Performancing Services

Every month, Performancing is going to run an experiment that we hope will accomplish three things. First, and foremost, it should be fun! Second, we’ll all learn a new thing or two about marketing strategy. Third, by running a collective experiment, we can share seo and marketing wisdom with each other.

This month, the experiment is going to be Book Arbitrage. Let’s have fun with it!

The book we are going to try to do search arbitrage on is Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Basically, this is the art of creating a useful website about a popular book (almost like a squidoo lens) and gaining Amazon affiliate sales.

If you read Performancing closely, you might have seen my suggestion that the Photopress theme is the perfect tool for book arbitrage because it lets you put up a nice and big picture of the book’s cover art….plus it’s clean and professional looking.

To get started, I’ve gone ahead and setup a bare-bones book arbitrage site for the 7th and final Harry Potter book that releases on July 21, 2007. As a community, we have about one month to put our plan into place and execute it. Profits will be split evenly between Performancing and everyone who either offers a suggestion in this comment thread or links to the Deathly Hallows site.

What I want us to do collectively is make suggestions for how to make this a killer landing page for HP 7. So fire away in the comment section. What should we add to this barebones template to make it kick some Google ass?

Although the June 2007 theme has not yet been released, we did have a winning bidder (the t-shirt site Fusilly). With this imminent release, we’ll be able to provide you with test case results for what exactly a sponsorship gets you.

The time has now come to open up bidding on the July 2007 theme. Bids can start at $500. Remember, you are bidding on the following:

1. A permanent link from the the highly trusted performancing.com domain
2. Hundreds or thousands of links from those who install the theme on their WordPress blog

Performancing now allows you to support and sponsor pMetrics with either a site-wide text link ad or an image ad.

Get seen by thousands of pMetrics users as they check their stats on a daily basis. pMetrics users are blog users, seo hounds, and stat junkies. If you want to target these demographics, please consider a pMetrics sponsorship.

Sponsorships are only shown to non-paying members of pMetrics, but this makes up about 99% of our users, and includes the Google Bot;-) Sponsorships are available at discounts to paying pMetrics users.

Current pricing is set at a discount level to encourage early adoption. You can expect pricing to change as our user base continues to grow at an exponential rate (people seem to love pMetrics!)

Early Adoption Text Link Sponsorship Pricing:

• $25/month text link for paying premium members
• $29/month text link for other members
• $49/month text link for third parties

Early Adoption Image Sponsorship Pricing:

• $99/month image ad for paying premium members
• $129/month image ad for other members
• $199/month image ad for third parties

These are great prices for what you can expect to be a PR 6 link on an uber-trusted domain with thousands of daily, scratch that, hourly, eyeballs.

Reading Ahmed’s recent blog reboot reminded me of something I’ve wanted to do for a while. From here on out, I’ll be highlighting one of the many timeless Performancing articles from founders such as Nick Wilson and Chris Garrett.

The post that first drew me in as a Performancing reader was Nick Wilson’s The Art of Linkbaiting. Nick’s main point in the article is that if you want to succeed at linkbait, you need a hook.

The fact is, if you want to succeed on the web with white hat principles, you need to give people what they want. Not only do individual linkbaits need hooks, but your entire site needs a hook. You should always aim to differentiate your site and offer something interesting or useful to your site visitors; something they can’t get anywhere else.

At the end of the day, hooks only work when they are original, interesting, substantial or useful. Top 100 lists work better than top 4 lists. But a top 100 list that borrows 98 items from another list just doesn’t cut it.

Be the first to get the scoop on the Barack Obama Sex Scandal and you’re golden, but tell me that Bush is the worst president in American history….well, I agree, but I’m snoozing.

Give me a simple but extremely useful web app that works 99% of the time and I’ll use it, but give me a powerful but bloated web app that only works 25% of the time, and I’ll go somewhere else.

So what’s your hook? How does your site differentiate itself and get people’s attention?

Performancing is happy to announce the rebirth of its “Reboot Your Blog” service. The way R.Y.B. works is like this. Performancing members nominate their blogs to receive a reboot and each week one blog will get selected.

So what’s a blog reboot and why should you want one?

A reboot consists in a thorough top to bottom analysis of you blog with practical suggestions for improvement. It gives you the blueprint for taking your blog into overdrive.

Blog reboots will provide you with professional level feedback on:

1. Blog design and layout
2. Usability enhancements
3. Search engine optimization
4. Ad placement and beautification
5. Monetization tips for your niche

If you’re interested in getting a blog reboot, why not nominate your blog in our reboot nomination forum. Make your blog stick out by telling us why we should pick YOUR blog for a reboot.

Finished blog reboots will be posted in our Rebooted Blogs forum, and even if your blog isn’t selected, you can still get some very useful info.

I was going to title this article “5 Ways to Use Performancing Selfishly” but decided to avoid the negative connotation. Still, at the end of the day, every one of us is looking for ways to improve our little corner of the webernets, and there’s nothing wrong with that.

Performancing exists for the sake of “helping bloggers succeed”. Enabling high-octane performance in high-octane bloggers. That’s all well and good, but you may be wondering what in particular Performancing has to offer and how you can use Performancing to take your blog to the next level.

1. Performancing as leverage: A free PR 5 user profile and PR 5 blog

My good friend Raj Dash has been a steady contributor to the Performancing community. By staying actively involved, and making regular posts, his user profile has a natural PR 5 as does his Performancing blog. Raj shares useful information with the Performancing community and gets naturally rewarded for doing so.

If you notice, Raj is able to link out to several of his websites from his user profile page, and if relevant, he can also link out from his blog entries.

The key to Raj’s success at Performancing is consistent, steady and useful contributions to the community. We all trust what Raj says. We pay attention to his articles. Each one shows up on the front page.

Not everyone will get a free PR 5 profile and blog, but those who consistently contribute useful information should be able to do so quite easily. And I don’t know about Raj, but I see traffic flow from my Performancing pages to my other blogs on a regular basis.

2. Establish yourself as an authority

The road to success on the web goes down one road: establishing yourself as an expert/authority. This is no joke. One great thing about the web is that it’s an equalizer. If you can perform, you’ll be noticed. Whether it’s YouTube and MySpace for aspiring musicians and entertainers, or Performancing for aspiring bloggeres, here’s your chance to prove that you’ve got what it takes.

Performancing has an open blog format. If the editors like what you’ve got to say, you’re blog entry gets on the front page. This gets your name in front of thousands of people…people with power…people who could give you the gig you’ve been looking for.

Oh, and did I mention that if we like your stuff, you get promoted to the front page which has a PR 7, which will boost your Performancing profile’s Page Rank…. (see 1. above)

3. Get free blog analysis

The Performancing community can provide you with blog valuations, tips on improving the usability of your blog, suggestions for layout and design and more. Just ask a question in one of our forums and expect an answer within hours, not days (we’ll try!).

This coming week we’ll be restarting the “reboot your blog” program. Each week we’ll pick one blog to provide thorough design, usability and SEO suggestions.

Of course there’s also pMetrics for blog stat-analysis. pMetrics will give you the tools for identifying where your traffic is coming from, how to improve your content, and whether your traffic building programs are working.

4. Monetize with Performancing

We currently have 3 primary ways to directly monetize through Performancing. First, you can get AdSense revenue from the blog and forum posts you make on this site. Second, if your article is promoted to the front page, you make $10. Third, receive referral fees for our pMetrics premium package. In addition to these three methods, we’ll be offering several new monetization options, including theme and plugin development contests.

5. Use our community resources

Is it time for a new blog design? Check out Performancing’s free WordPress themes. New themes will be released on a regular basis. Want to sell a blog? Try out our Blogs for Sale forum. Need help promoting an article? Try out our forum dedicated to free article promotion.

I wanted to call your attention to the Blogger Jobs section of our community forums. Postings are not only free, but we’ll select the best positions and feature them on the front page of Performancing.

Recently, I found a fantastic blogger for my video game site Gaming Moments. And I’ve also posted two new positions today which you may want to check out:

• PR 7 Technology Blog – Blogger Wanted
• Drupal Apologist Wanted!

Community is important to us at Performancing. Over the next few months we plan to roll out a number of new programs that enhance and give back to the Performancing community.

Earn $10 For Front Page Blog Posts

If we like your blog post enough to move it to the front page, you’ll earn $10. Each day, we’ll scour the entire set of Performancing blog posts and when we find posts that contain useful information, we’ll promote them to the front page. On the 1st of each month, we’ll pay users for the previous month.

AdSense Revenue Share

This is exciting. We’re sharing 70% of all AdSense revenue generated by your own content. This gives you a chance to utilize and leverage the strong Performancing platform to add an additional revenue stream for your online endeavors. Additionally, you earn 10% of all AdSense revenue generated by users that you refer to Performancing.

To setup AdSense sharing, go to “my account” in the right navigation menu. Then click “edit” followed by AdSense ID. Here you can enter your own AdSense ID.

To refer users to Performancing, go to “my account” and scroll down to “Your referral link” – if a new user uses this link to sign-up at Performancing, you’ll receive 10% of AdSense Revenue generated by the user’s own content.

Theme Contests

Details are forthcoming, but we will be holding regular WordPress and Drupal theme contests with substantial cash prizes. Stay tuned!

Plugin/Module Contests

As with our theme contests, we’ll be offering substantial cash prizes for plugins developed for Firefox and WordPess, as well modules developed for Drupal. Contest winners will include not only the developers, but also those who provide the concepts/ideas which we get implemented.