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February In Review – The Good, The Bad and the Downright Ugly

Darwin — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 12:47:46 +0000

Another month has come and gone. I usually have nothing but positive achievements and gratitude to report in my monthly updates that I’d been doing from my other blog Everyday Finance, but this month took me back down to earth. For one, Everyday Finance, my first blog, is not even active any more, as Google has for some reason flagged it as “SPAM” for reasons unknown to me. This is the downside of starting off with a free Google-hosted blog under the Blogger platform. While free, you don’t actually “own” the blog and the examples abound of seemingly legit blogs being “deleted” by the bots for indefinite periods of time ranging from weeks to months to forever.

After 3 years with my first attempt at blogging:

over 500 posts
over 500 RSS readers
hundreds of thousands of page views later, I woke up one day to a deleted blog (I’m glad I started Darwin’s Finance!).

I don’t spam anyone and it’s a legit blog, but based on what I’ve read in the forums and the terms of service, the bots could flag you for any number of reasons and once resolved or outright killed, you may never actually find out what happened. I’m not going to trash Google, as they may restore it any day now and frankly, they’re responsible for probably 75% of my traffic here. I’m still in the “appeal” process, but the process is somewhat of a black box. I just don’t know if or when there will be any resolution.

If anyone has advice or has been through a similar experience, please share.

In the Press

Aside from the inclusions in various Carnivals and weekly roundups that I certainly appreciate (and reciprocate), this month I found out that I was nominated as one of 5 Finalists for the Best Investing Blog in the Plutus Awards. This was an unanticipated pleasant surprise. Please check out the Plutus awards and if you enjoy the investing ideas and strategies you find here, please consider voting for me – just search “darwin” to fine me :>

Traffic/RSS/Twitter

For the first time in months, the traffic was down slightly month over month.

As you can see, there had been a steady rise in traffic, often by jumps of 20% or more month over month, which had me really excited, but this month things steadied out a bit. There are a few reasons for that. First, with Everyday Finance on hold for most of the month, that cost me a few thousand visits. EDF had been sending me a fair amount of traffic over the past year by cross-promotion. Additionally, as lame as it seems, February was actually a short month. With an average 2,000 views per day, having 2-3 days short from comparable months cost me another 4,000-6,000 views. So, all in all, in a comparable month under normal circumstances, I guess I would have shown decent monthly growth again, but in reality, it’s results that count. And the results were not stellar since my goal is to grow each and every month, no matter what the margin.

RSS readership has teetered back and forth around 800 followers for the month. I’m pleased with the continued trajectory of 50-100 new followers each month. If you don’t know what RSS is, you should check out how RSS works. It’s absolutely the most efficient and enjoyable way I track and quickly follow updates to all my favorite news organizations, blogs and other internet outlets.

Twitter – I’m over 1700 Twitter followers, but I don’t focus too much on Twitter followers as a gauge of success since many of the accounts are spam or don’t participate in the conversation. There is a core group of probably 100 Twitter followers and fellow bloggers that I enjoy routine interactions with. If you’d like to follow my Twitter, I go under the name Everyday Finance ironically.

Income

Since income is very strongly related to page views, my overall earnings for the month weren’t spectacular either. I don’t report specifics for various reasons, but I was probably 20% off my trajectory. Lower traffic and virtually no earnings from Everyday Finance were the primary causes. While January was a blockbuster month in terms of advertiser requests and deals and the like, February was relatively light. I presume perhaps the annual budget sends marketers off to the races in January? I don’t know, but it was pretty quiet for direct placements this month.

Alexa Rank/Page Rank

My Alexa rank has continued to improve and I’m looking to break the 100,000 barrier some time in the next several weeks. Why? I don’t know that there’s a strong correlation with Google’s search success, but being a top 100,000 blog is somewhat of a badge of honor in the blogging world to at least showcase that you’re running a successful, legitimate enterprise. While 100,000 sounds like a large number, there are millions of blogs created monthly, so the top 100,000 is actually viewed as highly successful.

There was no Google Page Rank update that I’m aware of this month, but I don’t focus on it too much any more anyway. From what I’ve read more recently, Page Rank isn’t that strong a factor in determining what kind of search traffic you’re getting any more. The system has become more smarter and looks at so many more things like incoming link quality, post frequency, images, visitor time on page and so many other things that can’t be represented by a digit.

Other Projects

ETFBase has been off to a good start. While I haven’t been able to keep up the posting frequency I would have liked, I am getting some search traffic which is encouraging. I’ll continue to cross-promote it and put effort into it since I believe so strongly in ETFs over other traditional investment vehicles and I think I have a lot to offer in terms of ideas, advice and new developments in the world of ETFs. If you haven’t already subscribed to that feed, you can Subscribe to RSS here or check out one of these articles from last month to see if you enjoy the content:

My Most Recommended Articles at Darwin’s Finance

I am proud of several of the articles I wrote during the month of February and I hope you’ll find them to be useful if you didn’t read them already. Here are my favorites from the month:

How Much Could You Reduce Your Budget if You Get Laid Off?
Is Paying Kids for Good Grades Wrong?
Winners and Losers Under Obama’s New Tax Plan
Double-Digit Returns in Any Market Ã¢â‚¬â€œ Update 2
What Does Financial Freedom Mean To You?
How Did Childhood Jobs Influence Your Current Financial Situation?
10 Highest Paying Degrees 2010 Ã¢â‚¬â€œ Best Majors in Demand Now

Easy Ways to Find the Best Finance Blogs

Darwin — Sun, 07 Feb 2010 13:14:35 +0000

There are a few ways people like to keep track of their favorite personal finance and investing blogs. There’s the old fashioned way of just bookmarking a site and visiting when time permits to check out the latest posts. That’s very inefficient and sooo 2000.

Then, there’s the RSS and Twitter option. I recommend following both if it’s a site/blogger you like. For a primer, see this video on how RSS works but basically, it’s like opening a newspaper each day and seeing the title of tens or hundreds of articles from your favorite writes – which can be read in full by clicking a little box (no download delay, article opens up immediately). Twitter will generally ensure you stay up to date with recent posts and other tidbits the blogger passes along, but if you follow a lot of twitter handles, you’re likely to miss recent posts by your favorite blogs unless you either check your stream incessantly or the blogger does nothing but tweet their own horn – which is not cool. I might only tweet about a new post once for every 5-8 other tweets sharing info on savings tips, other blog posts I found to be interesting or random stuff nobody else would care about but you may find amusing.

Blog Aggregators

Finally, there are some great blog post aggregation sites. Basically, you can get the most recent 1-5 post(s) from many bloggers all at once in an easily served up fashion. In some cases, by just mousing over a title, you can read the first paragraph of each article to see if it’s worth reading in full. While this isn’t all that different than using say, iGoogle for your RSS feeds, these aggregators will certainly introduce you to new blogs you’ve never heard of. Also, depending on the aggregation site, you’ll find top blogs ranked by different criteria. Let’s take a look at a few:

Wisebread Top 100 Personal Finance Blogs List – Well, it’s actually got more than that. But, this is a massive list with all the top bloggers listed by various stats that you can easily sort – Alexa, RSS, Twitter counts, etc.

Great Nexus - This is a another neat site that has various topics like Investing, Personal Finance, Technology, etc. and there are various mediums presented from recent YouTube Vids to top bloggers. The most recent 5 posts from bloggers are prominently displayed.

PFBlogs.org – This is a neat blog aggregator that’s been around for a while. Tons of money bloggers have their most recent posts highlighted here in sequential fashion. However, you can see how many clicks went out for each post and “Friends of PFBlogs” have their posts highlighted more prominently throughout. Since that’s a paid membership, none of the friends are spammers and they tend to be the more established blogs that participate.

Alltop – Alltop now has hundreds of topics (I linked to Personal Finance). Similar to Great Nexus, you can see the prior 5 posts by several top bloggers in a particular niche. It’s a nice giant newsreader basically. However, you didn’t get to pick the blogs. Sometimes, lousy blogs seem to get through, but for the most part, you’ll find the more prominent blogs you were already familiar with in the top slots, plus you’re likely to find some new ones.

NewsFlashr Business Blogs – This one tends to be more investing oriented, but it sorts by time posted similar to PFBlogs. This will introduce you to a different set of bloggers than most of the outlets above.

How To Use These Finance Aggregators

I use these primarily for two purposes as a reader – 1) as a giant newsreader and 2) to familiarize myself with new blogs in various niches. Each time I check them out I’m not disappointed. You’re likely to find new content or blogs you wouldn’t have come across otherwise. From a blogging standpoint, I’m on each of these (awaiting Nexus actually) and while I don’t get a ton of traffic from any one of them in particular, it’s nice to have my content out there and be associated with all the other great PF blogs out there. I suspect some of these “Top 100″ Lists are the source of many of the advertising requests I get (both the good and the bad). So, there are likely some intangible benefits besides traffic you get from these as a blogger.

Do You Have Another Favorite Aggregation Site?

If you’re not already following my RSS, it’s a click away! Follow Me Here.

Darwin’s News, Upcoming Events, Links and More

Darwin — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 03:10:44 +0000

There’s quite a bit brewing at Darwin’s Finance. I figured I’d take this opportunity today to update readers on a few things and share some exciting news and upcoming events.

The Carnival’s Coming to Town!

For this upcoming week, I’ve been selected to host the premiere traveling carnival of top money posts from around the blogosphere. The Carnival of Personal Finance was started by Flexo from a most excellent blog Consumerism Commentary. For a sample of a recent carnival, check out last week’s Carnival of Personal Finance hosted by Green Panda Treehouse, which published my article on Structured Notes outlining how these instruments that can deliver guaranteed range-bound returns in any market (leveraged up in some cases as well). To catch this week’s amazing entries (I plan on publishing at least 50), make sure to stop back in on Monday when it goes live or subscribe here for free via RSS (What is RSS?).

Traffic’s Up, Revenue’s Up, the Sky’s the Limit!

For a bit of background, I’ve been blogging for years with my first blog Everyday Finance. Unfortunately, when I started blogging, I had no skillz whatsover (well, not much has changed), and as such, I went with the free Google Blogger platform with the giant ” .blogspot.com” at the end. As my blog there took off, I quickly realized that I was restricting my visitor reach, performance and potential due to the barriers in dealing with the Blogger platform. I finally got around to starting Darwin’s Finance on a self-hosted WordPress platform and wow, what a difference! The flexibility and innovation out there for WordPress blogs, features, plugins and themes is truly amazing. With the effort I’ve put into the blog since launch and some of the benefits of WordPress over Blogger, I’ve quickly been able to jump to a Page Rank 4 and traffic’s been growing rapidly, breaking 10,000 page views per month within the first few months of launch and it continues to grow by over 1,000 additional page views per month.

And on revenue…well, I like to keep the IRS on their feet; but I’m very pleased with the passive income (well, not so passive, but “flexible” I guess) I’m generating now from both blogs. In all aspects, I’d say the blogging experience is exceeding my expectations from when I first started posting in Feb 2007: Is an Interest Only Mortgage really that risky? In short, NO.

My Blog’s Theme Was Screwed Up!

Over the past few weeks, I started getting all kinds of comments and emails that my screen was showing as dark blue with black font rendering Darwin’s Finance as virtually unreadable. While my browsers were showing no problems, when I got my iPhone, I noticed the same thing – it was horrid! So, I had to make a quick switch. I haven’t spruced up the site too much just yet, but the clean, simple white theme I have now should suffice until I add some additional bells and whistles. My apologies to anyone that experienced nausea over the past few weeks due to whatever glitch occurred.

June in Review

Here are my top dozen articles published in June 2009 to give you a flavor for what you’ll find at Everyday Finance and Darwin’s Finance on a routine basis:

How to Hedge Gas Prices and Put Money Back in your Pocket

Going Out of Business Sales a Scam or Worthwhile?

2009 Stock Market Returns by Country YTD

How Does Deferred Compensation Work?

15 High Yield Corporate Bonds Raising Eyebrows

Haverhill Home Staging Company Promising Great Employment – Scam or Legit?

How FSA Plan Account Contributions Can Save You Thousands

Too Late to Refinance? Maybe, Maybe Not…

401K Cuts to Matching Contributions Coming – Time to Exit?

Natural Gas ETF Anomaly – Time to Exploit?

Free 7 Paid Sick Days Mandatory Says Gov’t

No related posts.

Welcome to Darwin’s Finance

Darwin — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 02:37:48 +0000

Well, first post here. I shall certainly post something of more substance, but in short, I’m very excited to start blogging on this new platform. I intend on keeping the Blogger blog I’ve had for some time now going, especially since I have advertising commitments and it has some decent momentum. However, with Wordpress, I’ll be able to do much more. I’m thinking I’ll keep different concepts for the two blogs. While both will tie to finance and investing, they’ll have different tones. I’m still working on that.

Til next post!