Personal Finance Advice

I have to agree with your assesment. Being a new PF blogger, I’ve been looking for ways to differentiate myself from the ever growing list of PF bloggers.

I’ve decided to keep it simple…. to stick to journaling my personal finance happenings and decisions, right and wrong. Allthough not unique, reading similar blogs about others’ financial journeys is what first interested me into this blogging realm.

So my intent is not to drive up traffic (I’m ad free), but provide for others that enjoy personal finance like I do another profile to benchmark against.

All in all, though, I do enjoy reading most blogs, and the aggregation tool at pfblogs.com has made this tremendously easier.

p.s. good luck on your re-positioning…

hey hey, here I thought I was imagining things when I feel that the contents were changing. guess not!

thanks for the nice words and I totally know what you’re talking about. I hardly ever mention rate changes (or never? dont remember) since no one is reading my site for daily updates.

but yeah, if someone wants their blog to develope to a certain degree, it’s worthwhile to take a close look at what they’re doing, who their readers are.. and whats the best approach to their blogging goal, whatever that is.

personally I’m still trying to figure out what I want (long term) out of my blog. it’s almost a year already too. talk about going no where! lol.

oh and yeah, starting a feature such as the Financial Challenge is nice touch. you’re creating lots o value there.

I’m glad you made this post. I noticed the change here recently as well. What drew me to blogging in the first place was the personal nature of the posts. Some people write eloquently, some people are quick to point out deals and some are just very good at opening up with their information.

I’m a big fan of the last one.

And it’s true, when I see a rate hike entry, and I already know about it, I skip the entry altogether.

I’ve noticed the same things also, but I haven’t figured out how to really reposition my blog yet, oh well.

Good luck to you!

I don’t know if I’ve been reading this blog long enough to notice any change in direction, but I will say this is my favorite personal finance site and the one I visit every day specifically because the entries are 1) well written and 2) aren’t what you find in other types of blogs - especially things like the little slices of Japanese life and culture.

The hard part, as I am sure you are finding, is that posting often is much tougher when you are committed to original material. At least it is more difficult at the beginning when you are used to getting a lot of posts done by making “me too” observations.

I came to a similar conclusion this month on my site, and I’ve been pushing myself to make 4 out of 5 posts a week wholly or almost-wholly original. I write at least 5 posts a week, so that means I only get one “me too” easy-post. What is great about this process is that I find myself branching out, reading more source material, and thinking more deeply. This makes my site more valuable, and even more importantly it makes me better at PF, which is very important to me.

So, this change is win-win, which makes the unavailability of the “low hanging fruit” much more acceptable.

Good luck and good site

Oh, one repositioning tip. You need a better/different template. I often skip blogs with the default “kubrick” template such as you use, since they are usually very new and often haven’t really found their voice yet.

This is exactly why you are..and probably will continue to be…one of my faves

Thanks for the mention. This is why I enjoy your site, you aren’t hiding behind anything, you are transparent and allow yourself to be critiqued.

I enjoyed the occasional posts you have about what things are like in Japan - the phone card post was a fun read and I still remember it! Keep up the good work.

Like life, our blogs move in the winding direction the stream takes us.

Thanks for the plug and nice words. You’re a great writer, so I don’t think the immediate repositioning in a huge issue. I agree that lots of sites basically syndicate the same stuff, which makes it not very entertaining to read.

Personally, I’d love to read more about foreign ways of doing things in comparison with the American, financial or otherwise.

Hey pfadvice,

I agree with your assessments. The sites you list are some of my faves as well, and that includes this one here.

No matter how long you’ve been on the blogging scene — or even the pf blogging scene specifically — it’s always a struggle to reposition yourself in a way that stands out. The community has grown so much in the last year, and that’s a good thing, but from what I’ve observed it’s equally frustrating for the old hats and the new hats.

I couldn’t agree more. The last thing I need is another site telling me about the latest rates at an online bank. One of those is enough.

I do read a few of those blogs, because sometimes they write more in depth articles about a topic of interest. And some of them seem to find pretty good articles about personal finance. But to be honest, the blogs I enjoy reading most are those where the writer gives his or her perspective on something, ideally drawing on personal experience.

Now I think that by doing so, the author likely limits his readership to those in a similar financial situation. That’s not a bad thing, though. I can get a lot more out of reading about someone like me, and about his successes and failures, then I can from a general purpose article on snowballing debt repayments.

I have also changed my own style on my own finance blog - I went from trying to make a blog to make money, to a blog which I say whatever has been on my mind for the day (with regards to money mostly). I can’t say it is a successful approach but it certainly is therapeutic!