When Blogging Isn’t Blogging Anymore
“Content is King” as the saying goes… though it always seems like so much more when you actually get down to it.
Just this morning, the goal was to complete a few articles for the upcoming weeks. After several cups of coffee and strained eyes, it seems all I have to show is an updated Twitter and Facebook page.
Content is indeed kind, but so is Search Engine Optimization… and Daily Unique Visitors… don’t forget to update those WordPress plugins… and actively engaging followers on social media… oh, and commenting on other blogs…
Writing, the foundation of blogging, can get swept aside as websites grow. The increase in popularity is intoxicating and the focus shifts towards: further increasing web presence, improving rankings like SEOmoz or Alexa, entertaining advertisers, and researching the “next level” of blogging status.
From what I’ve been told, the typical lifespan of a blogger is 1-year.
Developing an immediate web presence early happens simply from the tenacity of being new. The novelty of blogging and learning about the business promotes aggressive writing, commenting, and socializing. Yet the effort required to make it in the Top 10 is a considerably more than making it into the Top 100. And here is where blogs eventually start to taper. Once that happens, it seems like only a matter of time before a site can crash & burn into non-existence.
How bloggers handle this transition is critical to a website’s success. Many handle this flawlessly, maintaining the core focus on consistently publishing quality content. Me on the other hand….not so much!
Allowing several stints of inactivity, I’ve chalked up this site’s different hiatus’ to a variety of reasons, like getting married, and it has impacted the site tremendously. The delicate amount of commentary quickly faded away, daily visitors shrunk to the low teens, and my Alexa ranking plummeted.
Training for an upcoming half-marathon and studying for the GRE exam, the site has been on autopilot for more than the past 3 months. Thank goodness for guest posts because there would be ZERO new content otherwise!
What I’ve come to realize is the slickness of the design or smoothness of the website don’t really matter if there’s nothing there to engage the readers. This is why personal finance bloggers with distinct online identities are so popular – visitors have either formed a connection with the author or are regularly entertained by what’s published.
So here’s to the original FinEngr – who not only enjoyed writing, but took the time to engage readers with quality content like:
Yakezie Carnival: Travel Edition
Interruptions to blogging come in many forms, including travel. Bloggers may even agonize over being days away from their sites, experiencing what some would consider withdrawal.
Scrap paper littered with post ideas sit unfinished and unwritten. Most excited about the “Career Buckets” post, my time just wasn’t well-managed.
Tomorrow we head to Iceland.
Of course, the excitement for the trip has been steadily building. One highlight… a Northern Lights tour. We’ve scheduled the expedition for immediately after the New Moon. Having the darkest sky should increase our chances of a sighting, so fingers crossed.
Oh and one last announcement before we get to the articles. There will be a giveaway this Saturday, February 5th for 3 FREE copies of H&R Block Federal Premium edition allowing you to File Taxes ONLINE file taxes online.
Happy 1st Anniversary EYF
Hard to believe this site has been in existence for over a year now. Instead of celebrating this milestone with a boisterous “HOORAY”, it’s more of a wimpy “yay”.
Readership continues to grow despite any regularity or consistency in the writings. Facebook fans are almost at 100 and the Twitter following hovers 400. Comments and discussions have dropped off and are one area I’d like to work on. Admittedly, I can’t expect comments without posting relevant and entertaining articles.
Inactive for an entire month, all of the recent listings have consisted of third party guest posts. Subjecting readers to my sporadic postings only punishes myself and establishing a better schedule for writing is another goal for me to work on. Don’t get me wrong, ideas for articles come to mind everyday as I read and think about finance – these ideas just don’t seem to make it from brain to keyboard.
Of all the things that keep me blogging, the #1 top has to be the Yakezie Network. Throughout my extended periods of inactivity, I’ve always returned with this sense of guilt from neglecting the members and current events. Even during these times, it remains one of my stronger support networks (outside of my loving wife). Amazingly I have yet to draft my Yakezie Network biography or announce my intentions to pursue a position for “Publication Marketing & Author Liaison” (the title isn’t real).
Adaptu on Engineer Your Finances
Engineer Your Finances is all about helping readers increase and expand their financial education, work on improving and optimizing their own financial system, and continue towards the ultimate goal of financial security. At Adaptu, we believe we can help you achieve your financial goals.
Adaptu is an online service, with tools, resources, and a community of connected users, that helps people make sense of and be in control of their financial lives. We believe that by taking a more active role in your own finances, you’ll be able to adapt to life’s both planned and unplanned events. Like Engineer Your Finances says, optimization is all about “maximizing the good, minimizing the bad.” There is always room for improvement. Continue reading “Adaptu on Engineer Your Finances” »
Money Crashers Personal Finance Blog Rankings
With the recent LoveDrop promotion, I figured we might as well keep the theme of promoting others (a la Yakezie).
My buddy over at MoneyCrashers, Andrew shot me an email a while back about their new Top PF Blogs tool they recently launched. There’s plenty of other ranking systems out there already, so what makes this one any different?
We formulated a unique algorithm that factors in statistics like FeedBurner subscribers, Twitter followers, Alexa rank, Compete rank, Technorati authority, Google PageRank, number of inbound links according to Yahoo, SEOmoz rank, and SEMRush organic search value and then calculates a weighted score based on all of the data. You’ll find that by accounting for all of these factors, the list is very accurate in ranking all of the top blogs.
At the time of the correspondence, I was a lowly #322. He tried to offset this with the fact that the list contained a lot of heavy-hitting, big-name blogs… but I wasn’t buying it being the competitive person I am. There’s been a lot of changes going on to the site, so it’s given me something to work towards improving. At the time of writing, I’ve soared up to #265 so it appears their algorithm is working just fine! 
Interested in a little more information, I asked Andrew to expand on the idea behind the ranking methodology.
As for how the rankings work, we don’t want to give away too much as you mentioned, mainly because we don’t want people trying to game the system (which is why we created it to begin with i.e. Alexa). But basically it’s a weighted average of the various different metrics you see on the list as well as a few others we included in the backend. They’re weighted differently depending on what we thought were the most relevant and important, and we’re actually still experimenting with the algorithm to try and make it as accurate as possible. It’s really tough putting numbers on something as subjective as the “best blogs”, but I think we can get pretty close.
Drop Some Money Love with LoveDrop
A regular reader of Budgets Are Sexy, I’ve had the privilege of getting to know the man behind the site – J Money. As everyone knows he’s quite the character, but he’s also a very genuine person.
He truly cares about personal finance. He’s always working on side projected and looking for ways to help others learn about & manage their money. He pinged me about a recent one he’s uber-excited about so I figured I’d share it with my own readers:
LOVE DROP
Teaming up with the social movement ItStartsWith.Us, he and Nate St. Pierre are on a warpath to start giving back NOW. No bailout proposals, political red tape, or misappropriated funds – just plain and simple helping others.
A micro-giving campaign, the idea is based on the participating collective changing the lives of one family every month with donations directly from the site.
“The idea is that if everyone gave just $1 or $2 to a pot, we could turn around and directly make an impact on the lives of those close to our hearts. It’s not a replacement for volunteering or any other charitable things we’re doing, but more of an extra way to help someone out financially. Check it out and let us know what you think!
