The Digerati Life

More about blogging for money… and fun!

I’d like the chance to acknowledge the awesome coverage we’ve received lately from some great sources. The Digerati Life got mentioned in a few articles and threads, where I had the chance to spill a few “secrets” (stuff I don’t normally discuss on this blog).

More On Blogging For Money!

Kimberly Palmer of US News recently wrote a series on blogging as a way to earn money. There were several financial bloggers who were mentioned in a couple of related articles on the subject, including yours truly! One of her articles discussed what you need to do to be able to turn blogging into a money-making activity. Her other article told the stories of a few bloggers who offer their insights into their craft. For the latter writeup, I got profiled along with fellow financial bloggers Squawkfox and Lazy Man and Money (and life coach Steve Pavlina). I must thank Kim Palmer for the opportunity to share my story. For the record, here is a quick rundown of her tips on how to earn money from blogging:

1. Pick a topic that you love.
2. Build up traffic.
3. Wait to monetize. Or start immediately.
4. Temper your expectations.
5. Start strong.
6. Don’t rely purely on Google AdSense.
7. Multistream your income.
8. Learn from others.

Coincidentally, I ran a post on this very topic and profiled top bloggers and what they earn. Their incomes are much less modest, and serve to inspire many of us who’ve chosen this path to our own dream of financial independence, self-employment and self-sufficiency.

Read the rest of this entry »

I had the wonderful opportunity to guest post at MSN Smart Spending today, where my article “Living on Reduced Income: 5 Strategies For Spending Less” is featured. I would like to thank Karen Datko for publishing this article and allowing me to share my story about how my family copes with our financial obligations during a time of economic uncertainty, especially now that we’ve moved from the 9-to-5 corporate world and into the realm of self-employment.

If you are new to this site, I hope you stay around and join some of our discussions! You can check out our archives and popular articles for information, tips and commentary on saving money, smart shopping, stock market investing, debt and money management, business and self-employment, and even real estate.

You can also receive regular fresh and convenient updates from The Digerati Life by subscribing to our feed via this orange button: .

You can also subscribe to my full feed here or via email.

Thank you so much for stopping by!

P.S. If you are wondering what “Digerati” stands for, it’s just a fancy name for computer geek . Our household, friends and family are all connected to the world of computers in one way or another and make our living this way.

I’m more than a little late on today’s post because I’ve been experiencing some technical difficulties with my blog environment lately. I’ve already relayed the story of how my computer crashed last weekend. So all this time, I’ve been working on getting things in order.

Then most of today, this web site experienced some outages and connectivity issues. And while I spent a lot of time harassing our web hosting service, it turned out that I was barking up the wrong tree and the real problem was in a blog page, specifically in one PHP script.

My bad! One which took most of the day to figure out. Sigh.

But we’re finally back and here’s where I hope to feel much better. Maybe you can help me by taking me up on my offer to provide you with regular fresh and convenient updates from The Digerati Life via this orange button:

You know you want to click it!

Or you can achieve the same thing by subscribing to my full feed here or via email.

Here’s where I also take the opportunity to thank the various sites that have linked to my blog over the last month, providing it with some much appreciated traffic.

Top Traffic Sources For June

• The Simple Dollar
• Million Dollar Journey
• Lifehacker
• Arkansas Business
• Five Cent Nickel
• I Will Teach You To Be Rich
• Lazy Man and Money
• Frugal Dad
• Zen Habits
• Gen X Finance

And a great big thanks to those who’ve shared their thoughts and feedback with us through comments and discussion threads throughout our posts.

Top Commentators For June

• Frugal Dad
• Father Sez
• Jim
• David Carter
• Luke @ Money & Fitness Blog
• Goran Web Design
• Craig @ Secret Affiliate Code

And most of all, thanks to all of you wonderful visitors to our site; it’s truly a great pleasure to write for you! My wish is that we all get to enjoy a great summer despite the crazy weather, heat waves and expensive gas!

Winners of The Million Visitors Giveaway

Earlier, I was thinking of giving away $5,000 to the actual millionth visitor on my site, but since I had no way to accurately track down the specific individual, the thought fizzled .

At any rate, I have tried to approximate the event by holding last week’s giveaway where I had a few of my favorite books as prizes. I’ll definitely hike up the prize values once I approach a few more memorable milestones (10 million? ).

And the winners are: Free From Broke, Frugal Dad and reader “EN”. Congratulations to you three for winning one of the following:

• Personal Finance: Smart Couples Finish Rich by David Bach
• Debt Management: How to Get Out of Debt, Stay Out of Debt, and Live Prosperously by Jerrold Mundis
• Investing: The Bogleheads’ Guide to Investing by Taylor Larimore, Mel Lindauer, Michael LeBoeuf

Now on to some stuff I enjoyed reading over the last few days!

Personal Finance Reads

• Get Rich Slowly: J.D. reflects on what it takes to be frugal and what it means to embrace thrift.
• Five Cent Nickel: Gas prices are killing our wallets, but look at the bright side…? Anyway, if you want some relief, try improving your gas mileage with these ideas.
• Lazy Man and Money: Lazy Man had the chance to hear Oprah at Stanford’s commencement exercises, and he was thoroughly blown away!
• Money Smart Life: Here’s how to market your home if you’re planning to go the “for sale by owner” route.
• Gen X Finance: ETFs or mutual funds? How about both?
• The Sun’s Financial Diary: With the weak dollar, the smart thing to do is to move into international investments. But that may not have helped your bottom-line recently, with international ETFs plunging along with the US market slump.
• Mighty Bargain Hunter: Being fat costs money! I use this mantra as one of my motivators for my quest to lose weight.
• No Credit Needed: I was a bit unhappy about this news — that gas stations may be curtailing the use of credit cards. Not sure if this is a trend though. Nevertheless, I am admittedly a fan of gas reward credit cards and cash back credit cards in general.
• Million Dollar Journey: Frugal Trader gives us a primer on how to buy and sell stock shares. It’s just what you need if you’re contemplating stock market investments.
• My Dollar Plan: Madison encounters a small business snafu — an advertiser’s bounced check. If you’re a small business owner, it’s always wise to keep an eye on your records regularly.
• Brip Blap: Find out how we got fat, rich and unhappy. I surmise that it’s because of too much work and little play, but that’s just me….
• My Two Dollars: Ugh! I agree with David here that Lego fruit-flavored snacks are hazards! Not a good thing to feed your kids if they’re young enough to still be playing with Legos (not to mention the sugar content).

Additional Readings

• Bad Debt Leads To A Bad Job And A Rough Life @ The Wisdom Journal
• How To Shop For Your Next Cell Phone Plan @ American Consumer News
• A Guy’s Guide to Saving and Survival @ Tales From The Road Less Traveled
• Avoid Baggage Fees: How to Pack a Suitcase @ Sound Money Matters
• Five Ways to Save When Grilling Out @ Not Made of Money [Yum!]
• The Dark Side of Dividends @ Dividends4Life
• Selling the Car, Jewelry & Other Stuff to Raise Cash @ The Frugal Duchess

Recent Carnivals

• The Diva Cup, Spam Sales and Emergency Funds
• Best of Me Symphony
• Carnival of Family Life: Father’s Day Edition
• Carnival of Homeowners #39
• Kids and Money — June 20, 2008
• Money Hacks Carnival #17 - Music of the ’80s
• Finance Fiesta No. 3: The Spanish Money Proverbs Edition
• The Carnival of Twenty Something Finances
• Festival of Stocks - 93rd Edition
• Carnival of the Green #132

Happy Father’s Day to all of you daddies out there — hope all your festivities are going well! As for us, we’d like to share an exciting milestone with everyone. We finally made it to a million! And though it would be great to say we made our way to a million bucks, that’s not really quite what happened. Instead, I’d like to thank all the readers, subscribers and bloggers who’ve made their way here over the last year and a half to help us garner a million unique visitors for this site.

Photo by Grilled Cheese

To all of you who have supported The Digerati Life, a huge, heartfelt thank you.

Free Financial Books To Give Away!

To mark this occasion, I’d like to give away one copy each of my favorite books below, so if you’re interested in any of these freebies, please drop me a comment. I’ll be choosing some random recipients from among the commentators. This offering will be open for a few days to a week, depending on interest.

• Personal Finance: Smart Couples Finish Rich by David Bach
• Debt Management: How to Get Out of Debt, Stay Out of Debt, and Live Prosperously by Jerrold Mundis
• Investing: The Bogleheads’ Guide to Investing by Taylor Larimore, Mel Lindauer, Michael LeBoeuf

Read the rest of this entry »

It seems that Pinyo is at it again…. . He’s the tireless guy behind the Moolanomy blog and various other web resources such as forums, other blogs and even web carnivals that have been helpful to me in so many ways. This time, he’s announced his new baby (no, not the one he just had with his wife… ) which is called Personal Finance Buzz, a new “Digg-like site for money and finance related articles and resources.” New projects like these being developed for the online financial community can hopefully enrich our space further.

From Pinyo’s post announcement, he also lists some other interesting financial resources that is well worth your review:

• The Finwikian — A personal finance wiki created by Mrs. Micah.
• A World of Personal Finance Bloggers — A Google Map of where personal finance bloggers are located, created by Prime Time Money.
• PFBlogs.org — A personal finance blogs aggregator created by Flexo of Consumerism Commentary.
• Alltop Personal Finance — A personal finance articles “newsstand” created by Will Mayall, Kathryn Henkens, and Guy Kawasaki.

Some other notable financial community resources you shouldn’t miss!

• Carnival of Personal Finance — a listing of personal finance blog posts that is thematically showcased in various personal finance blogs on a weekly basis. If you’re interested in anything personal finance, this is a weekly event you may be interested in checking out.
• Festival of Frugality — another roaming carnival like the original Carnival of Personal Finance, except topics of blog posts submitted to this carnival are focused on frugality and money saving advice. There are tons of other fantastic finance carnivals that exist, which you’ll find me covering here at The Digerati Life.
• Money Blog Network Forums — a financial community forum for PF heads. Again, lots of PF forums exist out there, but this is the one I scout out most often.
• FIRE Finance’s Monthly Personal Finance Blog Rankings — monthly rankings of PF blog sites according to traffic. Seems like a lot of blood, sweat and tears to compile this stuff every month!
• The Money Writers — Okay, I snuck this one here, but it’s the aggregate site for the personal finance network group I belong to. Here’s where you can view a concentrated slice of personal finance from a handful of personal finance bloggers I enjoy bantering with.

Happy surfing!

But wait, there’s more…! Following are great financial articles for the week by The Money Writers and the rest of the financial sphere.

Personal Finance Reads

• Lazy Man and Money: Lazy Man’s site has turned TWO years old. Yay! And it has stayed fun, fresh and amusing all this time. Oh yeah, and quite educational too. At least, Lazy Man hopes.
• Money Smart Life: Ben, along with many others out there, has happily received his economic stimulus check. But there are those of us who are still waiting! Where’s ours? I think this is the reason we haven’t received ours yet.
• Gen X Finance: Because of some inflation in food items, your family cookouts will now be more expensive. By about $1.65 more this year.
• The Sun’s Financial Diary: If you’re a TransUnion customer, you may be in line for a free credit score and credit monitoring service for as long as 9 months. TransUnion, one of the three big credit reporting agencies, just settled a class action suit and the free services are part of the settlement.
• Mighty Bargain Hunter: Where do you stand on parents holding the hammer on their children’s money? Is this blackmail?
• No Credit Needed: If you give up soda for 30 years, you’ll have over $20,000 after that time period if your interest rate is 4%. At an 8% rate of return, your soda sacrifice will yield you $42,000 over that timespan. Read the proof here.
• Free Money Finance: Beyond the financial aspect of this predicament, a $1,200 vet bill all for naught is all sorts of heartbreaking. I, too, have a cat I’m very fond of, and hope we don’t have to face a similar situation in a good long while.
• Million Dollar Journey: I’m a Saver and my spouse is an Empire Builder. What are you? Check out your Money Personality here.
• My Dollar Plan: Are you a frugalist who enjoys saving money? I would say that I am, but I agree with Madison when she says there are just certain frugal activities she can’t or would rather not do.
• Brip Blap: I agree with Steve, that you’ll probably get richer faster when you stay focused and invest in what you know. You’ll probably sleep better at night too. And have a lighter conscience.

Additional Readings

• Then and Now…. @ Fabulously Broke In The City
• Are You Really Free Or Are You A Slave? @ My Super-Charged Life
• Priorities @ Our Common Cents
• Keeping and Eye on My Dividend Portfolio Goals @ Dividend Guy Blog
• Growing Assets By Outsourcing @ The Shark Investor
• Jaclyn, A Profitable Going Private Transaction @ Fat Pitch Financials

Another month has rolled around and I’d like to once more remind (okay….encourage… ) new readers to receive a convenient and automatic dose of articles from this site by clicking on this orange button:

It’s easy!

Or you can achieve the same thing by adding us to your reader or email box by trying out these links! Subscribe to my full feed here or via email.

I’ve also noticed that it has been a while since I’ve been able to publish a list of all those who have helped keep the dialogue and traffic going on here at The Digerati Life. I was extremely “distracted” these last couple of months with real life matters such that I let a few things slip. But I’m now back to rekindle this monthly tradition.

I’d like to acknowledge those sites that have sent us readers and visitors this month of May, and that have given us a traffic boost. Thank you so much for referring The Digerati Life to your readers. Here were the top traffic sources to this site:

• The Simple Dollar
• MSN Money’s Smart Spending
• I Will Teach You To Be Rich
• TipNut.com
• Million Dollar Journey
• Lazy Man And Money
• Cheap Healthy Good
• Gen X Finance
• All Financial Matters
• Get Rich Slowly

In addition, I’d also like to say how much I appreciate those of you who have left comments and shared your thoughts with us here. I know I should be adding more to the discussion here as well and I will strive to do that going forward. A big thank you to those of you who have added to the discussion threads in our posts over the last month:

• David Carter
• David (a reader)
• My Finance Butler (a reader)
• Frugal Dad
• Jim
• Personal Money Tips
• Fathersez
• Mike
• RocketC

As always, I’m happy that you’ve been able to stop by and keep me company here this month. I’ve enjoyed talking shop and learning about all matters of personal finance with all of you.

A warm welcome to all of the first time visitors arriving here via CNN Money’s story on birthday parties. Thanks for dropping by! And if you have some time, you can also browse through the archives on this site or check these recommended articles. We’d also love to hear any comments and feedback that you may have.

If you like what you read and would like to catch more updates from here automatically, you can do so by subscribing to my feed or by signing up for email updates.

Again, thanks for stopping by!