MiB Smarter Money » Blog Improvement

365 Days of Statistics On My Finances, My Blog Stats, And My Revenue Here @ The MiB

hank — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 20:23:10 +0000

I’m a fan of numbers, but I try not to get too wrapped up in them. They’re good markers, but the main point is to drive through with them and continue improving them. They can go up and down and really frustrate you if you let them.

I’ve more than paid for my site but people like to read and learn about how everyone is doing it, so I’m happy to share the past years traffic numbers (and some financials as well)…

MY Personal Finance Numbers

My 401k Through T-Rowe Price

I’m not immune to the stock market diving by any stretch of the imagination but that doesn’t mean I’m keeping my money out of it. It’s an opportune time to buy right now and you’re getting stocks/bonds/mutual funds at all-time historic lows.

I can see Carl’s point when he says: “You all want to leave your retirement money in the stock market right now? Are you insane? I’m 31 years old, self-employed, and all I have (had) so far is $8200.00 to put into a ROTH-IRA. This was 4 months ago. Since then, I’ve lost $2200.00 and the bottom is STILL dropping out.

You expect me to ride this nonsense out? If this continues and I lose almost 2-5% of my money almost every day, I won’t have anything left to bounce back with. I’ll gladly take the $500.00 penalty for early withdrawal before i have nothing left to withdraw.

I’m probably the least savvy when it comes to managing finances but I’d rather bank on the guarantee that if I have the money physically in my hands, nobody, no bank and no government can find a way to molest me. I’m furious about all of this and I don’t know what else to do.”

But the problem I see with the numbers there is that he is only 31 years old. You’re in a ROTH IRA and the point and benefit of a ROTH is for long term investing. You’re not taking that out for almost 30 more years! The stock market is risky, that’s part of the game, but if you’re confident in your fund choices, you should know that you’ll need to occasionally ride out a storm as your money isn’t always going to be headed in the black.

In the past 365 days my 401k has dropped 23.00% [see screenshot1]

My ROTH IRA Through Charles Schwab and Edward Jones

The ROTH IRA funds haven’t been without bumps in the road either. I’ve stopped contributing to my Edward Jones “B” shares ROTH contribution this year and have put it all to my Charles Schwab fund SWEGX.

I am still on pace to contribute the $5000 and max out my ROTH contributions for the 2008 year, however, like my 401k they have taken a beating. An upside to the downside of the market is that I made a good choice stopping contributing to my Edward Jones ROTH IRA as it has dropped over 1/3 its price in the last year (-36.87%) while SWEGX in my Schwab account has “only” dropped (-32.45%).

But Hank, you just lost 1/3rd of your retirement in both your long term retirement accounts! Why are you still in it?

Like I said about my 401k above, and Carl’s comment., I’m only 30 years old.

I’ve got at LEAST 30 more before I plan on taking that money out.

I look at it with a “glass half full mentality”, I’m BUYING funds now for 1/3rd of the cost I was previously paying for them.

I may have lost a good chunk of the capital in there, and that’s demoralizing, but know the game and how it is played and you’ll fair better.

In the past 365 days my cumulative ROTH IRA has dropped 34.66% [see screenshots 2, and 3 above]

My Day-Job Salary

My day-job salary has been the one thing that has kept me in the stock market. Yes, if my salary had dropped or I lost my job I’d certainly have cut contributions to my 401k and ROTH, but it hasn’t, so I’m not.

My salary since Oct 2007 has had a promotion and cost of living increase added to it to help pad the long-term investments a bit more while they’re cheap.

Additionally, my online income has increased from $0.00 in Oct 2007 to… well, that’s in the next section. This is for salary.

In the past 365 days my salary has increase 36.11%

Website Numbers @ The MiB

Top Referrers

I’m happy to have a strong referral base to complement the big dogs (Google/Yahoo) driving traffic. Clearly social networking plays a HUGE role in the success of the blogs MiB not withstanding, and I encourage you all to check out each and every one of them on my Where Am I page. Feel free to “friend” me in each of the respective sites.

These social powerhouses drive thousands of visitors to my site each month and are a staple if you plan on sticking it out for a year or more!

However, without the people in the blogosphere sending folks my way, I wouldn’t be where I am today. Furthermore, without the constant participation and idea brainstorming at the other sites that link to me, I’d probably have stopped in the first month or 2.

Seeing as though this is the year long compilation of stats, I figured I’d bump it up from the standard top 10 referrals to the top 20 shout out to my referrers. Without you guys, nobody would ever find me.

The top referrer to my site in the year was…

1. FrugaHacks.com – it’s strange because I’m buried deep in the pile, but apparently people check it out enough to dig deep! Thank you very much FrugalHacks!

The rest o’ the pack; all with at least 100 people sent my way – thank you all for your support!

2. BibleMoneyMatters.com – (a close second actually – thanks Pete!)
3. Moolanomy.com
4. RemodelingThisLife.com
5. pfblogs.org
6. MoneyLifeNetwork.com
7. FreeFromBroke.com
8. SenseToSave.com
9. FrugalDad.com
10. PFBuzz.com
11. PTMoney.com
12. TheWildInvestor.com
13. TheDigeratiLife.com
14. BeingFrugal.net
15. GatherLittleByLittle.com
16. FreeMoneyFinance.com
17. Finwikian.com
18. MoneyHackers.net
19. MoneySmartLife.com
20. MyDollarPlan.com

Total Traffic

This one can be summed up with the combo of Google Analytics and WordPress Dashboard charts to the right and above. I’d say no counter is perfect, but I’d imagine that

combining both and taking an average should be close to around 125,000-ish viewers this year! Hopefully some of you will stick around, eh? It’s funny to watch the spikes in the big traffic drives you see over the year.

I started off somehow managing 2 and 3 thousand in the first few months, but then I had almost 40k in February/March when StumbleUpon came to be.

It tapered off, but it has been a pretty good boost for all bloggers to have it around I’m sure.

Additionally, I’d mentioned prior that I’d gotten drop from PR4 to PR2 from Google, but my Alexa score has hopped several hundred thousand (125,602 on 10/7/2008) and I’m approaching the top 100k of all sites. We’ll see how it looks in year 2.

Total Posts/Comments

I’ve changed up my posting routine a lot in the past year for multiple times per day, to once daily, to once every other day, but haven’t missed 2 posts a week.

I like the change and it gives me some freedom to step away from they keyboard, but the thing I’ve learned in the past year is that you don’t need to post daily to get the readership you want.

Sometimes writing daily is too much for people to keep up with. Personally, I’m not able to keep up with the 100+ feeds I’m subscribed to and will likely give the reader a once over every week and pick my favorite articles that jump out at me to read/comment on.

I wish I could get to them, but I really just don’t have the time to do so!

I’d like to say I’m extremely happy with Akismet, and rightfully so, they’ve saved me from almost 6,000 spams.

However, I dug around a bit in the past few weeks and had to manually release maybe 20-30 valid comments I’d previously just deleted. Sorry if you were actually one of “the missing” in there folks and dumped you!

But all things considered, I’d rather release 20-30 than block 6000. So I’ll keep my thanks there.

As for the comments, they speak for themselves (literally). People have been very gracious in stopping by and leaving their thoughts, and it is a driving factor to keep going. People clearly find value in some of the things I write – Specifically, people have been interested enough to sign up for the feed! Thanks to all of you as well!

MiB SiteStock Traffic/Growth

In August I was pretty excited to start my first app that I coded in PHP.

I had no prior experience in PHP but had enough to get me started with what I wanted to do.

Basically the goal was to find a way to consolidate all these types of stats on this post into one number. One dollar value metric, and I did that with SiteStock.

I’ve got tracking numbers detailing when it was used and the numbers of queries run against it in the past 2 months but unfortunately aside from guessing don’t have the number of folks actually using it.

However, in the past 2 months, I’ve seen 3,542 queries looking as to how their sites rank against the rest of the folks on the internet!

I hope that number will grow and I’m completely open to feedback on ways to improve/advance it. Thanks to all for using it!

Website Revenue For The MiB

Google Ads

It’s been the steady horse here over the past year. Slowly increase month over month from less than $10 the first month to $250 last month. I can’t actually post numbers and/or click through rates without breaking the Google Policy, but I can say that my best day was Saturday, August 9, 2008 when I made $41.15 that day.

A tip to Google Adsense implementers – Use AdsBlacklist, seriously. Or else you’ll never make more than pennies from Adsense. It takes 2 minutes to sign up and makes a world of difference. It’s free, fairly easy to use, and I’m happy to say dumps the low paying clicks from your site.

In the past 365 days my Google Adsense revenue has produced $1,320.28

Individual Link/Banner Sales

I’ve had good and bad things to say about these. I like that they pay well (between $150-400 per 6 month contract) but they’ll certainly slap your Google PR rank. I was up to a Google PR4 for a while and am sitting at PR2 now. My advertisers page states that I can change the nofollow tag at will, but haven’t seen a decrease in Google traffic since the downgrade to PR2.

We’ll see how this one flies in the coming weeks/months.

In the past 365 days my Individual Link/Banner revenue has produced $1,200.00

“The Rest”

I’ve written about it in the past that I’ve experimented with a couple of different money makers to no avail. Either they were far too intrustive (Kontera $0.02 in 1 day) to the reading or they just didn’t produce (JobsThread – $3.12 in 5 months) in addition to Amazon Affiliates that took up too much space ($8.29 in 1 month) on the site.

I’ve been experimenting with Microsoft Ads ($44.20 in 3 months) and the previously unenchanted Forbes Ad Network ($34.21 in 4 months). With those numbers though, I may fall back into disenchantment shortly.

However all the prior are better than Performancing Ads ($0.00 in 2 months) and Commission Junction ($0.00 in 3 months AND over 40,000 impressions).

Conclusion

You can put a number on pretty much any metric. As you can see through this post, I’ve tried. But can you really put a value on what you’ve learned over the past year? Or how about the relationships you’ve made? I get some pretty solid feedback from a handful of close “associates” I keep close to the hip.

From Blogging Tips to Joint Giveways; from Writing Improvement to Wordless Wednesdays – I find that the monetary value of the site is climbing fast indeed, but not nearly as fast as the relationship/networking potential that this site has given me.

Thanks to you all for a great year!

Introducing MiB SiteStock! – YOUR Web Is Now Worth Something!

hank — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 08:01:54 +0000

So I’ve been hammering on this for quite some time now in the background and downtime; it’s drawn a lot of blood, sweat, tears, and sleepless nights (honestly, some 20 hour stints trying to figure it out). But I’d have to say it has come out exactly like I had hoped it would!

Learning PHP has been a task and I’m about a 4.5 of 10 in total knowledge of it, but I’ve gotten enough to get the SiteStock widget up to snuff and ready for the masses!

What?

It’s fairly self explanatory as to “what’ it is – the screenshot above pretty much says it all, but basically it’s a widget that will run your site through a series of criteria and spit out a fancy little chart as to what your site is doing as of today, similar to the stock market.

Have you been an active poster on your blog? Have you sent a lot of people to your site? How long have you been established?

The widget takes all that info in and gives you a slick widget you can cut and paste on your site!

Why?

I started this out with an idea after seeing several other sites around the web coming up with these fancy widgets and scripts that told you what your blog was worth or how many links and how high your Google Pagerank was.

Well, that’s good and all but it’s very scattered and the web is more than any ONE set of those datas.

Not only was the data scattered, but some only produce a ranking based on being part of a certain group. Technorati’s API comes to mind. It’s good, but how deep is it? Only as deep as their bot can crawl when in reality a site encompasses much more than that.

It’s not just about Technorati or Alexa rankings. Wrap them up in total and give me something tangible that can be put to any site. In comes MiB SiteStock.

How?

To access the site yourself, you should see it in my projects bar near the top, see the screenshot here? Or just go to http://myinvestingblog.com/sitestock!

I’m not a programming professional by any means, so it may have a few bugs and glitches that I need to hammer out – let me know when you see them!

I’ve tested it about 1000 times on Firefox and Internet Explorer 7, and have had success with Internet Explorer, but I’ve seen a few glitches, let me know if I’ve got them all figured out – another reason I’m a big Firefox fan.

Where?

I get the metrics from several sites across the web including Google, Technorati, Alexa, Yahoo, and Altavista to name some of the magic ingredients. They all have their own bots, and their own answers, but none are THE answer.

Combining them all and weighting them accordingly has produced exactly what I’ve been looking for – a baseline that doesn’t gauge you on ONE specific metric or bot, but everything, combined.

What Now?

Welp, I’d hope you’d go out and spread the word! Put the cut and pasted widget on your own site and come back often to see how you’ve went up or down in the world!

If you see it’s got errors or holes in it, let me know as it is still “technically” in the QA testing phase being just opened up to the public, so please let me know your thoughts on it. Too much? Too little? Wrong data? Does it smell funny?

If you still have questions, check out the FAQ section on the SiteStock homepage!

Q3-2008 Magic Quadrant of Personal Finance Blogs

hank — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 08:01:58 +0000

The Q1-2008 MQ and Q2-2008 MQ saw some good traffic and excitement and the idea has had a lot of publicity and interest generated with a healthy dose of new entries from folks wanting to get in. I figured out a more in depth way to go about evaluating each blog in the realm with BETTER efficiency and deeper analysis of each…

The Recap

So I’m still looking for ways to automate this process, and I’ve come up with a few scripts, but at this time I’m still doing it manually – if you’ve got any programming/background experience with writing apps, ping me and we may be able to come up with a quick and dirty way to kick it off automated in the future!

Anywho, the whole point of the Magic Quadrant is to give an overall picture based solely on measurable statistics. Gartners Magic Quadrant is a term acquired by Gartner, but Wiki says it is:

…a proprietary research tool developed by Gartner Inc., a US based research and advisory firm. It is designed to provide an unbiased qualitative analysis of a “markets’ direction, maturity, and participants.

The Rules

Each Personal Finance Blog (minus MyInvestingBlog – details below) in the mix needs to have at least THREE months of posts and needs to have had at least ONE post in the last week; based on that initial information, they are then rated based on the following metrics:

Hard Metrics:

* – new metric added to the list since last run.

Technorati authority
Alexa ranking
How much is their blog worth?
Load time from iwebtool and Pingdom*
Google PageRank courtesy of DigPageRank and Blogflux*
Link Popularity*
Search Engine Saturization*
Backlink depth*
URL fan*

Soft Metrics

Blogging frequency – how often do they post?
Commenter involvement – I randomly choose 10 posts on their blog to see how responsive they are to readers and the comments left on their blogs
Site Design
Readability/Grammar
Post Originality – How unique are the posts?

The List

(IN ALPHABETICAL ORDER):
* – new site added to the list since last run.

AllFinancialMatters.com
ALongLongRoad
Bargaineer.com
BeingFrugal.net
BibleMoneyMatters.com*
BripBlap.com
CashMoneyLife.com
ChanceFavors.com
ChristianPF.com
ConsumerismCommentary.com
CreativeInvestor101.com
CubeFarmer.net
Debt-FreeRevolution.com
DoughRoller.net
FireFinance.com
FiveCentNickel.com
FreeFromBroke.com
FreeMoneyFinance.com
FrugalDad.com
FrugalForLife.com
GatherLittleByLittle.com
GirlsJustWannaHaveFunds.com
GenXFinance.com
GetRichSlowly.org
GrowingWallet.com
i-endeavors.com
LazyManAndMoney.com
LegalAndrew.com
MDMProofing.com
MilkYourMoney.com*
Moneyning.com
Moolanomy.com
MrsMicah.com
MyDollarPlan.com
MyMoneyBlog.com
MyTwoDollars.com
OnFinancialSuccess.com
PaidTwice.com
Plonkee.com
PrimeTimeMoney.com*
RemodelingThisLife.com*
SenseToSave.com*
SevenMillion7Years.com
Shauna26
SingleGuyMoney.com
TheDigeratiLife.com
TheSimpleDollar.com
YoungAndBroke.com
20sMoney.com*

MyInvestingBlog.com is missing, why?

Well, I figured this would be thought of as a “democratic process” if I included myself. If you really want to know where I fell, I’m happy to tell you, contact me.

The Graph

Click the image for a larger view (or right click and “Save As” to save for later):

The Movers

It was brought up that I should chart who moved up and who moved down on the list. In response to that, there really is no bad place to be. It’s a matrix just showing where sites have fit in the niche.

Think of it kind of like a mutual fund index, there is no bad place, just “other” places. That being said, the top right corner of most Magic Quadrants are generally considered the “the place to be” because of the Large/Growth idea, but by no means puts any less value on the other squares. Look at the metrics by which I’m judging, it’s a big pool!

The Forgotten

Know somebody I left off? Leave a comment on the post here, or contact me and I’m happy to throw them in the matrix for the next run of the “Magic Quadrant of Personal Finance Blogs”!

The Money Life Network Expands!

hank — Sat, 28 Jun 2008 08:01:58 +0000

It’s with great pleasure that I announce the newest members of The Money Life Network! Emily from RemodelingThisLife.com and Kacie from SenseToSave.com have taken positions on the board! They’ve both got very good writing and give The Money Life Network a female perspective that wasn’t there in the past. With their subscriptions we’re nearing 2000 RSS subscribers for the MLN feed and delivering the best Personal Finance info right to our readers from all 7 of our unique perspectives!

Sense To Save

On Kacie’s “About Me” page she states:
“I write about how to live a frugal lifestyle. I’ve always been somewhat of a tightwad, but I’ve found that thanks to a few key books (The Complete Tightwad Gazette) and the frugal blogosphere, I’ve found an incredible amount of resources and support. My second blog, affectionately called “Other Blog,” is about everything else. I haven’t written much on it yet, but it will probably be about my personal life and other things that don’t fit on my main blog.

I have a writing background, and most of my experience is in journalism. These days, I’m a homemaker and freelance writer. So far, it’s been a lot of fun!“

A few articles I found VERY worth reading from Kacie @ SenseToSave.com

Remodeling This Life

Emily states on her About page that she is a “29 year old stay at home mom to 2 great kids, my 3 year old princess little girl Drew and 1 year old son, Eli. I’m a mother, a wife, a daughter, a sister, a friend, a runner, a remodeler, a decorator among many other things.

2 years ago, my husband and I and our then 1 year old daughter sold our house 1500 miles away and moved to Florida where we decided to change our life and our ways. We bought a 60s “cottage” and have spent the last 2 years on our labor of love, remodeling it into a cozy little home that we love, on a dime. Along the way, we’ve had lots of ups and a few downs.

I’m a growing, changing, learning woman. Our huge life change 2 years ago has taught me so many things, but most of all that a simple, small, frugal life is a fabulous life. I have learned what I really need in life vs. what I simply want in life and through that, my needs have become pretty much my only wants. I have learned to live in the moment, enjoy the mundane and find beauty in the little things.”

A few articles I found VERY worth reading from Emily @ RemodelingThisLife.com

Conclusion

You’re going to be seeing a lot of these young ladies on The Money Life Network in the future and you should get in while the getting is good! They’re absolutely fabulous additions to the team and will bring a good presence to the already dynamic Money Life Network! Welcome to the team Kacie and Emily!

Speaking of MLN, there is still time to get into the Summer Savings Series $100 giveaway going on! It’s easy to get in and free to play! Why not?

Money Hacks Carnival #18 — The History Of Money!

hank — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 14:12:29 +0000

So I did some deep undercover investigation for this weeks carnival digging back in time to bring you The History of Money! Did you know that China was the first to use paper money around the year 1000. It was made from the bar of mulberry trees. Leaves from these trees, you may recall, are feed to caterpillars to produce silk. I honestly don’t know the last time I used paper money – I stick to plastic. Without further adieu…

The Editors Picks – Series 1934 Gold Certificates Go To:

The largest denomination of currency ever printed by the Bureau of Engraving and Printing (BEP) was the $100,000 Series 1934 Gold Certificate featuring the portrait of President Wilson. These notes were printed from December 18, 1934 through January 9, 1935 and were issued by the Treasurer of the United States to Federal Reserve Banks only against an equal amount of gold bullion held by the Treasury Department. The notes were used only for official transactions between Federal Reserve Banks and were not circulated among the general public.

A lot of good submissions this week, but the Series 1934 Gold Certificates go to:

Dorian Wales presents The Importance of Learning to Let Go posted at The Personal Financier. I grew up in a family that had a tough time letting go of a lot of things. Maybe it was because we were so frugal with everything, but we did and this post hit home.

Aryn presents Avoid Baggage Fees: How to Pack a Suitcase posted at Sound Money Matters. It’s a lost art, but I lived by it when I got out of school and went traveling – if you don’t know how to do this, you best stay home.

Livingalmostlarge presents Investment Mistakes a Couple Makes posted at LivingAlmostLarge. I’ve made a few mistakes on that front, and it’s a list that you don’t see often, but it is DEFINITELY worth reading.

Broke Grad Student presents 9 Simple Ways To Save Money On Gas posted at Broke Grad Student. With gas where it is now, this is always something people are interested in. The tips may “seem” small, but when we’re looking at where gas is headed, every penny counts!

Big Bills, Big Dreams

On July 14, 1969, David M. Kennedy, the 60th Secretary of the Treasury, and officials at the Federal Reserve Board announced that they would immediately stop distributing currency in denominations of $500, $1,000, $5,000 and $10,000. Production of these denominations stopped during World War II. Their main purpose was for bank transfer payments. With the arrival of more secure transfer technologies, however, they were no longer needed for that purpose. While these notes are legal tender and may still be found in circulation today, the Federal Reserve Banks remove them from circulation and destroy them as they are received.

Hilary Green presents When is Leasing Not For You? | Cars for Girls posted at Cars for Girls.

Ybother presents 10 Ways To Get The Best Price For Your Car posted at www.ZhouWenhan.com.

Dividends4Life presents The Will to Win posted at Dividends4Life.

jim presents Advanta Business Card for Bloggers, eBay, PPC posted at Blueprint for Financial Prosperity.

Unique Money Uses

The $2 bill has not been removed from circulation and is still a circulating denomination of United States paper currency. The Federal Reserve System does not, however, request the printing of that denomination as often as the others.

The Series 2003 $2 bill was the last printed and bears the names of former Secretary of the Treasury John W. Snow and Treasurer Rosario Marin. As of April 30, 2007 there were $1,549,052,714 worth of $2 bills in circulation worldwide.

Joy Harrison presents Reduce your debt load: 9 proven techniques posted at Money Sense.

The Happy Rock presents Sometimes You Just Don’t Feel Like Saving Money posted at The Happy Rock.

FMF presents A Real-Life Example of How to Save $1,300 in Less than Two Hours by Shopping Around for Car Insurance posted at Free Money Finance.

Mark Runta presents Seeking Therapy for Debt Management posted at investing lessons.

NtJS presents Do You Trust Trans Union? posted at not the jet set.

Steve Faber presents - Top Debt Consolidation Loans – How to Get the Best Debt Consolidation Loan posted at Debt Free.

passive family income presents Creating a monthly family budget to track income and expenses. | Passive Family Income posted at Passive Family Income.

MrsMoney presents Does it Make Sense to Drive Farther to get a Lower Price on Gas? posted at The Ultimate Money Blog.

Brice Hogan presents How to Radically Save Money posted at Financialzip.com.

Saving Money Tips

On March 10, 1862 the first United States paper money was issued. The denominations were $5, $10, and $20. They became legal tender by Act of March 17, 1862.

The inclusion of “In God We Trust” on all currency was required by law in 1955. The national motto first appeared on paper money in 1957 on $1 Silver Certificates, and on all Federal Reserve Notes beginning with Series 1963.

retirehappy presents Rules on Claiming Dependents posted at My Retirement Blog.

RothIRA presents Graduation Gift Idea: Roth IRA posted at Roth IRA Explained.

DMH presents Best Gas Credit Cards posted at Daily Money Hack.

FFB presents Customer Service Done Right 1800Contacts.com posted at Free From Broke.

PT presents Credit Card Rewards – Are They Really Worth It? posted at Prime Time Money.

Joe Manausa presents Property Flipping Re-Energized? posted at Tallahassee Real Estate Blog.

Helen Anderson presents 8 Tips for Saving Money and Your Life posted at Bankaholic.

Mrs. Common Cents presents 8 Tips to reduce your medical spending posted at Our Common Cents.

J. Savings presents Save $10 bucks and wash that sexy car of yours. posted at Budgets are Sexy.

Chief Family Officer presents Lesson: Always track Amazon’s prices posted at Chief Family Officer.

Joy Harrison presents Cash-out refinance loan? is it a good choice for extra cash? posted at Money Sense.

Coupon Artist presents How Couponing Changes Your Outlook on Life posted at artofthecoupon.com.

Kaye presents Savannah Family Fun – The Intro posted at Mrs Nespy’s Frugal World.

Heather Allen presents Where There’s a Will… posted at The DebtFree Playbook Blog.

Bill D presents 13 Lucky Tips to Save on Life Insurance posted at The Wealth Hunter.

Worldly Money Influence

Reserves were formerly held only in gold, as official gold reserves. Under the Bretton Woods system, the United States pegged the dollar to gold, and allowed convertibility of dollars

to gold. This effectively made dollars appear as good as gold. In 1971, however, the U.S. abandoned the convertibility of dollars to gold, and the dollar became a fiat currency.

Since then, all major currencies have removed convertibility to gold, resulting in a general devaluation of world currencies over time. The dollar has remained the most significant reserve currency, though central banks now typically hold large amounts of multiple currencies in reserve.

Foxie presents The Latest Object of My Affection posted at Dreaming of Ferraris.

Silicon Valley Blogger presents Managing All My Money Is Futile: Outsourcing My Finances posted at The Digerati Life.

Will presents Prepaid Visa Travel Cards posted at Your Finish Rich Plan – A Personal Finance Blog.

GBlogger presents Market Plummeting! Recession! Plague! posted at CAN I GET RICH ON A SALARY.

Interesting Hack (Facts) About The $100 Bill

The vignette on the back of the $100 note is Independence Hall in Philadelphia. There are three people depicted in the engraving. Two (a man and a woman) are in front of the hall close to the building; the third person is a man pictured looking toward the building. There is no record that the man and woman are embracing.

The hands of the clock are set at approximately 4:10. Although the time is not readily identifiable to the naked eye, it may be verified if examined under twenty-fold magnification. There are no records explaining why that particular time was chosen.

Lisa Spinelli presents The Dope On Stagflation posted at Greener Pastures.

Ryan Taylor presents What are the Risks of Shorting Stocks? posted at Millionaire Money Habits.

The Shark Investor presents No Buzz = No Business posted at The Shark Investor.

MoneyKing presents Real Estate Profits And Losses: Burn, baby. Burn!!!!. Scenario 39. posted at The Money Kings – RULE your money at home, at work, and at play!.

CreditAddict presents Amex Delta SkyMiles Cardholders Can Pay With Miles posted at Credit Card Addict.

nickel presents Four Financial Tips for Recent Graduates posted at fivecentnickel.com.

mbhunter presents Why are some gift cards more “expensive” at MyPoints? posted at mbhunter.

Kay Bell presents Tax help for summer camp costs posted at Don’t Mess With Taxes.

Madison presents What is Credit Card Arbitrage? posted at My Dollar Plan.

Brooke presents Six Flags and Other Theme Park Details posted at Dollar Frugal.

Ray presents Best 0% Balance Transfer Credit Cards posted at Money Blue Book: Personal Finance Blog.

Bryce presents Perot Charts posted at Save and Conquer.

Pamela Grundy presents Recession Monday: Do Vegetarians Save More Money? | Personal Finance Analyst posted at Personal Finance Analyst

Amanda Milne presents Show Me The Coupons! posted at Value For Your Life.

RC presents 7 Reasons You May Not Have Received Your Economic Stimulus Rebate Yet posted at Think Your Way to Wealth.

Kevin Fleming presents Netflix 30 Days Free Coupon – Satellite TV Guru posted at Satellite TV Guru.

Thanks to everyone for participating! Keep an eye out next week over at SoundMoneyMatters as the carnival heads that way!

Sometimes Money DOES Grow On Trees; You Just Need To Know Where To Look

hank — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 08:22:17 +0000

Most things where you get thrown in a pot to have a chance at winning usually cost something, or aren’t worth your time anyway. But knowing that you’re spending your time reading this blog make me think that a chance at a few extra $ carries some weight; that being said, there are hundreds (if not thousands) of dollars out there that you can take a pretty decent stab at…

Before I get started, I’m not undermining our own efforts over at The Money Life Network to cook up a FREE $100 Amazon gift card; I’m just making you aware of everything ELSE out there that you could be getting for free by “tossing your hat in the ring“.

Yes, the lottery has been referred to as “voluntary tax on the ignorant“, and I’m agreeing with D4L there; but I’m still a sucker for getting into contests that don’t cost me anything. Leaving a comment, joining an RSS feed, posting about a contest is worth it I think to get a shot at getting some free $ (or something I can sell for $).

I’m sure that some of them are rigged and/or don’t pay our so I am wary about contests that are on obscure blogs/sites. I enter my gmail address with a +contest at the end of the address and have it route directly to a “contest” folder to keep my standard email safe (Thanks for the tip MrsMicah ).

Other Free Money Across the Land

1. JonathanVolk.com is cooking up a contest giving away:
1st Place – $200 Amex Gift Card AND Flip Video Camera!
2nd Place – Ipod Touch!
3rd Place – Market Leverage USB Flash Drive Pen

2. Gadget5 is giving away Digital Photo Keychains.

3. NetFool is giving away a Brand New Flip Video Mino and $50 MLRewards Card!

4. How about going so far as to offer $20,000 to Innovative Moms? Whirlpool isn’t a blog, but it’s still free to enter.

5. Bloggernoob is giving away a 4gb Ipod Nano(plays video), 2gb USB pen, Flip video camera, $50 American Express Card.

6. How about an Eee PC laptop, a Shoplet.com gift certificate for $100.00, or a Shoplet.com gift certificate for $50.00? OfficeSummerFest is cooking this one up.

7. Cook up something in our realm, US Savings Bonds! Join the Proud to be an American Photo Contest:

8. Gas is pricey these days – how about a $25 gift card for gas?

9. OpMom is giving away a whole slew of treats here:
1 GRAND PRIZE:
(1) $250 Zappos.com Gift Card
(14) Books from the Hachette Book Group
(1) Set of Eco-tool Brushes
(1) Thymes Sweet Leaf Baby Collection

1 FIRST PRIZE:
(1) $100 Lands’ End Gift Card
(1) $50 Earth Mama Angel Baby Gift Card
(14) Books from the Hachette Book Group

8 SECOND PRIZES:
(14) Books from the Hachette Book Group

10. FrankTownRocks has a laundry list of prizes they’re also giving away! See the page for more details.

Sites That’ll Do The Work For You

Conclusion

The list really can go on and on and these are just a taste of the many contests going on all the time. Even do a search in Google if you want to see what’s cooking because there are dozens running every day giving stuff away to sign up, comment, participate, join a revolution, etc that’ll certainly be happy you stopped by.

It’s kinda like buying friends, even if it is for a short while, I’ve done it myself twice (1,2) and the friends I’ve bought have been pretty worth while thus far.

photos by: /brookenovak/ /eelssej/ /timusan/

The “Summer Savings Series” Is Upon Us; Time To Win $$$! (Presented By The Money Life Network)

hank — Sat, 07 Jun 2008 08:01:25 +0000

The Summer Savings Series is warming up, and you’re in line to win some cash in the process! It’s easy to enter and be a part of the series and bring home some Summer “green” of your own!

We at The Money Life Network have been cooking up our first group project and contest this past week! Throughout the summer we’ll be giving away tips to keeping green in your pockets this year and more importantly, FREE MONEY!

What Can You Expect?

Our blogs look at a lot of different topics when it comes to personal finance, and this series will probably be no different!

Over the next 3 weeks each member of the Money Life Network will write 1 post per week about how to save this summer on their blog. Keep checking MoneyLifeNetwork.com as we’ll have a new article every day Monday-Friday for the duration of the series geared at saving YOU big $ this summer in the heat!

The Summer Savings Series starts on Monday June 9th over @ BibleMoneyMatters.com, followed by PrimeTimeMoney, MyInvestingBlog, FreeFromBroke, and MilkYourMoney rounds out the week! We’ll wrap up with a roundup post on June 30th with the best of ALL our posts! So subscribe to our feed, bookmark the contest page and stay tuned for tons of great ways to save this summer!

How Can I Get Money From This Hank?

If you want to get in on the “Summer Savings Series”, write your own post about how you plan to save money this summer. As long or as short as you’d like, just make sure to plop a link back to the post! Feel free to use the slick graphic that appears on this page and link people back to the “Summer Savings Series” page.

Once you’ve posted your article just shoot us an email through our contact page, or leave a comment on one of our blogs, and we’ll post a link to your article at the top of the contest page and you’ll be automatically entered to win $100 from Amazon.com!

Why Do I Want To Take Time To Contribute To This Writing Project Hank?

Well, aside from it being a pretty quick post that people enjoy reading, cold hard (gift card) cash! When you write your post you’ll be given an entry in our contest to win a $100 Amazon gift card. A drawing will be held once the series is complete. Ways to win include:

* Write a post about how you plan to save money this summer. Send us the link. (5 entries)
* Subscribe our our group feed, and email us the secret phrase. (3 entries)
* Leave a comment with your summer savings tip HERE or THERE. (2 entries)

You can enter each way once for a total of 10 entries. We’ll put all of the entries into random.org to choose the winner. Entries can be submitted up to 11:59 am Monday, June 30th. We’ll announce and contact the winner on Tuesday July 1st to email the gift certificate. If the email address is not valid we will award the prize to the second place finisher. Good luck!

Head over to the MoneyLifeNetwork contest page to get all the details and look for my first post in the series on Wednesday, the 11th!

A Practical How-To For Entrecard (Blog Improvement Post)

hank — Fri, 30 May 2008 08:01:16 +0000

Yes, this is a Blog Improvement post (Why does a PF blogger write about Blog Improvement?). EntreCard has morphed a lot in the time since it started; most seem to say for the worst. I’m not a big fan of the new pricing system and as a consequence, I’ve fallen off the “EntreMap” pretty significantly lately. I still get 100 people a day dropping on my site, but as far as gaining new readers, it has been less than stellar…

The Beginning

I started with them in late March. I got hooked on the “powerdropping” for a few weeks and moved up on the Finance and Investing category pretty fast (I think I peaked at #5), but honestly after I wrote the article on “Reverse Engineering The Entrecard System” they changed the rules.

I have bookmarked all of my blogs that I read on a daily basis and after I’ve read through them all via RSS for the day, I’ll pay my due diligence in the form of dropping my EntreCard on their site.

I figured I’d one up it and show a quick way to reach the 300 drops in a day. Some call it powerdropping and some even say it is ruining EntreCard, but it is the nature of the beast, dangle a carrot and people will try to get it.

I read all the blogs prior that I’m dropping on, and assume they’ll have interesting sites they allow to advertise on their sites. Sometimes I’ll mosey through their sites and see what the new sites have to offer, other times I’ll just fly by and drop the card. It varies really on the day for me. But the purpose of this is to show how I do the powerdrop.

1. Use Firefox.

2. Bookmark your favorite blogs that use EntreCard. (usually about 20 per set of bookmarks is the optimum amount and won’t overload your machine.

3. Go to Bookmarks–>[the place you bookmarked in the folder]

4. Right click [the place you bookmarked in the folder] and “Open in All Tabs”

5. Give it about 15 or 20 seconds to load the page.

6. Drop to your hearts content.

The Goods

I usually find each set of 20 is good for 80-100 drops for the day; I’ll usually go through 2 sets a day, but often times I’ll get caught up on one of the EntreCard sites I’ve click through to; so I’ll read it for a while. It gets a bit addictive… Anywho, here it is…

Conclusion

I’m still a fan of the system, and I still get people swinging by dropping cards, but as odd as it is, my biggest traffic coming around is actually just from organic Google searches now as it appears my StumbleUpon juice has died off a bit too. I still get a few dozen stumbles a day, but hundreds of Google searches. Entrecard will stick around on the blog for a while as I have a pretty good home for it, but, eh, I could go either way with it nowadays.

Anyone have any new slick traffic drivers on their site?

Introducing The Money Life Network!

hank — Tue, 27 May 2008 08:01:24 +0000

I’m proud to introduce the latest and greatest Personal Finance aggregate – The Money Life Network! Our membership list contains a very diverse yet focused group that have been in the PF blogosphere for a while.

FreeFromBroke, BibleMoneyMatters, MilkYourMoney, PrimeTimeMoney, and MyInvestingBlog will ABSOLUTELY keep you on your toes financially with tips galore along the way!

The Money Life Network of blogs is a group of personal finance bloggers who have banded together to bring you great content designed to help you improve your finances and increase your quality of life.

We have common goals, but we come from diverse backgrounds and unique perspectives. In addition our blogs tend to focus on different aspects of financial life which we think will keep things interesting.

Give us a shot and subscribe to our group RSS feed, and we promise to work hard to bring you posts on a daily basis that you’ll find entertaining, informative and enlightening.

All the sites in the list are more than capable of keeping your attention so to get you started, I pegged my favorite posts from each blog to get you started:

My Favorite Posts By FreeFromBroke

If I Could Turn Back Time – Money Mistakes I’ve Made
Why is Roger Clemens in Front of Congress?
Why Getting a Large Tax Refund is Bad

My Favorite Posts By BibleMoneyMatters

Paying for pets: When is it too much?
Finance Tip: Take a personal day to fix your finances
Useful Money Tricks

My Favorite Posts By PrimeTimeMoney

What’s in My Wallet (with Pictures!)
How to Prioritize Your Debts for Payoff
Pay All Your Bills at the Same Time: Change Your Payment Due Dates

My Favorite Posts By MilkYourMoney

25 Biggest Real Estate Mistakes
Should We Worry About Inflation?
When Should I Buy Into The Stock Market?

My Favorite Posts By MyInvestingBlog

How Do I Publicize My Blog? A Personal Finance Blog’s Lifeline From “Start-Up” To “Staple”
A New Investment Idea – Pay Someone To Pick Up The Phonebook That Gets Dropped On My Door Every 3 Months That I (And Millions Of Others) Never Use!
Bad Decisions I’ve Made In Investing

You’ll certainly not be let down by what The Money Life Network has to offer, so buzz over and sign up to the RSS now to improve your financial future!

I Need Your Help!

hank — Wed, 14 May 2008 08:01:43 +0000

No, nothing is wrong physically, emotionally, family-wise – All is ok on that front, thanks for your concern. I’m just looking to revamp the header of my site and just need some feed back from you folks!

I polled a couple of my TOP advisers to see what they thought, and it was a big wash. 5 people, 5 different names jumped out at them, so I need a bigger pool. This is where you come in!

I was hoping you all might be able to help me out with a little redesign for M.I.B. I’m working on. I think I’m scaring off some readers that see “MY INVESTING BLOG” as the header of the site because the site is more than just “investing” and I think it is sending some people packing before they get to see what else I’m cookin’.

So I’m in the process of reworking the header to better fit what I blog about, personal finance.

I have come up with a decent tag line ( I think) that I want to use below the site name of:
“Personal Finance Should Be Personalized”
But am still trying to find the right fit for the main line and all of the options people have given me sound alright, so I’m tossing it back out there for a final vote.

Note: this screenshot is just filler with the “M.I.B. SMART FINANCE” in there. It isn’t the “chosen” one. It is just the “filler” one till a suitable suitor is found.

I want to keep M.I.B. in there just if nothing more to tie the site to the domain name. I like the tag line piece, but am looking for a vote (or more suggestions if you can think of any) for the new main line, so help me out here, what sounds good?

[poll=1]