nick wilson Archive

Performancing is receiving loads of buzz these days. Everyone in the blogosphere is talking about the launch of their Partners product and how it (could) offer another stream of revenue for your blog. So, me being Columbo-like wanted to find out more. I chatted with Nick Wilson, one of the co-founders of Performancing about what’s going on over there and what’s next. Nick was generous enough to participate in an interview with me and below is a transcript of our discussion.

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Allen: Can you provide a brief bio?
Nick: Nick Wilson is one of the co-founders of Performancing.com, the worlds largest organization of professional bloggers. Since early 2000 Nick has been involved in online publishing and community building in one way or another, with the last 3yrs being spent almost entirely focused on the difficult but rewarding task of building communities.

When not online, Nick likes to walk his dogs, and spend time with his daughter Robyn and wife Ivana in the Danish countryside.

Allen: What does Performancing do?
Nick: Performancing runs an advertising network for bloggers that we’ve just launched called Performancing Partners, we produce the #1 blog editor as an Firefox extension: Performancing Firefox as well as running a busy community of professional bloggers (25,000 or so) from the Performancing.com site.

Allen: What does the Performancing team look like? Where are you based?
Nick: We’re all gorgeous. Chris is in Barnsley in the north of England, Patrick is in Idaho, and I’m in Denmark.

Allen: Since you are all based in different geographic locations – do you find that hinders innovation since you are not all in the same office?
Nick: Quite the opposite actually. Because we’re all so far apart, we don’t have the time to mess around or chit chat about crap – we work, and we work hard. We use IM and email to communicate and for the most part we allow each other to get on with whatever needs doing, which means we probably get more work done than many web development teams.

We rarely have meetings, and we absolutely never have to make sure anyone is doing what they’re supposed to. We all have our areas and we all work tirelessly (well almost..) on them.

Allen: What is the Partners option all about?
Nick: Partners is a new type of blog ad network. It’s free to join, you don’t need an invitation or know the secret handshake, you just paste a small bit of code into your blogs template and within a day or so you’re blog is given a price, and is open to advertisers.

The idea behind Performancing Partners was to build something with community in mind, and to help bridge the traditional gap between publisher and advertiser by bringing them together within the system and enabling interaction and cooperation.

It’s early days yet, but so far we’re really pleased with how it’s working out.

Allen: How has the feedback been since your Partners launch? Any stats you can share?
Nick: Feedback has been overwhelmingly positive. People understand we’re a young company in beta and are giving us a lot of room to get things right and are actively helping us improve the system every day.

Allen: How do you compare Partners to Text Link Ads and Google Adsense?
Nick: I don’t.

Allen: What can a blogger expect to make from Partners?
Nick: That depends almost entirely on the blog, and their choice of settings. But advertisers are starting to buy ads on niche blogs and things so far are going according to plan.

Allen: How do you determine if someone is a blogger vs. a regular community type site?
Nick: We have a look at it.

Allen: Where is Performancing going in the next 1-2 years?
Nick: World domination, via the pub.

Allen: Where is the blog going in the next 1-2 years?
Nick: I think we’ll see blogging continue to grow, but also for the subset of commercial bloggers we’ll see an increase in skillsets, tools and a focus on quality niche content become a mantra for making money from blogging.

Allen: Which web apps do you use on a regular basis?
Nick: Tadalists. Mostly i find “web apps” to be an unproductive temporary diversion – fun though.

Allen: What do you think are the most important characteristics that are needed for a startup to be successful?
Nick: Big balls.

Allen: What would you say is the top thing you have learned since you started Performancing? positive or negative?
Nick: Hire your friends, or people your friends will vouch for. Everyone else will just waste your time.

Thanks for participating Nick and thanks to you for reading. I will be reporting back on the progress of Performancing. I think they will have enough publishers to be successful, the key will be whether they can get the advertisers to fill those ad slots.

If you would like to participate in a conversation on CenterNetworks, or if you have any comments or questions, let me know.