eXtra For Every Publisher

So many people have a hard time hashing out blog posts in a consistent and efficient manner, and so I wanted to take a minute to talk a bit more about my own system which I have found can decrease the time between starting a post and publishing it.

The Idea

The first part of posting is to come up with ideas. I sometimes find it necessary to just start writing down words related to my industry and working outwards from there. After coming up with a few different ideas, I bring certain main points together as a single post and I have a fully conceptualized idea.

It can also help to see what other people are writing about. Do you have an opinion? Look back and see what was interesting to people a year ago, two years ago. Have things changed or are they still the same? Some of my favourite posts by authors are the ones where they compare/contrast two different products or two different time periods.

The Questions

Everyone knows about who, what, where, when, why and how, and these questions are infinitely more important when getting ready to post on a blog. They are especially useful when you don’t know everything, and can come up with things you’ll want to research to include in the post.

For example, if you are doing an article about a car company you could easily add information about who designed their main cars? When did they perform the best? How well has the public received their cars? Why are they producing cars with bigger engines than another company? What do you see them dealing with over the next few years?

The Research

Don’t take too much time researching, or you can get bogged down in what others have said. For longer articles, you shouldn’t be spending more than an hour researching for a post. This can be one of the longest time sinks in creating an article. Don’t spend time writing the post as you research, or you can get sidetracked, and unable to create proper flow in your article.

For any niche you should be able to, over a period of time, pick out a few resources that are consistently useful for research, and that will save you massive amounts of time. Try not to stray from these main resources too often, unless you aren’t finding the answers you need. Too much variety, and you can land into information overload world, where nothing productive ever happens.

The Post

The amount of time you need to write an article always depends on its length, but now that you’ve come up with an idea, answered some questions, and completed your research, the words should flow from you. Don’t worry about what you are writing, as you can come back after you are done and edit. The hardest thing I ever learned was not to self edit as I was writing.

As paragraphs are written, your mind will come up with other things to say, and usually, if you are properly prepared, the article will flow together nicely.

You should easily be able to tell how long your article is going to be by this point, and don’t try to push it too far beyond that point, or you’ll find yourself adding useless filler. Brevity can be just as important as details, but with the attention span of most people dwindling, shorter is most likely better.

The Call to Action

After you have written, and edited the post, I always suggest going back and adding in a call to action. It might be a question at the end of the post, links to further reading, or just a simple request to have people comment. You are much more likely to have people act upon what they read, if you ask them to.

I enjoy asking people to comment. I want them to know that I’d love to see them participate if they have any thoughts on what I’ve written. Some bloggers put in affiliate links, strange questions, or a list of other articles they have written along the same lines. These can all be important to increasing the longevity of an article online.

The Pretty Additions

Now you are ready to add in links, images, proper text formatting of headings and whatnot. This doesn’t have to be perfect, but it will add some pizazz to your article. Don’t give it too much time. You can edit articles after they have been published, but no one can see the content until it is published. Far too many people play with formatting for so long that the information that they wanted to share becomes stale.

I take the time to set proper headings, bold certain lines of text, italicize what I think would work best, work on the coding for my lists, and insert block quotes at this point.

The Publishing and Promotion

Once everything else is complete, publish. Your articles don’t do you any good unpublished. Get them out into the world. Feel free to edit them after the fact, or to write whole new articles giving more details, or adding onto your original points.

Don’t forget to let the world know about what you’ve written. Don’t be shy. People are hungry for new content, new ideas, and new perspectives, so find a way to get your work to them. The best thing a writer can receive is constructive criticism on how to improve, so open yourself up to that.

Conclusion

If you are trying to merge all of these steps into one, you might find your articles taking forever to craft and it is fairly easy to see why. There are so many areas between crafting the idea and publishing that breaking it down is really the only way to remain consistent and efficient.

Post inspired by Tom Leroux, check out his blog Leroux.ca.

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Now that PerformancingAds has officially launched, I wanted to take some time to talk about my experience with it so far.

I was lucky enough to have early access to PerformancingAds as it was being developed, and a fair bit of my feedback and criticisms were dealt with early on and while I am sure I will always have more criticisms as the service develops, for all intents and purposes, PerformancingAds meets ninety percent of my advertising management needs.

Who Created It?

If you recognize the Performancing brand, then you already know who is behind the PerformancingAds service. For those of you that don’t know, Performancing is a blog with a similar audience to this one and has had writers who have always become very successful in making a living through online endeavours.

Performancing has always been home to some of the best content online, and some of the strongest secondary brands.

Ryan Caldwell has been spearheading this project, and as he has with other things he has built, he has put nothing less than his full heart and soul into making this project a success.

Why Another Ad Management Service?

One of my first questions to Ryan was always “why would you want to start another ad management service?” There are so many players in the space, and so much competition, and while I know Ryan as a success in everything he attempts, I wondered if he was taking on a niche that was just too heavily saturated.

Was there room for another advertising service in the blogosphere?

Features

Ryan didn’t want just another service promising the world and he worked hard to deliver something that would fulfill the needs of many bloggers currently trying to monetize their blogs. He would bring a bunch of great sites together in a directory, while also working hard to bring in companies willing to advertise.

Automate advertising inventory
PerformancingAds allows you to manage your 125×125 pixel advertisements on your WordPress blog. Not only making it easy to show the ads, and position them, but also adding your site to a marketplace where advertisers can easily find your site.

Take PayPal Payments
It allows you to take all forms of PayPal payment, even if your personal account doesn’t normally allow credit card payments.

Book on your own site
One of my favourite features is that PerformancingAds allows you to book ads on your own site for free, making it easy to control affiliate program ads or place ads outside of the normal payment system.

Advertising exchange system
PerformancingAds also has a traffic exchange system, where, like other banner exchange systems, you can have your ad placed for free on other sites, and in return, you allow banners to freely be placed in one of your advertising locations. Don’t worry, there is no dropping “cards” to game the system here.

Quick Payments
Also, unlike other systems, any balance in your account gets paid on the first of the month. No waiting thirty or sixty days to get your money.

Featured Sites Already Using PerformancingAds

There are many great blogs already using PerformancingAds, and some have already had some amazing success, including one publisher that has already sold ten ads during the short open beta period.

• Essential Keystrokes
• Candy Addict
• Blog Herald
• PopCrunch
• Freelance Writing Jobs

Links go to PerformancingAds advertising pages for listed sites

Affiliate Program

Here is the best part in my opinion. Even if you don’t want to manage your own ads on PerformancingAds, you can still make money using their affiliate program.

You’ll earn $10 per unique sign-up and 5% of the recurring revenue on all advertiser ad buys.

That could quickly add up to a fair bit of passive income if you get a few advertisers signed up through your affiliate link. If an advertiser spends $500 per month thanks to finding PerformancingAds through you, that means an extra $25 per month in your pocket. If you found ten people of similar ad buying habits, that could mean $250 per month in income, which is nothing to sneeze at.

The Catch

Didn’t think I was going to mention any negatives, did you? I believe in transparency, and despite the advertisements I have on this site, I won’t compromise my ethics. There are some downsides to PerformancingAds which I have already addressed to Ryan. Some he can do things about, and others, he can’t.

The first issue is that you need a WordPress plugin to power the advertising service on your blog. If he releases new versions of this plugin, because it isn’t in the WordPress plugin directory, I will only know about new versions from the PerformancingAds main site.

The next issue is related to the cut that PerformancingAds takes from ad sales. They take a fifty percent cut. This to me is frustrating, and could really limit their growth. Also, with the way they currently run the distribution of revenue, they take 50% of the rate that you set. So if you put up advertising spots for $20, you get $10 and they get the other $10. For the service that they are providing, as well as the marketplace, this might be worthwhile, but I think that the split should be done differently.

I have already made some suggestions regarding this, and I know Ryan and company will take them seriously.

The other small issue is that booking ads on your own site was not very refined last time I used it, and that could easily lead to some frustrations from publishers, but I haven’t tried it out since the launch announcement.

Conclusion

If Ryan and company puts the same level of passion behind making PerformancingAds a success as they’ve done on other sites, then I am sure it will be a success.

The biggest barriers right now in my opinion are the limited number of advertisers knowing about PerformancingAds, and the revenue split keeping away people that feel uncomfortable with a 50/50 split no matter the potential marketplace size or power.

Full Disclosure: I will be working for Ryan starting in August, and I have been a close friend of his for a while now. I have had access to the service from its infancy, and have information on new features coming down the pipe, but this hasn’t clouded my judgment, at least, not all that much.

UPDATE: The revenue split has changed, with 60% going to the blog owner, and 40% going to PerformancingAds, with a sliding scale based on some currently unknown criteria.

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I have been working on freelance work for almost a week now, and I have to say that I really don’t understand how people can make a full time living this way. While it is nice to have variety, and some choice in what I do, dealing with the almost random pay, and random number of work hours each day can be quite difficult.

Also, after writing two posts today for someone else, I almost didn’t feel like writing on this blog. While I believe that is only because the topics of this blog and the blog I wrote on have fairly similar audiences, I still am reminded of why I have decided to change my career path yet again. I want to write, and I want to enjoy writing. I want to create something, and build something that I can be proud of and maybe even build equity in.

Working for other people can mean getting paid, but building equity can mean enjoying a lifestyle.

How do people work freelance full time? Am I missing some meaningful reward that my varied salary positions will never give me?

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In this episode, I cover all of the latest WordPress news and developments, including the new WordPress for iPhone application, the re-launch of the WordPress theme directory, and as usual the WordPress theme of the week.

Download Episode Three

Mentioned in the Show

You can now blog from your iPhone to WordPress, if you can afford an iPhone…
WordPress for iPhone

It’s back! There is now an official WordPress theme repository once again. It has been long coming, and seems to work rather well, but there is limited choice right now in what you will find.
WordPress Theme Directory

WordPress 2.6 is still giving me issues, specifically with PodPress, but I also noticed that the new features in WordPress 2.6 don’t really do anything for me, except for one.
PodPress
No Revisions

Theme of the week: InSense
InSense

WordCamp Toronto is coming up on October 4th and 5th, and there will be more than one special guest speaker attending.
WordCamp Toronto

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So, it looks like I will be speaking at WordCamp Toronto this October. The event runs October 4th and 5th, and will have sessions from many great WordPress fans, developers, and bloggers.

The attendee list is quickly growing, and I am looking forward to giving any expertise I may have to the people that chose to attend my session (read that as very excited and nervous). I am still hammering out the details of what exactly I will be speaking on, but as many of you already know, I have an opinion on everything.

I have to admit that I felt a little snubbed by the event at first, as I applied to speak when the announcement of the conference was first posted, and didn’t really receive a strong response from the organizers, but after a while, they did get back to me with more information, and we were able to come to an agreement.

What I, and many people are excited about is that Matt Mullenweg will be coming to Toronto to speak at the event. It is always nice when Matt can give his own thoughts, opinions, and of course time to the community that he has helped build.

I have listened to him talk before, and I have to admit, he is much smoother at public speaking than I am. It reminds me a lot of the effect that Steve Jobs has on people who come into close proximity of him.

If you are interested in more information about the WordCamp Toronto event, please check out the blog that the organizers have set up at CCSAI.ca/WordCampToronto.

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