Why women personal finance bloggers don't make the top lists?

[Lynn]

Nina, Don't Mess With Taxes, and SVB once pointed out that female personal finance bloggers tend to rank pretty low in traffic and popularity polls.

Why is that? Is there something fundamentally different between the way men and women think (and blog) about money? Do you agree with this statement from Don't Mess With Taxes?

Even today, some gender-specific societal expectations manage to persist. That's a topic for a whole 'nother set of blogs. But perhaps some of these antiquated ways are partly behind a trend I've noticed. That is, a lot of women take a more "supportive" fiscal approach, focusing on money maintenance, holding on to what they have, instead of taking steps to advance it.

Please take the poll and share your thoughts.

[davoscat]

There might be a lot more women personal finance bloggers than you think. Not all the bloggers are that explicit about their gender.

It took me a few weeks before I figured out that the Digerati Life is a woman.

[Will]

The disparity Don't Mess With Taxes pointed out is intriguing.

Some people do think that women are too conservative:

76% of women are too conservative when it comes to investing, where only 64% of men (and from my personal experience, I truly believe that number is too high) consider themselves conservative investors. Women often pass up excellent investment opportunities, because we are too afraid to take the leap.

But given the recent financial collapse, is being aggressive really the better investment option? Not so according to this study:

The study, entitled "Boys Will Be Boys," found that men, far more than women, fall victim to the error of overtrading in their investment accounts - and thus come out with lower returns.


Examining more than 35,000 accounts at a discount brokerage firm from 1991 to 1997, Odean found that men traded 45 percent more often than women. Too much trading is notoriously harmful to one's financial health; it raises your costs and increases your chances of making mistakes.



Sure enough, Odean says, women in his study earned an annual return, adjusted for risk, that beat men's by 1.4 percent.

[Xin Lu]

I think the women not marketing themselves is a big thing. For example I just don't have the time to submit myself to every social network and comment on every blog out there. I do it sometimes, but not as much as the more dedicated bloggers. The women that do market themselves do VERY well. For example Millionaire Mommy Next Door got onto national TV and got thousands of subscribers in less than a year.

[AlmostFrugal]

I wonder how much of it is insecurity as well. The feeling of 'oh, well I can't be a big PF blogger, because I talk about my family'. I also know that personally, I was really taught how to sell and promote myself. Nor was I taught technical aspects of blogging, and that's a huge part of having a successful blog. If you look at the 'big' blogs they have design or coding experience but more importantly, the ability to promote themselves.

[Ginger]

I think it has to do with a lot with learning and understanding how to market and network with others. The male PF Bloggers definitely share a sense of comradery and they share information with each other.

But honestly I've found that there are some women personal finance bloggers that are unecessarily catty and "stand-offish" if that's really possible online lol. As in real life, some women are reluctant to really get to know each other and network themselves to success.

I think we hold a unique perspective on personal finances with regards to family, child rearing, career etc etc. I find that the women who read my blog are more geard towards home, family and career with regards to personal finance. The male bloggers IMHO hardly discuss these topics as they hardly think about how to balance baby and a career. But we do. So we talk about it. Along with that comes balancing baby, career, time off and personal finances. Again, therein lies our unique perspective but somehow we shy away from it because we're not about self promotion and lack the ability to get along with each other on a professional level.

[Ginger]

Originally Posted by Xin Lu

I think the women not marketing themselves is a big thing. For example I just don't have the time to submit myself to every social network and comment on every blog out there. I do it sometimes, but not as much as the more dedicated bloggers. The women that do market themselves do VERY well. For example Millionaire Mommy Next Door got onto national TV and got thousands of subscribers in less than a year.

But I think it has to do with more than getting on TV. MMND truly has a great blog. She brings a unique perspective as someone who's made it to where most of us want to be in our personal finances. I also love her writing style.

While Ive been featured on 5 major news networks, I have no where near as great content and consistency as she does. So I think its a bit more than just being on TV, her blog actually embodies "content is king".

[svb]

I agree with Davoscat that not many bloggers explicitly refer to their gender online. But there are quite a good number of pf blogs by women, many such bloggers have actually been around for quite sometime.

Some of the original women pf bloggers out there: Frugal For Life (Dawn), Boston Gal's Open Wallet and My Open Wallet, Frugal Duchess.

I believe it's a combination of several factors that prevent women bloggers from being more recognized: seems like a conglomeration of things need to line up before a blog gets some visibility: promotion, marketing, technical expertise, content focus.

One thing that has helped me greatly is the fact that I joined a pf blog network early on -- it's called the Money Writers and it includes some early blogs (born in 2006) with some pretty vocal guys in there, like Lazy Man and Gen X Finance.

Though good content is key, focus on promotion and technical issues can help a blog reach its full potential.