prepared to hear a lot of useful information as we moved from topic to topic pretty quickly.

software Choices
WordPress
Movable Type
etc…

Initial Content
Mix of Content
Link Bait
Resource Bait
Average Articles

Pages
About
Contact
Archives

First Impressions: Design
Logo and Branding
Design or in our case: WordPress theme

Basic Advertising Considerations
Ads now or later?
Basic Ad Terminology:
CPC
CPA
CPM

Which ad system to use?
AdSense
Adify
Commission Junction

Social Media
Why is Social Media promotion is important?
Which social media site fits our niche?
Digg, Reddit, StumbleUpon, Mixx, Delicious
*Tip: Don’t always seed your own articles, but get them out there anyway you can

Getting Press
Beyond Social Media
Using network connections
Contacting competition

Call to Action
Ask for people’s opinions
Ask people to do something (comment, submit story to digg, etc…)

LINKS MENTIONED ON THE SHOW
shareasale.com
wickedfire.com
99designs.com
forums.digitalpoint.com
performancingads.com
talkfreelance.com
oiopublisher.com

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 11 Minutes

NEXT EPISODE – January 29th, 2009 at 7 P.M. EST

ITUNES – Click here to subscribe to the show via iTunes

DOWNLOAD THE SHOW: PerfcastEpisode21.mp3

LISTEN TO EPISODE 21 OF PERFCAST:

Before launching your blog or website, there are a number of things worth considering. In this weeks edition of Perfcast, David Peralty and I cover a broad spectrum of things you should consider such as:

Before Spending Money
Idea
Niche
Potential Posts
Research (competition, friends)
Interaction (commenting, collecting resources)
Can I do this for a long time?

Domains
brainstorming (instantdomainsearch)
what to choose (preference, .com, .net, .org, country codes, .info?)
where to buy them (namecheap, godaddy, from Host)
next step – nameservers!!! (just because they are registered, doesn’t mean they are “attached” to your project)

Hosted vs Self Managed
The hosted blogging solution versus the self hosted solution
Similarities
Differences

Webhosting
Shared
VPS
Dedicated
– CLOUD HOSTING –
Control Panels (custom, cPanel, etc..)
Fantastico?
SSH?

Analytical statistics
Basics: Uniques, Page Views, Visitors, Bounce Rate
Different Services/Apps, Different Stats0

As you can see, we covered a ton of information and this is just for the prelaunch. Next week, we dive into Lesson 2 which is all about Launching The Blog.

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 5 Minutes

NEXT EPISODE – January 22nd, 2009 at 7 P.M. EST

ITUNES – Click here to subscribe to the show via iTunes

DOWNLOAD THE SHOW: PerfcastEpisode20.mp3

LISTEN TO EPISODE 20 OF PERFCAST:

While last weeks show contained a number of depressing news items, this weeks show provided the upshot. Venture Capitalists are still investing in companies with hefty amounts, a hosted blog service disappears, what happens to companies when they don’t pay for their advertising campaign, growing your blog on minimal time, and a model who sells Google are all topics of discussion this week. We also answered a listener email and announced that David and I will be starting a series on the show where we cover the various aspects of Starting, Maintaining, and Exiting a blog. We’ll start from square one and go through the rungs in detail.

Next week is the first episode in this series called ‘The Blog Prelaunch‘. Things you should do or think about before you decide to create a blog.

STORIES DISCUSSED –
JournalSpace Disappears

VC Funding Still Happening
eFresh.com nails 5.4 million bucks
Evernotes Nabs 4.5 million bucks
JibJab Gets 7.5 million bucks

Model Sues Google For Information on Snarky Blogger

Non Paying Advertisers

Twitter Accounts Phished

Growing Your Blog on Minimal Time

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

Sent by ConorP – What is the best way to get more visitors to a new blog. For example: I write a good blog post and don’t get any comments.

BLOGGING JOB OF THE WEEK – Found thanks to Freelanceswitch – Independent Mac Apps Blogger

We’re launching an experimental blog about independent mac apps and need a part-time blogger to review and write about mac apps like these ones: http://freelanceswitch.com/working/35-absolutely-essential-mac-apps/

You’d be writing about 5 – 10 posts per week, a mix of short news posts, reviews and occasional round-ups.

You’ll need to have some experience blogging and be a mac fan with lots of knowledge of mac apps.

LENGTH OF EPISODE – 1 Hour 9 Minutes

NEXT EPISODE – January 15th, 2009 at 7 P.M. EST

ITUNES – Click here to subscribe to the show via iTunes

DOWNLOAD THE SHOW: PerfcastEpisode19.mp3

LISTEN TO EPISODE 19 OF PERFCAST:

Its been awhile since David and I had the opportunity to discuss the news and various happenings across the blogosphere. In this action packed, somewhat depressing episode of Perfcast, David and I reflect back on 2008 just a little bit and then proceed to dive into the news which their was plenty of this week.

STORIES DISCUSSED –
Is That Comment Spam?
Podango Bites The Dust
B5 Media Made 1.3 Million Dollars In 2007 (David actually clears up some confusion related to this post)
Consumers Union Purchases Consumerist And Defamer Goes Up For Sale
More Bad News About 2009 And Online Advertising
Monetizing Doesn’t Seem To Be Getting Any Easier
Success And Post Count
Google PageRank Updated For The New Year

LISTENER FEEDBACK – In this episode, we answered a listener email, read two comments related to previous episodes of the show and read and email from a new listener. You can give us your feedback by shooting us an email at, [email protected] or leave a comment on this blog post.

BLOGGING JOB OF THE WEEK – Found thanks to Freelance Writing Jobs – Entertainment Industry And Technology Columnist

I’m looking for a freelance writer passionate about the entertainment industry to contribute a monthly column about Technology from the perspective of being productive or successful in the entertainment industry.

Topics Include:
Marketing on twitter
Myspace Marketing Tips
Expanding your fanbase with Ning
Email Dos & Donts
DRM issues
Website reviews

LENGTH OF EPISODE – 1 Hour 10 Minutes

NEXT EPISODE – January 8th, 2008 at 7 P.M. EST

ITUNES – Click here to subscribe to the show via iTunes

DOWNLOAD THE SHOW: PerfcastEpisode18.mp3

LISTEN TO EPISODE 18 OF PERFCAST:

I want to thank Steven Hodson, DaveAC, Patrick O’ Keefe and Mark E. for helping to co-host the show with me last night. Our special guest was Jonathan Bailey of PlagiarismToday.com. During the show, we discussed how you can stop Internet plagiarism, copyrights, enforcing your copyright, tips and tricks to help combat content theft and much more. Be sure to bookmark Jonathan’s site as it contains stock letters for sending out cease and desist letters, DMCA notices, and more.

Also, Jonathan keeps tabs on the Legal Issues section of the Performancing forums which will be included in the Performancing Reboot. If you have questions pertaining to copyright or content theft, ask them in the forum.

ANNOUNCEMENTS: This was our last episode of Perfcast for 2008. Our next episode is on January 1st, 2009.

LENGTH OF EPISODE – 1 Hour 50 Minutes

NEXT EPISODE – January 1st, 2008 at 7 P.M. EST

ITUNES – Click here to subscribe to the show via iTunes

DOWNLOAD THE SHOW: PerfcastEpisode17.mp3

LISTEN TO EPISODE 17 OF PERFCAST:

Join David and I as we interview Jonathan Bailey of PlagiarismToday.com. We’ll be talking about content theft, ways to prevent content theft, copyrights, blogging, podcasts, and more. We’ll also talk about his work with the BlogHerald and the opportunities that have been presented to him through blogging.

Please refer to how to participate in perfcast live for information on how to be part of the show.

Kevin over at BloggingTips.com is asking if you think MyBlogLog has gone downhill. He seems to think so. Near the beginning of my blogging experiment, I hopped on the MyBlogLog bandwagon before Yahoo! picked them up. They were a pretty cool service in that, it provided a way to place a face or an avatar with an actual visitor. The service was designed so that, you could build up your social blog network of friends and join each others communities.

Unfortunately, the system has at least one inherit flaw in that, each time a MBL member visits a site with the MBL widget displayed, their avatar displays in the widget. Now, what if a bunch of porn spammers sign into MBL with porn avatars and then visit thousands of sites a day so the avatar shows up in more places? Now you end up with an annoying problem. I must admit however, I performed a small experiment with MBL which mimicked this problem. I visited a bunch of sites in MBL by clicking on a bunch of random avatars to see if it would drive traffic to either my MBL account or my site. Turns out, both areas received a good bump in traffic thanks to the end users curiosity.

Since I’ve redesigned my personal blog, I have not added the MBL widget to my blogs sidebar. I don’t really see a need to do that anymore. Besides, judging from the looks of things, Google Friend Connect appears to be the next best thing.

Do you remember MBL? Are you still using the service and is it providing value to you?

Patrick O’ Keefe, author of Managing Online Forums was our special one hour guest. In this episode we discussed a wide variety of topics related to managing forums such as:

• A short checklist of things to consider before even thinking about starting a forum.
• Describing the difference between managing a forum and managing a blog
• How can one extend the skills they learn from managing forums to entire online communities
• What do you think of gated communities like Hive or my own Branding David Members area
• You are selling one of your blogs, what do you think of people selling “communities”
• Should every major blog or site have a forum for community interaction
• What is your best advice for someone who has set up a forum, but it hasn’t become a community

Those topics are just the tip of the iceberg! We also had quite a chatty bunch with us in the live chat room which was awesome to see. They provided us with a couple of great questions that Patrick had no problem answering. Although we simply couldn’t discuss everything we wanted to within a 60 minute time period, Patrick will definitely be on the show in 2009 to provide even more insight into the realm of forums and online communities.

ANNOUNCEMENTS: Jonathan Bailey Of PlagiarismToday to discuss content theft as well as his blogging career thus far

BLOGGING JOB OF THE WEEK: b5Media looking for bloggers who can write about Cars, Men’s Fitness, Cigars and Liquor and other manly topics. – http://jobs.problogger.net/view/1875

LENGTH OF EPISODE – 1 Hour 16 Minutes

NEXT EPISODE – December 18th, 2008 at 7 P.M. EST

ITUNES – Click here to subscribe to the show via iTunes

DOWNLOAD THE SHOW: PerfcastEpisode16.mp3

LISTEN TO EPISODE 16 OF PERFCAST: