Lazy Man and Money

Advice for New Personal Finance Bloggers

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From time to time, a new blogger comes across Lazy Man and Money and sends me an e-mail. Typically they have only a handful of posts and are looking for is a link to their site. I like to see a plethora of posts before giving my stamp of approval. Instead I offer them something better. I would have traded 100 inbound links, to have this information, when I was starting out
1. There’s Blueprints for Financial Prosperity’s 25 Steps To A Wildly Successful Personal Finance Blog. Here are some of my own thoughts:

    • Buy the domain from FX Domains, where you can get private registration for less than $2 a year. It can be nice to be anonymous.
    • Get a theme that allows for WordPress widgets. Widgets are an easy way to add great functionality.
    • Take the date out of the permalinks and just use the title. This can be a personal decision, but I really like the clean URLs you see up top and it’s really hard to change after you get too far along
    • I want to stress the read and comment on other blogs. I do this almost exclusively and I find people come to my site because they read a comment posted on theirs. A good place to start? Each day I try to read PFBlogs.org’s Popular Posts. I leave comments when I can find something to say, which is almost always.

2. When you are done with that there’s The Simple Dollar’s Building a Better Blog for 2007 Series. More of my thoughts:

    • You’ll notice that “SEO doesn’t matter” contradicts the previous article. I’d say it’s worth spending two hours learning about when you start and maybe 8 more two months later. Overall, it’s not going to make or break you, but it can definitely help. Just put 90% of your focus into your writing, 9% into your design, and 1% for things like SEO.
    • I’d like to emphasize the idea of not cluttering your site with ads and not blending them to trick the user.

3. Lastly there’s one more series you have to read. Free Money Finance brings you How to Get Your Blog to 100,000 Visitors and Beyond.

    • I loved the part about picking popular search terms for your domain name. I don’t know how popular Lazy Man is, but I’m pretty happy with my choice.
    • I like the idea of including your blog in your e-mails, but if you are going to be anonymous, this might not helpful.
    • Join a Network? I need to listen to this myself. If you are a new blogger though, you shouldn’t worry about this for some time.

A Word about Advertising

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I’m going to step out of character for a minute and write about advertisements on Lazy Man and Money. Some people are anti-advertisement, but I always thought it could be slightly hypocritical for me to talk about my financial journey and leaving money on the table.

That said, I’ve been occasionally disappointed with some of the third party contextual advertisements on Lazy Man and Money. At times, I’ll find an advertisement that is contrary to my philosophy. For those readers who are observant, you’ll notice a new sponsor today, Finweb.com. As I started to learn more about their website, I was impressed. There is a treasure trove of content that is extremely well-organized and direct to the point. I’m sure my frugal readers will be pleased to know that all of this is free, just like Lazy Man and Money. Like many users, I often surf the web with advertisement blinders on. I probably missed Finweb’s advertisements elsewhere on the web. What other great sites have I missed with my advertisement blinders.

Full Disclosure: This post was NOT part of the terms of the sponsorship. I’m just hoping that my readers give it a look, because there’s a lot to learn.

Alternative Income Streams Progress – January 2007

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This is the fifth installment tracking of my alternative income streams plan and progress. It appears my income streams have taken a step backwards. As my alternative income consists largely of my blogging income and interest income, it’s can be volatile.

There is some upside to look forward to. I have six Prosper.com loans pending that haven’t been factored in. I did a little math and this would have amounted to another $3. Additionally, I’ve been saving up money for my Roth IRA contribution. Of course this doesn’t factor into the my alternative income. Perhaps I should have a retirement alternative income as well? Let me know in the comments.

DateAlternative IncomeNecessary ExpensesTo Go
10/15/2006$17.00$1,699.00$1,682.00
10/31/2006$26.00$1,689.00$1,663.00
11/20/2006$33.00$1,689.00$1,656.00
12/3/2006$51.00$1,689.00$1,638.00
1/2/2006$50.00$1,689.00$1,639.00

Thank You and Happy New Year!

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I’ve been keeping it a little secret, but I’ve had a personal milestone for a week now. Last week, I noticed that I was on pace for 10,000 visitors before the new year. On 12/30 around midnight, I had my 10,000th visitor.

I want to thank you all for coming, and I hope you’ve liked what you’ve read. Have a happy New Year!

How Much is a Blog Worth?

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The title is a loaded question. There are pile of different ways to measure a blogs’ value. For example:

  • Business Opportunities says my blog is currently worth $35,001.48. If anyone wants to make an offer, I be can be reached via e-mail at lazymanandmoney [at] gmail (dot) com.
  • Linkworth implies that I could earn $500-$600 a month by adding 10 links at $50-60 a piece.
  • Text Link Ads’ Blog Juice gives me a 3.0 rating, while their ad calculator says I can earn $160 a month.
  • SeoMoz provides a measure of page strength.
  • Lastly, a very common (and somewhat controversial) way to figure out how popular a blog is the Alexa rating (use the search box at the top of the page).

The last two points (along with the Blog Juice) measure popularity more than the value of a website, but I thought I’d include them as they provide valuable feedback.