Darwin’s News, Upcoming Events, Links and More

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

Oil’s Trending Up – Let’s Blame the Speculators!

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