Ask The Digerati Life a question! (Women of Personal Finance Spotlight)

[svb]

Originally Posted by curlytreefan

I'm working at a start-up that is focused on helping shoppers save time and money. We don't have a blog yet. I'm concerned though that it will take a lot of time and effort before we'll start to see a return on the investment. Is there a minimum time/cost per week that we should be prepared to spend before kicking off a blog?

I think I know who you are . You are right about how much time it may possibly take to kick off a new blog, but once you've built its foundation, you may not have to update it so frequently. At least, I've seen some well-established corporate blogs update their sites once or twice a week and they still get fairly well trafficked usually due to crossover visitors from their main site.

To launch your blog, the work is usually concentrated in the first month to just get it into place with design, theme, configurations and initial promotion. If you are planning to monetize it as well, you probably won't see much until 3 months or more down the road. But you'll establish some sort of routine over time.

If you have a personal blog, it will probably take longer to pick up traffic than a corporate blog since blogs that supplement existing company web sites already have some leverage from the main site's visitors, as I've explained. I believe it can be run by someone who spends maybe half the day working on it (esp in the beginning).

Corporate blogs are great because they're easier to market virally than main sites through cross-linking with other blogs, for instance. With general web sites, you'll probably have to market those in a more traditional fashion such as through press releases, other forms of media, and a nice mention in TechCrunch .

[svb]

Originally Posted by LazyMan

Thanks for doing this SVB...

I have three questions for you...

1. I'm looking to find out more about tax liens... (on second thought nevermind)
2. Do you ever get bored writing about personal finance every day?
3. If you had to start another blog with an eye towards profitability first and foremost, what topic would you pick?

1. Tax liens? I am sorry Lazy, but I am not as versed on tax liens as I'd like to be . I'd have to read up on that!

2. Actually, I'm hardly ever bored with personal finance or with writing about it. But there have been times when I've gotten overwhelmed or burnt out by writing. I think that it's normal to "burn out" when you keep working on a particular activity for sometime or if there's not enough time in the day to do all that you want. I feel that I have many ideas I can write about, just not enough time to present them. I really love this subject matter and I find it a fun challenge to try to give a particular topic a new spin or angle.

3. Ah, interesting question! I think that if you're going to make something profitable, you should be well-versed in the subject matter. So to have a blog have a good shot at making money, you should have a good grasp on the stuff you blog about. The more you know about a topic, the greater the chance you'll stay with it for the long haul, thus increasing the possibility you'll make money with your blog.

As far as blog niches are concerned, I heard that the "make money online" blogs can do really well. . Don't give me ideas now! As for me though, I had started on a celebrity / reality tv blog 2 years ago (did I mention how much I love SYTYCD and American Idol?), but I had no time to update it. Maybe I'll get back to it again someday. I wouldn't know how profitable these celebrity / pop culture blogs are, but Perez Hilton isn't doing too badly!

[Greg]

Hi SVB,

Thanks so much for fielding these questions! I think we bloggers could learn a lot from your experiences.

My question(s):

What are some of the most successful blogging strategies/tactics you've tried? What are some things you've tried, but it didn't work out as expected? What are the top 5-10 things a newbie blogger should do in their first year?

Thanks in advance!
Greg

[svb]

Originally Posted by Greg

Hi SVB,

I think we bloggers could learn a lot from your experiences.

My question(s):

What are some of the most successful blogging strategies/tactics you've tried? What are some things you've tried, but it didn't work out as expected? What are the top 5-10 things a newbie blogger should do in their first year?

Thanks in advance!
Greg

Greg,

Here were a few things I tried and didn't work out as well as I thought:

1. I tried to start more than one blog at the same time. After around 3 months' time, I realized I was *not* making much progress on either one (no traffic growth, for ex.) So I ditched one in favor of The Digerati Life. Good thing I did or I may still be stuck in a rut!

2. I tried to self-host and it turned out to be a very frustrating experience. Even moving my blog to Dreamhost was an improvement!

3. I started off with Blogger. I learned how to blog on Blogger and was very reluctant to move to Wordpress, which only happened because of the limited features Blogger had a couple of years ago. The migration was a pain! But believe me, Wordpress rocks (all the plugins are cool)!

4. I had some different plans for my site a long time ago, which included launching Cafepress stores and putting more personal stuff on it like photo albums, etc. I guess I was feeling pretty experimental about my site. In the end I didn't go that route due to lack of time and the decision to keep the site "pure" and focused on personal finance. But experimentation is still a good thing since it'll give you an idea what you enjoy doing and what you can potentially be successful with.

5. I should have spent more time thinking about the right domain name and blog name to use. I started out with some pretty weird names (like "curlytree") and had to change names over a few times, thereby losing some traffic in the process. Even today, my blog's name seems pretty odd. If I could do it over, I'd probably change my blog's name....

What should a newbie do in the 1st year?

1. Get to know other bloggers. I find this to be of utmost importance. Contrary to what some may think, blogging is quite a social activity and a lot of your success hinges on knowing other bloggers in your space.

2. Join carnivals and networks. You need to spend time promoting your posts as much as you spend time writing them. I used to just write posts and be done with them. I only later discovered that that was only half the work!

3. Write regularly. In order to grow your blog, you'll need to write on a regular schedule. People want to get updates all the time!

4. If you are monetizing your blog, be patient, since the money doesn't come quickly with this work. Blogging revenue can be pretty erratic so don't be discouraged when the money doesn't come right away. I remember how I wrote this funny post a long time ago, bewailing my lack of earnings.

5. Do comments and link roundups. That's the fastest way other bloggers will notice you! I'm still surprised how some bloggers don't do roundups since this is one way to easily reach out to the blogosphere.

6. If you have bandwidth to do this, then guest posting is a nice gesture.

7. Join pfblogs.org. Again, it's one way to be part of the pf blogging community.


Hmmmm... I wish I could think of more tips. The floor is open for anyone else to add some more pointers!

[davoscat]

Join carnivals and networks

Hi SVB I notice that you belong to two networks: The Money Writers & # Investors Blog Network. I've always been a little confused about what are the benefits of joining a network. Besides adding each other to your blogrolls and aggregating feeds, what kind other exciting behind the scenes stuff can you tell us about your networks? Do you have plans on expanding to include more bloggers? And most importantly, how do you apply!

[Jason White]

SVB--Just wanted to say thanks for taking the time to answer my question. This Q&A was a great idea, and I look forward to following your responses to other questions.

[svb]

Originally Posted by davoscat

Hi SVB I notice that you belong to two networks: The Money Writers & # Investors Blog Network. I've always been a little confused about what are the benefits of joining a network. Besides adding each other to your blogrolls and aggregating feeds, what kind other exciting behind the scenes stuff can you tell us about your networks? Do you have plans on expanding to include more bloggers? And most importantly, how do you apply!

To start, here's a list of existing pf networks. Also, it's very likely that new networks exist that we may not be aware of. I'd love to hear what the others are if that is the case!

I got into these networks by invitation. I had befriended some bloggers early on -- those who started along the same time as I did and had similar site stats and growth pace. Then I was asked to join their network -- hence, the Money Writers. The original members of this group were blogs started in 2006, while new members have joined in the last half year or so.

There are various types of networks too, some are run loosely while others are more "exclusive" or much more closely knit. The Money Writers is a closely knit group where we share lots of tips behind the scenes and get to know each other on a more personal level. As a group, there are also advantages, such as being able to share knowledge on all aspects of blogging, i.e. monetization, technical issues, web design, marketing -- a lot of stuff on how to maintain a blog.

Though we are all responsible for our own blogs, there's so much leverage we're able to capitalize on by virtue of being in a tight knit network. We also have the option to pitch ourselves as a group to advertisers and not just as individuals, if the opportunity arises.

The other networks I belong to are looser in nature, and I have joined them to get to know other bloggers in some other spaces. The IBN (Investor's Blog Network) is a carnival blog that isn't as active as it used to be. And I also just joined the Div-Net Network, which is a network in the investment space. I'm still quite new to Div-Net and my inclusion is more of that as an associate member of the group.

Many of these networks may be exclusive and by invitation only. One way to get into a network is to simply ask. Or get to know one of the members of the network and see if there are openings in their group. Another idea is to start your own network by looking around for sites you like and whose writers have stuff in common with you. Check around and write each other, establish a forum for your communication and voila! You have a network!

Note too, that if a network is unable to take you on, it's because networks need to have a manageable number of members to stay nimble. I think members are capped at 10 for many and on average there are only 6 to 8 members. If you add more members, it just becomes a bear to manage the group. We do add new members based on the following criteria:
-

• Someone drops out of the network, leaving room for new recruits
• We find someone so exceptional, we can't help but invite this blog over to join us
• The blogs considered haven't yet joined another PF network

I am sure that different networks have different rules on gathering new members (which I'd be curious about myself ), but these are some of the basic tenets we follow.

[svb]

Originally Posted by Jason White

SVB--Just wanted to say thanks for taking the time to answer my question. This Q&A was a great idea, and I look forward to following your responses to other questions.

Anytime Jason! Thanks so much for participating here and sending me some questions. I also look forward to future Q & A's of other bloggers!

[davoscat]

Thank you SVB. You answered my question completely. Thanks for coming on the forum and giving us these invaluable tips.

[Norbert The Librarian]

There are so many personal finance blogs out there rehashing the same topics over and over again. My favorite thing about Digerati Life is that SVB is able to put very interesting spins on old financial topics.

How do you find these new angles for old topics? Do these ideas just come natural to you? or do you look at what other bloggers have written on the topic and deliberately find a new spin on it?

Love the blog keep up the great work.