Lazy Man and Money

Blogging Goals: What You’ll See Here in 2009

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Thanks to Green Panda Treehouse for pointing me to Visionary Blogging’s 7 Strategic Blog Improvement Questions. That article serves as an outline for my blogging goals for 2009.

  1. What will I accomplish with my blog in 2009? How will I make my blog more valuable in 2009?
    There are a number of ways to determine the success of a blog. Here are just a few examples, with 2008s numbers and my goals for 2009:

    • Traffic – Last year I averaged 37,794 visitors a month. This may put me in the top 99.9% of blogs or higher, but it’s really not where I want or need to be to make Lazy Man and Money truly successful. For 2009, I’d like to average at least 75,000 visitors a month.
    • Earnings – In 2008, I made roughly $30,000 from my websites. I had hoped to make more in 2008, but instead of growing those sites to make more money, I put some into time into consulting making a guaranteed dollar. In 2009, I’m going to aim to make $60,000. Of course aiming to do something is one thing, having a plan in place and executing on it is another thing in it’s entirety.
    • Value To Its Readers – I don’t know how one would go about quantifying this goal. The closest I can come is noting that I have 3000 readers who subscribe to Lazy Man and Money’s RSS feed. If that number grows it tells me that readers like what they are reading and are passing along the information to their friends. That’s an indication that my writing provides value to its readers.
    • Value To Myself – One of the reasons why I blog about personal finance is that it really helps me with my own money. As I network with readers and other personal finance bloggers, I learn ways to not only manage my money better, but also find smarter ways to spend it.
  2. How will I increase the authority of my blog in 2009?
    The formula for a successful blog always seems to boil down to two basic ingredients: content and marketing. If you create content that people find valuable and deliver that content to them, you’ll find that your blog will be successful. Other than you to sincerely ask readers to send articles that they like to their friends and family, I haven’t come up with any new ways to market my blog in 2009. Which brings us to the next question?
  3. How will I make my content more addictive in 2009?
    In 2008, I often wrote and published my articles in the same day, with no proofreading. That’s a bad recipe for creating top content. Some may say that they enjoyed my content in 2008. However, if I revamp my process to be ahead of the game, it will give me time to review, improve, and edit the content before you read it.

    In addition to focusing more on writing in advance, I’m going to look to create a new format for 2009. This is subject to getting ahead of the game with my writing. If I can do that expect the following format:

    • Monday – I will focus on frugality and ways to save money. One of the quickest ways to financial freedom is to reduce expenses. I will focus on the value of a dollar spent. Sometimes it’s worth paying a little more for quality that you can count on.
    • Tuesday & Thursday – I’d like to cover some of the basics of personal finance. In 2008, I didn’t do a lot of research on personal finance topics. I found it easier to write about some financial thought that came into my head. The advantage of this is that my writing comes from my heart – it stresses the “personal” in “personal finance.” However, I realize that I need to write about basic topics – ones that can help people in all aspects of their lives. Look for the following topics in 2009: banking, budgeting, career, credit, debt, entrepreneurism, investing, taxes, real estate, insurance, retirement, estate planning, college saving, and more. My biggest challenge will be making these topics interesting and engaging.
    • Wednesday – I plan to use Wednesday to tell some story about my personal financial life, or something that I think you should know. There are the kinds of articles that regular readers will be used to. If you are happy with the way I’ve been writing in 2008, don’t think that I’ll this writing only to Wednesdays… If I have something to say, I’ll publish it as a second article from Monday-Friday.
    • Friday – I think there’s a lot of value to many minds contribute their thoughts. With that in mind, I’m asking readers and/or personal finance bloggers to contact me and submit articles for this Friday slot. I promise submitters of quality content will garner instant fame and fortune. 1. If I can’t get enough people to submit content for Friday, I may have to resort to bargains from Amazon’s Friday Sale or other lighter content to ease into the weekend.
    • Saturday – Expect me to live up to my name here and take the day off.
    • Sunday – In 2008, I used Sundays to write about something that might not be financial in nature – a small peek into my life. Along with that story, I will include some personal finance links from the last week that I found of interest.

    If you have any feedback on this I would appreciate it.

  4. How will I make my blog design more charming in 2009?
    Readers, I need your help on this one. What design changes would you like to see? In 2008, I went with a new theme that focused on readability and scannability by shortening the column of content. I’ve heard from some people that the light green outline is a little bright on some monitors. Have you been seeing this? Is it bad? I also went out and had a professionally designed logo, which people seemed to enjoy.
  5. How will I make my blog community funner in 2009?
    It’s a good time to remind you that I didn’t come up with these questions. Friends say that I’m fairly funny in real life. Either I’m not that funny in writing or it doesn’t come through very well with personal finance topics. Perhaps the tax code is only so humorous. If I can succeed in making personal finance more interesting, not only will my blog be more successful, I think readers will look forward to learning together.
  6. How will I melt my blog more fluidly into my business’s big picture in 2009?
    I’ve started down the road with Twitter and I can tell it’s going to be a big part of the Lazy Man and Money brand in 2009. I will look into Facebook to see if I can leverage that to grow Lazy Man and Money. My wife has made me some sweet looking business cards. I will use these when I network with financial start-ups in Silicon Valley. Living near these start-ups allow me unique opportunity for “face time”, which helps me partner with brands that may become tomorrow leaders.

Those are my goals for 2009. Some may be aggressive, but my limited experience with day camp archery says that you have to aim a little high to hit the bullseye.

Notes
1. Fame in this case is defined by the electronic publishing of the article. I use the Dictionary.com version of “fortune” as “things that happen or are to happen to a person in his or her life”, not the one of “wealth or riches.

Five Thoughts To My Future Children…

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I got the latest edition of Money Magazine yesterday, and Pat Regnier in his The Bottom Line column used the letter to his children as a literary device. It’s not unique (I’ve even written a letter to my high school self in the past), but nonetheless, I thought the idea was worth stealing flattering Mr. Regnier with my own letter to my own children. [Note: I probably wouldn’t use bullets and bolding in a real letter to my children, but I think you’ll find it easier to read.]

Dear Xetra and Dax,

  • Your Names – Sorry about the names. They seemed cool at the time. I didn’t think your mom would take my bet. Even so, Matt Cassel himself didn’t expect to win the Super Bowl.
  • Your Education – I’ve seen a lot of specialists make a lot of money. I was a specialist myself – one of a dozen or so people in the United States who could program a computer in a very propietary computer language. However, like me, a lot of specialists lose their jobs when that specialty goes away and have nothing to fall back on. There’s something to said about doing one thing and doing it well, but there’s also a lot to be said for networking well, writing well, speaking well, and knowing technology well. There are a lot of other valuable skills as well, but that’s a fine start.
  • Your Time – It’s the most valuable commodity you have. Right now, you probably view it as an infinite resource. It gets more finite with each passing minute. Look for ways to do something well once instead of having to do repetitive work. Many mistake your Dad as Lazy, but it’s more about being efficient with your time.
  • Your Money – If you haven’t learned it by reading Dad’s website by now, money is important. It buys you freedom from doing things that you don’t want to do. It buys you freedom to do the things that you do want to do. It also buys you the ability to help friends and family in time of trouble.
  • Your Happiness – I don’t have it quite perfected yet, but I’ve been working on a recipe for this. Beyond that, I’ve found four factors of focus: family, friends, freedoms, and fitness.

Getting Ready to Buy Some Stock

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Wednesday my wife said, “You know we have a lot of cash sitting around, we should start to invest it while everything is cheap.” It’s amazing how I can write about this stuff everyday, while she spends about 4 minutes a year on it, and we both come to the same conclusion. Then Thursday happens and the stock market store just slashed prices another 7%. Friday morning, I hope to open up a Zecco account (why do people pay commissions?) and see how quickly we can get some money in the market. I say “hope”, because I expect them to give me lots of paperwork and/or ask for me to fax something. Faxes don’t work well with my Vonage phone lines.

I make it sound like an easy decision to invest. We have a long-term view and could wait out quite a bit of a downfall. I realize that earnings and cash-flow are likely to drop making stocks, even at this price, fairly valued. Still, I have to agree with Chad at Sentient Money when he says, “This market might be the best buying opportunity in the next 10 years.”.

So what would I buy? I think, I’ll stop by Vanguard and look for some cheap broad-based ETFs. My first target will be to load up on Total Stock Market ETF (symbol: VTI). I’ll add some Small-Cap ETF (symbol: VB), just to overweight ourselves in that area a little bit. I would also look to their REIT ETF (symbol: VNQ) to diversify quite a bit. I may then look to diversify more by looking at PowerShares DB Oil Fund (symbol: DBO) and PowerShares DB Agriculture Fund (DBA). These last two typically go up as oil and food prices go up. This is a great hedge and if oil goes back up to $140 a barrel, we’ll have solid stock gains to offset the pain at the pump.

Would you buy tomorrow? If yes, how would you reduce risk, but still try to capitalize on these relatively cheap prices.

Update: Looks like it might take a few days to get the Zecco account set-up. I did everything to set up an active account yet it doesn’t look like I have an account set up to fund. Once I do have an account set up, I will need to decide how to fund it. If I go with the free ACH method it’s going to take 5 days. If I going with the wire transfer it will cost $20, but be quick. I’m leaning towards the wire transfer at this point.

My Six Word Memoir

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For those of you who don’t follow such things, there’s a thing in the world of blogging (often called a blogosphere) called a meme. Basically someone takes a topic, writes about it, and then “tags” others to write about it. I suppose if you don’t write about it, you get stuck being “it.” As we learned at an early age, no one wants to be “it.”

The point of the story is that I’ve been “tagged” by credit addict. I need to write six words that encompass my thoughts. So I had six words together:

Be Ben Franklin… healthy, wealthy, wise.

However, fate has changed my memoir. I was tagged for the same meme by Fat Man Unleashed to write one for Lazy Man and Health. This means that I’m going to have to split my single statement into two reflecting each personality.

Thus for Lazy Man and Money, I go with:

Money – freedom to do almost anything

This is really what Lazy Man and Money is about. I talk about being Lazy, but that’s just one example of what is possible when you are financially independent. I feel that it strikes a chord on some level with most people.

If you are curious what my health memoir is, please check my six word memoir at Lazy Man and Health.

The proper thing at this point is to tag some others. I’m not one to support pyramid schemes, so I’m going to tag three people total from my two websites. This is a more “sustainable” meme that will help it last longer. And rather than tag the big blogs, I’m going to bring attention to three blogs that have unique viewpoints, only a handful of posts, and could benefit greatly from your attention.

These sites are:

For those people the rules are simply:

  • Write your own six word memoir.
  • Post it on your blog and include a visual illustration if you wish.
  • Link to the person who tagged you in your post.
  • Tag at least three more blogs.
  • Leave a comment on the tagged blogs with an invitation to play.

Weekend Personal Finance Review – High Cholesterol Edition

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My wife got a cholesterol test yesterday. We’ve known that she’s had high cholesterol in the past, but this was off the charts bad. As some people know, the ratio of good to bad cholesterol is also important. Unfortunately this number isn’t on her side either. I’ve spent the morning researching what can be done to improve her numbers. Sadly, she’s doing a lot of the recommended things already. I did get a few ideas to ask the doctor about – one of which will be increasing her garlic intake.

While I’m studying, enjoy these links:

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