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5 Ways To Make Performancing Work For You

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.

PR 7 Blog For Sale – Have Laptop, Will Travel

Have Laptop, Will Travel
Tech, software and general geekery

PR7 with solid PR6 categories
Over 1000 uniques per day and a solid stream of Google searches

Auction ends May 4th @ 9pm Eastern
BIN: $19,000

With my new responsibilities at Performancing, and my inability to find a good, consistent writer, I’m putting the premier blog Have Laptop, Will Travel up for sale. I reserve the right to cancel the auction if I’m not happy with the final bid.

http://www.havelaptopwilltravel.com

The Performancing Top 20

You may have noticed “The Performancing Top 20” over in the right sidebar. Each day we’re ranking the top 20 premium pMetrics blogs according to site visitors and listing them, along with page rank passing links. That’s one more great reason to become a pMetrics premium subscriber.

Worried that you won’t crack the top 20? Just do a little site promotion, write a few articles for Performancing (along with some links to your blog), and market your blog like a pro. The more you promote, the more you’ll see visitors, and the more likely you’ll get some link love from Performancing!

By cracking the top 20, your blog will receive a free, one-way PR 7 link. A killer incentive for a killer product;-)

Blog Valuation

There don’t seem to be any forum rules banning people from asking for a ‘valuation’ of their blog(s), so I’ll kick things off.

http://www.techzi.net/

Started last July – Almost 1,000 unique articles. Multiple backlinks from ProBlogger.net, etc.

Varying traffic – 10,000+ uniques a month.

Google Pagerank – Very strong PR5

Alexa Rank – 50,000ish

Then…

http://www.carzi.com/

Started only recently.

Rapidly growing traffic – 150ish uniques daily.

Google Pagerank – PR4 (We just launched before update!)

Alexa Rank – Don’t even ask – evidently car fans don’t use the toolbar. 😉

Then…

http://www.zimedia.net/

Launched alongside CarZi.

Zi Media Network includes both TechZi and CarZi, aswell as future branding opportunities.

Please note: I am NOT interested in selling – just want a rough idea of selling price. 😉 Maybe even a mock bid-out to see what you’d pay? 😉 Again – I stress I’m not selling.

Creating Visual Content For Your Blog

No doubt with the new Google PR rollout, there’ll be some laughing and some crying. If you fall into the latter category because your ranking dropped, it might be because you didn’t maintain your site. Thing is, it’s tough to come up with fresh content all the time. Even the most prolific of us can’t always maintain the productivity. Sure, you can fire off a bit of content every day, but if it doesn’t inspire you, it’s probably not your best work. However, there are numerous web tools – many of them free – that you can use to add a bit of life to your website or weblog, almost regardless of topic.

The one I’m focusing on lately is SplashCast, which I think is brilliant. It’s skinless, so it fits in very nicely on any web page. You can use any of the dozen or so size configurations or specify your own. Each slide or frame of a SplashCast can have documents, images or video. How’s that for versatility? I’ve been using the tool like mad, and now you can too. I’ve set up a new splashcasting tutorial at Tubetorial on how to create your own Internet music TV channel, and have also given an example Pearl Jam Splashcast (embedded below). Of course, you can use the same method to produce any kind of SplashCast on pretty much any topic. And word from SplashCast Media is that new features are being rolled out very soon.

So get to it. Don’t let your blog stagnate. Create a SplashCast or something similar. Most humans are visually stimulated. While there are still purists who want the web to only have text, the rest of us like visual content. It’s now easier than ever, and getting involved like this might just spark your interest back into writing. And if you don’t have any of your own content, you can always borrow some from Flickr or YouTube until you do.

Lo and Behold, Big G’s Page Rank Change Is Rolling Out

Maybe I’m more obsessed with Google PR (PageRank) than most, due to being a math and stats (and computer) geek and needing to measure everything. Sure, PR is not an accurate measure of your site’s worth, but it is a measure nonetheless, which for some ad networks helps determine how much you’ll earn. And love it or hate, it just changed. Or is changing. Right now. If you haven’t seen the change, you probably should over the next few days.

Only moments ago, I checked one of my sites that’s too new to have made the last rollout in, what was it, late January or early Feburary? So lucky for me, it went from PR0 to PR4. Which really is meaningless because traffic is still transient. I haven’t posted even once per week regularly, despite my promise on the site. Anyway, until I do get consistent traffic, I have no plans on monetizing it. I’m taking a wholly different approach this time, unlike most of my other sites. [I’m talking about my personal site, which will never have contextual ads, but may have other types in the future, after it hits PR5.]

Still, my experience over the past two years is as follows. Take any keyword phrase and search for it. Usually, but not always, the SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages) listings will have higher PR pages at the top. That means, since most people are lazy and don’t check past the first page of SERPs, more traffic goes to the first ten pages listed.

The unfortunate thing about this new PR rollout, at least to myself and a friend, is that his PR5 tech site just dropped to PR4. (According to the two tools I’ve found to be most accurate. Other tools show a mix of 4 and 5, though they used to show all 5.) I had intended on buying it in a few days, but the change likely means both a strong drop in traffic and revenue. He let the site sit dormant for too many months after he left the United States.

Which means any zomblogs (zombie blogs) out there are probably losing rank if they are not at least gaining new backlinks. This may mean that Google has decided to implement some important algorithm changes – such as the momentum metric Ryan Caldwell suggested.

So, if you have a site and have let it slide, you may want to quickly find someone to write casually, before the next PR rollout. If you can’t pay, maybe guest-write on their side. Or you could sell your site at Performancing’s Blogs for Sale section. You should be seeing a few of mine for sale soon, as well as few job listings.

Note: If you want to check your PR, you could use Data Center Watch [via SmartWealthyRich], but i find it’s inaccurate. I prefer Aaron Wall’s SEO for Firefox plugin, which embeds results into Google and Yahoo’s SERPs, or Search Status for Firefox.

Review pMetrics on your blog and get 12 months free

The first 100 bloggers to provide an honest review of pMetrics on their blogs will receive pMetrics premium free for 12 months.

Requirements:

At least 250 words (if a video review, then this condition does not apply).
At least one link (though we’d love more).

Conditions:

Post a comment on this thread with a link to your review of pMetrics (link must stay up for at least 12 months). We will then credit your Performancing username with 12 months of pMetrics premium for free. The first 100 members to post a review, as ordered by the comments in this thread, will receive the free offer. If your review is received within 6 hours of the 100th review, we will still honor the offer.

pMetrics Blog Analytics Now Available!

Performancing is pleased to announce the re-release of pMetrics blog analytics. In its current state, pMetrics is a simple, clean, “chock-full-of-features” stats program, specifically targeted for blogs.

Plugins & Widgets

As more and more Performancing members adopt pMetrics we’ll be unveiling some uber-cool widgets and plugins to enhance your blogging experience. Plans currently include: 1) an AdSense tracking plugin and a 2) a Performancing “top blogs” widget that links back to the top 50 or so blogs using pMetrics. Discussion about pMetrics development and plugin/widget suggestions will be taking place in our pMetrics forum: http://performancing.com/forum/578

Simple Yet Feature-rich

If you’re a stats junkie like me, you’re constantly looking for useful information about site visitors. Site stats give us the tools to assess the success of our current actions and make strategies for improving the quality of content, navigation, headlines, etc. on a website.

Many of us need more in a site analytics program than daily log analysis. Sometimes we need a real-time look at traffic flow. Sometimes we need a quick and dirty, one page summary of recent search queries, pages visited, and referrals. Unfortunately, if you’re like me, you haven’t been very satisfied with the multitude of stats programs out there, especially for blogs.

That’s one reason why we’ve partnered with Clicky to bring you the new pMetrics. With pMetrics you get detailed information about each user without having to drill down 4-5 levels in the navigation. One of the things I personally can’t stand about Google Analytics is that although it is powerful, finding the information you want has never been intuitive or easy. pMetrics solves this issue.

Real-time “Spy” Analysis

But pMetrics offers you more. Have you ever wanted to get a good sense of real-time user behavior? pMetrics has a Spy function*; a real-time stats-ticker that shows each and every user behavior at your site, as it happens in real time. This information is priceless and can provide the details you need to increase site usability. You can also monitor, in real time, the results of any marketing and promotion that you are involved in.

Doing a Reddit and Digg campaign? Want an adrenaline rush? You can track the results in real-time, and let me tell you, it’s a massive thrill!

pMetrics also offers you a picture of visitor demographics and geography, breaking visitors down into countries and even cities, and then plotting this information on Google Maps.

RSS Feeds

pMetrics gives you the choice of making your stats public or private, and you can even publish a summary via RSS*. RSS gives savvy blog owners the chance to dispaly site stats in creative ways on their blogs and to view multiple stat summaries from a single RSS reader.

Referral Affiliate Program

Performancing members earn 20% of every payment made to us by any user who signs up through an affiliate link and eventually becomes a paying premium member. Additionally, there is a second tier commission of 5%, which means you will get 5% of any payment made to us by your referal’s referals. More information on the affiliate program is available here.

The basic version of pMetrics is available for free, but we highly recommend upgrading to the advanced version for a modest annual fee (just a little more than $1/month). The advanced version includes Spy (real time visitor stats) and RSS feeds so that you can syndicate your stats and view them in an RSS reader, saving you time and energy.

Get started with pMetrics right away!

*Premium version only

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