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Performancing Partners – First Impression Review

Posted By Darren Rowse 18th of October 2006 Advertising 0 Comments

PartnerservePerformancing have just shot an email out to their newsletter list announcing their long awaited Performancing Partners program – an ad network which will rival BlogAds and which will be of interest to bloggers wishing to make money blogging.

It’s not really a secret as they’ve been quite open about the process but as of today you can now sign up as a publisher or advertiser.

The process is fairly simple – you place their code on your site and Advertisers can then sign up to place their ad on your site with you taking 70% of the revenue and Performancing taking 30% (you can see what happens when you add the code in my own sidebar (scroll down). Until ads are bought Performancing’s ad shows.

Pricing

Publishers can either set their own price for ads or can use ‘Auto Pricing’ which examines your blog’s impressions, click stats etc to come up with a price. Auto pricing takes up to 48 hours to be worked out – I’m still waiting to see what they’ll price ProBlogger ads at (more on pricing here). The most expensive ad in the system at present is $323.00 for the month with most ads being priced at around the $1.60 to $1.90 CPM range.

Payments are made at the start of each month via paypal.

You also take 5% of income generated by any publisher or advertiser that you refer to the system – indefinitely (nice).

The ads

What are the ads like? Well I’m yet to see any on the sites that are listed in the advertisers section but if they are anything like the performancing placeholder house ad they are not too large, have rounded corners and have a little text box that appears when you scroll over them.

The system is quite like BlogAds.com but on a first impression it’s a lot simpler and more useable system. Time will tell whether advertisers take it up though (BlogAds has a long head start).

A few other details

  • Ad Approval – Publishers get to approve each ad that shows on their site before it appears.
  • Other Ad Networks – They do allow you to run these ads with any other type of advertising that you choose.
  • Minimum Payments – There’s no minimum amount earned before you’ll be paid.
  • Numbers of Ads – You can choose to show up to 6 ads on your site (or as little as 1).

How to use the Performancing Partner Ads

It’s early days so it’s too soon to really make any predictions on how this will go (keep in mind that it’s in beta and a system that will no doubt need to be tweaked). However a couple of tips on how to get the most out of them come to mind:

1. Put your ads as high on your sidebar as possible – I find with BlogAds that advertisers are much more willing to purchase an ad that is above the fold. This is of course a challenge for some of us (for example here at ProBlogger the space at the top of my Sidebar is at a premium) however I suspect it’ll be more likely to convert to sales if you can put your ads high on your sidebar.

2. Keep a Careful Eye on the Auto Price – I’ve seen two pricing strategies employed successfully by publishers over at BlogAds. Some publishers undercut their competitors while others use premium pricing. I suspect that the same thing will happen here – it’s worth experimenting. Check out what price the auto pricing gives you and then start experimenting with prices above and below it.

What I’d love to see from Performancing Partners

It’s too early to review the performance of these ads – I think the challenge will be finding advertisers as there are so many other ad networks for them to buy ads in. Without them publishers won’t allow house ads to be shown for too long. Hopefully Performancing are willing to put some serious effort into selling ads for publishers to get the ball rolling.

A few other features come to mind that I’d like to see added:

  • Referral Buttons – I’d like to see Performancing develop some buttons/banners similar to Text-Link-Ads has for people to refer advertisers and publishers with their affiliate program. This type of promotion will bring more advertisers and publishers into the system (key for success).
  • Free House Ads – One feature that I love with BlogAds is the ability to run my own ads for free using a coupon code. This means I can make the ad section look used (attractive to other publishers) but also do cross promotion between blogs as well as promote affiliate programs.
  • Ad Examples – I have to admit that when I first went to the site to look at this new network that I was somewhat confused about what type of ads the network ran. Perhaps I read through all the information too quickly but it took me a while to work out if they were text ads, banner ads, button ads etc. Perhaps some examples of the types of ads that people could run would be good both for publishers (to see if they fit with the vibe of their sites) and advertisers (especially).
  • Multiple Ad Spots – Another technique that BlogAd publishers have open to them is having Blog Ads appear on multiple locations on the one site. This allows them to price the ads in premium positions at a much higher rate and have lower priced ads for lower on the side bar. Some of the big political blogs do this and have used it very very successfully.

All in all Performancing’s Partners program looks like it has real potential. I am looking forward to see how it performs and suspect it’ll do well – especially knowing the caliber of people behind it and involved with performancing.

About Darren Rowse
Darren Rowse is the founder and editor of ProBlogger Blog Tips and Digital Photography School. Learn more about him here and connect with him on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn.
Comments
  1. I thought this was a scam since the url in the email wasn’t the same as the url of the link in the email.

    I’ll look into it.

  2. You definitely weren’t the only one confused, Darren… when I read about it this afternoon and cruised over to there I finally ended up just leaving the site after not being able to figure out what kind of ads they were running.

    I’m glad you clarified it : ) Sounds like a decent set-up, paritcularly with all the recent trouble with BlogAds.

  3. Hi darren,

    this thing seems to be good similar to ad text links and adbrite.I would digg more when i get back from work.

    Wrong place to ask u but if i register my domain and space how should i make it work as a blog? So it can have rss feeds and the other blogging features.

    Do tell me at your own convinen.

    Thx in advance

    Ashish

  4. good post
    ill try this in my blog :)

    thanks darren

  5. I am so dissapointed us South African’s can’t use it. Paypal isn’t accepted here. Dang.

  6. […] So after reading a couple of reviews on the new Performancing Partners, (most notably Problogger.net), I logged in to my account, hit the partners program, and the ugliest word stared me in the face… […]

  7. Just found an example ad on Link Building Blog. It looks really simple compared to BlogAds, will see how it perform on my blog.

  8. Jbagley, Paypal IS accepted dude. I’m a South African and I have a Paypal account. It works lekker! just register with paypal and select South Africa!
    Then you simply add your debit or credit card to paypal en bob is jou oom!

    hey Darren, there is a mistake in your article. The link that goes ( or is supposed to go ) to the publishers section actually link to the PNG that people click on to go to the publisher section!!! hahaha Just check that out eh.

    I like performancing I think. I signed up with them a while ago, but never REALLY checked them out. Maybe now is the time to do so!

  9. have implemented it on my site this morning.

  10. Hey everyone,

    thanks for the terric writeup Darren. A lot of what you’ve pointed out will be put into place asap. Not showing example ads was a fairly major blunder on my part, but it’s easily sorted and ill have it done today.

    Thanks everyone, im glad the majority seem to like it :)

  11. […] >> bookmarken mit del.icio.usdel.icio.us Digg Furl reddit Shadows Spurl Yahoo MyWeb Yigg Trackback-URL Gelesen: 1 heute:1 […]

  12. This was easy enought to set up and I agree that it could be great. Now I just have to wait for the first ads….:-)) The free house ads idea is an attractive one.

  13. Thanks Darren,

    I have implemented that in my blog. Will update you guys how it goes from here!

  14. hmm, does anyone know where can I input my palpay account addy? I can’t find anywhere I can put in that.. which makes me wonder, how does the advertiser pay us?

  15. […] Darren over at Problogger has written a nice first impression/review of the new ad system. […]

  16. Christian, go to “my account” on the rigt and change ur email addy. Ill try ot make that clearer in the system

    cheers

  17. Thanks Nick.

    My 2 cents, I think it will be good if under the payment options, we can specify the paypal addy.

  18. Got my pricing today. So did you Darren. Congratz on great figures. I fare not too bad, by I’m in the long tail ;-)
    Fairly priced. A little underpriced for my taste, but good enough.

  19. Hi Darren!

    This sounds very interesting — thank you so much for the clear explanation. I wonder if a small blog like mine would qualify?

  20. Also, i wonder how they calculated the CPM…. ???

  21. it’s still limited to english blogs only

  22. Thanks Darren! Perhaps I will try this as an alternative to Google Ads! ;)

  23. WTJ: I’m working on something to fill that gap HEHE

  24. One thing that was very confusing was setting a price.. be very careful with this.

    What happens is that they estimate monthly page views from current activity. As you’d expect, it’s going to take several hours or maybe even a couple of days for that to stabilize and be accurate.

    So in the meantime, you set a price.. the cpm looks way too high because your estimated page views aren’t accurate yet. Remember that price you set is what you get for the WHOLE MONTH. So, for example, because of not knowing what your monthly pageviews really are, their tools might suggest $3.00 or less as your price – and unless you are a teeny, teeny site, you certainly want more than that!

    Base your price on what you know your page views actually are. The CPM will look artificially high until they catch up, but that will adjust itself.

  25. gonna go right now and give it a shot! thus spoke churchpundit!

  26. […] For a more extensive review check out Darren Rowse’s Review. […]

  27. I must be an idiot. I signed up but see NO place to get ad code. I see a place to blog and all kinds of other things, but nothing that says, “Get your ad code here.” The site is _totally_ confusing. If it is a free blog along with a blog ad network, fine, but for the life of me I can’t find how to just use the blog ads.

  28. Of course – the second I post this – I return and I find it. Still, I think it could be easier.

  29. I’ve got it on my blog. Took forever to find where to put it in my template. I got it as close to the top as I could and for $4.00 a month, it’s a bargain for whoever chooses to buy it.

  30. […] Het systeem lijkt erg op BlogAds.com (de eerste blog advertising specialist) maar lijkt eenvoudiger (volgens Darren Rowsen – ik heb zelf geen ervaring met BlogAds.com). […]

  31. Adam:

    $4.00 a month is ridiculously low. Even if your monthly page views really are what is showing at http://performancing.com/partners/advertisers/blogs/all when I looked (and it probably is not at all if you just put it there), you are selling your space at a .37 CPM rate.. most people make 10 – 20 times that rate with ANY kind of advertising – Google, whatever.

    I think a LOT of people there have made the same mistake.. admittedly, you are a Political blog which might be seen by some as worth less than some other categories, but c’mon: 37 cents is way too low..

  32. Looks to me like PP is already suffering performance problems.

    That’s good, in the sense that it must indicate a lot of interest, but it’s not good that their servers are struggling under the load..

  33. pcunix: How to they calculate the CPM?

  34. Well, I can’t say what they REALLY do, but it LOOKS like they estimate your monthly impressions and divide that into your ad price.. so if your estimated monthly page views are 100,000 and you set a ad price of $100, that’s a $1.00 CPM.

    They don’t always update things quickly though – if you change your price, the old cpm will show for at least a while.

  35. […] Before signing up, you may want to read the preliminary reviews of the Partners service at ProBlogger and TechCrunch. They’ve got a few concerns they’d like to see addressed also. […]

  36. […] Performancing’s Partners Program officially launched (I might have jumped the gun a little with my first impression review – oops!). […]

  37. Back to Adam and the $4.00 price: as you no doubt have noticed, PP’s autopricing adjusted you to $28.00, which is a far more realistic figure for your blog. Of course you are free to reduce that to be more competitive, but it shows you that you were way underpricing.

  38. I actually didn’t set the $4, they did and then they moved it up.

  39. […] Performancing Partners – First Impression Review […]

  40. […] The ad network seems easier to navigate than blogads already. Ive used blogads for over a year now and have found that even with the recent upgrade to 3.0 it is quite cumbersome to deal with. I was able to set up my Performancing Ad account in about 2 minutes and with minimal headache.  They give you the option for pricing to either have it calculated by them based on your page views or you can set a price yourself. If you choose the auto pricing option, it should populate the price in 48 hours, though I found it to be less than 24. Im testing things out on our Music blog, Each Note Secure to see what happens.  Some more details on the pricing can be found here. <a target=”_blank” href=””>Darren over at ProBlogger has a great review of the news.  We will keep an eye on things and let you know how this new ad network stacks up to the competition! […]

  41. At this point, I think this is a bit of an (perhaps unintentional) scam.

    Right now there are apparently no advertisers – or if there are any, it’s folks looking for extreme bargains caused by publishers mis-pricing their blogs.

    So, if you have their code on your site, they run a “house ad” pointing back to themselves. Great for them, doesn’t help you any… and in the meantime, I’ve got valuable web real estate tied up doing nothing but giving free ads for Performancing Partners. The space they are taking now for that ad might even be affecting my Google income (just because it pushes Google further down the page).

    Since all they REALLY need right now is a hit counter so that they can accurately track stats, that house ad is truly a gift from me to them.. effectively it’s free advertising for them at my expense – yes, I could potentially get referrals from it, but heck, I could get referral money from lots of things I could run in that space – I’d rather run ads there, thanks anyway.

    I’m not accusing them of deliberate chicanery: I think they WANT advertisers and may even get some someday. But right now, running their code gives THEM free publicity and does nothing for me.

    By the way, they “helpfully” removed me from their system and told me to remove their code after I posted the above opinion in their forum.. and then removed all traces of it from their site.. rather telling response, I think.

  42. I think eventually pp will be successful – though I think they will need to do some “promos” to get advertisers. If you look at TLA (started by one of the founders of Performancing) – they had to run some heavy $100 free promos to get advertisers. Eventually it took off. I think PP will need to do the same thing.

    I wish they would give publishers an idea of how many ads they have sold.

    I just completed an interview with Nick from Performancing – you can check it out here:
    http://www.centernetworks.com/interview-with-performancing

  43. […] I just received my first ever Performancing Partners (aff) payment (read my first impression review of the ad network here). […]

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