Ryan Caldwell on Performancing Ads, the Ad Network for Bloggers

An Interview by admin

Ryan Caldwell is the man that makes Performancing work, that old strong brand that is all about helping bloggers succeed. He’s been busy, not only with the great content we have come to expect from the leading bloggers of Performancing, but also with the web analytics service pMetrics, and Performancing Services.

The most latest release is non other than an advertising network. Performancing Ads wants to be the ad network for bloggers, and it looks like they might be able to pull it off.

You recently heralded the launch of Performancing Ads, how does it feel a few weeks in?
We did over $2k worth of ad sales after our first full day of promotion, so it feels great, really. Reaction so far has surpassed my expectations… which were high in the first place. However, I won’t feel really, really great until PerfAds is the ad format of choice for bloggers. That will take a lot of work, but I know we have something that will make bloggers money, and that’s the most important ingredient.

Are there any plans to add other ad formats? Not everybody heralds the 125×125 button after all.
Right now, we do offer other ad formats to Premium publishers. But yes, if all goes well with the 125×125 format, we have many plans for expansion. Having said that, plans are one thing. Execution another.

Why does Performancing launch this service, and why under the Performancing brand?
You want me to be a politician or keep it real? Let’s keep it real. Performancing launched the service to make money, of course. But we also launched it with an eye towards creating a real, sustainable source of income for bloggers. After all, the Performancing brand is all about helping bloggers succeed.

Some readers might remember the previous owner’s ad network, how does today’s Performancing Ads compare and differ from that one?
Though I don’t know all the details, the problem with the previous network was that advertisers were not buying. Most of the buyers were other bloggers and an economy can’t succeed unless you have deep-pocketed advertiseres involved. With the new PerfAds, we are confident that we have the right relationships with advertisers this time around.

Selling ads is hard, most bloggers have understood that by now. Why will Performancing Ads bring in more money than, say, Google Adsense or Text-Link-Ads?
I think that the question goes in the wrong direction. It should be “How will PerformancingAds compliment and possibly exceed AdSense and TextLinkAds?” The fact of the matter is that we didn’t want to compete with current sources of income, but provide an additional stream that was substantial.

Two of the benefits of being part of PerformancingAds as a publisher is that 1) you get exposure in our marketplace and 2) we have a direct ad sales team working to sell ads for your site.

The sales team might be a selling point for a lot of potential users. Will the team work with all blogs, or just premium ones? What’s the strategy here?
Our sales team is actually selling across categories. So, we pitch all of our business blogs to some advertisers and all of our tech blogs to other advertisers. Advertisers like the ability to target their ads to certain types of readers, but also to get as wide a reach as possible.

Performancing is still looking more or less like it did when Splashpress Media acquired it. Don’t you think a redesign is way overdue?
Yes. But, we felt that before we got a redesign, we needed to create monetizable services. It took us 1.5 years to create some solid services, now we’re ready for the redesign that integrates the services into the blog.

Fair enough. Will you be sticking with Drupal as a backend?
This is an open question that will be answered with the next 2 weeks. One thing seems clear right now: as things stand, the Drupal backend is not adding any functionality that a simple WP install would provide.

I’m told there’s a great number of spam blogs hosted on Performancing. How will you tackle that?
By removing them. That’s one of the benefits of going with WP. We can keep the best content and get rid of everything else.

As you know I’m a member of Hive, the pay forum hosted by Performancing. Why did you launch it, and how have the pay model fared so far?
Honestly, the paid forum has worked out far better than I expected, mainly because of the quality community and content. People really care about each other in Hive. When someone is going through a tough experience, the community rallies around them. That’s rare for an online forum, and something that’s hard to acheive in a fully free and public forum.

Originally, I launched the Hive to foster a deeper, more tight-knit community of bloggers where experts and newbies could intermingle and help each other out. We already have over 100 members who have chosen to pay, and we have an amazingly high retention rate. That speaks volumes, IMHO.

What’s next for Performancing?
A redesign is our first priority. That will help us tie all of the great content and services together. Additionally, we have plans to start offering blogger oriented services like a one-click, off-site blog backup system.

Finally, any last words you’d like to pitch the readers? The soap box is all yours!
Yeah, I love the new Blog Herald design. Seriously. It’s your best yet.

Thanks Ryan, appreciate it!

I’d like to thank Ryan Caldwell for doing this interview, and for his kind words. Check out Performancing Ads, the new ad networks out there. I personally also encourage you to check out Hive (aff), which is a great forum and well worth the money. I’m there.

This Interview was published on August 18, 2008 at 9:53 am • Did you like it? Subscribe!
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