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July 2014 — Monthly Income Report

By Frugaling 25 Comments

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Less is more. Incidental Comics.
Credit: Incidental Comics

Important: My preamble before profits

Despite being a personal finance website and blog, I’ve hesitated to regularly provide specific earnings. Each time I’ve shared writing revenue — at 6 and 12 months — it’s taken me some time to deliberate whether I should. My revenue isn’t everything, and frankly, it’s been steadily declining since last summer. But while I made less revenue, I saw more traffic — the important metric to me.

Many personal finance blogs share their earnings on a regular, monthly basis with their readers. My fear in regularly doing so may come from an irrational place, but I worry that sharing this information is like eating junk food; the syrupy sweet taste goes down easily, but it has a vapid nutritional value. Do public displays of revenue help those that follow this site? Would love your input!

While keeping these questions in mind, I’ve decided to write about last month’s earnings, analyze the data, and provide forward-looking goals. Hopefully, you can take this information and let it inspire you to reduce your debt and meet some of your own financial dreams. Maybe you’ll start a blog of your own!

July 2014 Income Report

This month I truly learned what it meant to have an article go viral. Shortly after publishing “Destroy The 40-Hour Workweek,” the site quickly received the most incredible response ever. Google Analytics data showed that there were over 221,000 pageviews because of this tremendous social networking surge. Obviously, the increased traffic affected my income for this month, too. Most of this is reflected in an incredible spike in Google AdSense earnings.

LinkOffers Affiliates
$416.00 (Down $200 compared to last month)

Affiliate sales led the way. My most popular articles that lead to commissioned sales are the Barclaycard Arrival and US Airways credit cards. Unfortunately, sales have steadily declined in recent months; likely, due to a combination of search engine optimization (SEO) problems that were caused by server problems. Also, referral rates have been in decline, which means that each sale equaled fewer commissions.

Google AdSense
$247.95 (Up $204.49 compared to last month)

As I mentioned earlier, Google AdSense had a huge spike in revenue that was largely attributable to my viral post. Click-through-rates did not change by much, but the surge led to more clicks and impressions. I recently added a couple videos to YouTube and used one of them in an article about moving from my old apartment. While miniscule, the ads on YouTube are contributing to my earnings.

Amazon Associates
$1.13 (Negligible change)

There’s not much to say here. Amazon Associates is one of the most flexible and user-friendly affiliate networks. Moreover, it pays a fair amount for each item sold. When I linked to TurboTax during the tax season, I actually made about $200. But since then, it’s been pretty stagnant.

Total July 2014 Earnings: $665.08

Forward-looking statements

My main goal in starting this site was always focused on building a network and traffic stream. Money wasn’t the main motivator. But revenue from this website has changed my life forever. It’s given me an incredible lift in mood and gives me an outlet to share my thoughts. I’m truly honored to have visitors and followers. Your contributions fueled me to write more than I ever thought would be possible.

Going forward, I want to build on my fundamental desire for traffic. I’d like to increase subscribers via email (please sign up!), more frequently engage with Twitter followers, and find ways to integrate Facebook with the site. Whatever money follows would be a wonderful thing, but hardly the sole, motivating factor to this site.

The other piece that I want to begin including on Frugaling are book reviews. Anything that has to do with money, finance, and stock markets, I want to review and share with you. Hopefully, it can be a quick way for you to stay informed about complicated financial matters and offer me an opportunity to do something I love: read.

Thanks for viewing my report. If you have any recommendations, questions, or comments, please leave them below. I love nothing more than helping another person make their goals come true! Best of luck!

Filed Under: Make Money Tagged With: ads, AdSense, Amazon, Blog, Blogging, Google, Income, LinkOffers, Make Money, Online, revenue, Writing

3 Books To Unleash The Financial Guru In You

By Frugaling 16 Comments

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College Textbooks

There’s a simple reading rule that Warren Buffett asserts: Read 500 pages a day. He soaks up everything he can get his hands on, and that leads to a massive amount per day. Buffett contends that by reading this voluminous amount of information, you’re effectively investing in yourself – “knowledge builds up, like compound interest.”

The Oracle of Omaha has been doing pretty well for himself these days; reportedly, he’s making an average $37 million a day. His company, Berkshire Hathaway, has skyrocketed in share price in recent years. For him, all that reading means smart investments and terrific paydays.

When I was in high school, I avoided books like they were laced with smallpox. I’d read Sparknotes and research the main topics of books on the web; ignoring the censures and recommendations of astute instructors, pleading that I actually read the assigned novels. When I remark on my primary education, I cannot remember a single assigned book I read cover-to-cover.

Nowadays, I read voraciously. I cannot get enough; albeit, I’ve not reached 500 pages per day – that’s insane. The following are 3 must-read books for the future financial guru in you! Isn’t it time you unleashed the Buffett in you?

1. Confessions of a Street Addict by Jim Cramer

There was one book I remember from high school, and it wasn’t assigned to me. When I was a junior and senior, I thought I might pursue a career in business. The world of investing and finance was tantalizing – I dreamed of getting a job on Wall Street. Those ideas were born from a thorough and repetitive reading of Jim Cramer’s Confessions of a Street Addict.

Despite Jim Cramer taking a beating by popular media types such as Jon Stewart, the man started from fairly humble beginnings and worked tirelessly to make a career on Wall Street. For some time, he lived out of his car and was uncertain about his financial and vocational future. Cramer was educated at the best of Harvard’s schools and went on to manage his own hedge fund that was quite profitable.

This book is less about advice than a thorough look through the eyes of a financial guru. Confessions of a Street Addict is a terrific read – well written – and nasty at times. Cramer does not paint the business world in a pretty light; rather, he shines a spotlight on some of the craziest parts of finance.

2. I Will Teach You To Be Rich by Ramit Sethi

When I got to college, I realized I needed to balance my budget and better understand my cash flow. I was spending money like there was no tomorrow. Living in the moment led me to outspend my budget and eventually into a significant debt load. Ramit Sethi’s I Will Teach You To Be Rich is a wonderful primer for understanding a variety of financial principles.

The book takes readers on a journey of lessons and financial changes. Sethi teaches people how to automate finances and easily control spending. Likewise, the book suggests a variety of personal finance checking, savings, and investment accounts that will help to maximize your interest rates and side income.

Filled with practical tips, this is perfect for millennials that may be starting their financially frugal journey. I refer back to this book quite frequently to recall what steps I should be taking to maximize my return on investments.

3. The Big Short by Michael Lewis

There’s not a lot of fact and depth in the news surrounding the most recent financial meltdown. If you’ve been paying attention, you probably have heard of credit default swaps, bad mortgages, and some of the leading banks being targeted by federal inquiries. Unfortunately, little has changed since the catastrophe, and we may see this happen again.

Michael Lewis is the now famous author for Moneyball, after the book was turned into a movie. Lewis is a gifted researcher and writer, weaving fact and intrigue into effortless stories. Suddenly, complex financial instruments are fascinating concepts that are fairly easy to understand.

The Big Short is one of Lewis’ best books, and a must-read for people that want to better understand the meltdown and see who actually profited off the mess. Surprisingly, there was an elite group of mathematicians and investors that bet in the opposite direction and made millions/billions off the downfall.

Filed Under: Make Money, Save Money Tagged With: Books, Confessions of a Street Addict, Finance, Financial, guru, I Will Teach You, investing, IWTYTBR, Jim Cramer, Make Money, Michael Lewis, Ramit Sethi, Reading, Side Income, The Big Short, Wall Street, Warren Buffett

8 Proven Purchases For Happiness

By Frugaling 8 Comments

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The Wolf Of Wall Street Movie Film

Happiness = Money, right?

Research suggests that happiness and money are poorly correlated. In other words, money doesn’t tend to make people happy. Pretty crazy, right? Everything about our society seems to be predicated around the synergy of these two variables. But most of the time, happiness is correlated to other behaviors (i.e., closeness to friends, enjoyment at work, and balance in life).

In this consumer-driven society, encouraged to buy from our very own presidents and leadership, we are primed and ready to spend and spend – well beyond our budgetary restrictions. Our world tends to eschew philosophical questions about why you need to have something, in favor of taking advantage of the present moment to spend.

Happiness is often a marketing tool, used to increase sales. For instance, a commercial may feature scantily-clad women partying with beers in hand. It doesn’t take a scientist to decipher the claim: drink more beer, get more women – prettier ones, too! But lasting happiness isn’t at the end of a bottle.

You’re Doing It Wrong

Wolf Of Wall Street Leonardo DiCaprioIn Martin Scorsese’s The Wolf of Wall Street, Jordan Belfort wreaks havoc on financial markets, his family, and to anyone else in his way. He has a ruthless charm, narcissism, and greed. He spends and drives recklessly. Jordan is the living embodiment of a metastasized compulsion to capitalism.

What our antagonist fails to understand is that happiness, purpose, and meaning are not contained within another $100 bill (or, however many millions he makes). Who can blame him, though? When a society values money like we do, and encourages spending without regard for the future, he’s actually playing by our rules.

Moreover, he’s not alone. Many struggle to understand and say “no” to a society that propagates this need to spend and make more money. But what if money did actually make you happy? What if there was a way to make these two things more correlated?

An Action-Plan For Money And Happiness

Newer research suggests that money can make you happy, but up until now we’ve been spending it wrong. All the beer, fast cars, and yachts can’t make us happy. Instead, happiness comes from some specific action-oriented spending.

  1. Take the trip, ditch the tchotchkes
    When it comes to happiness, buying material goods rarely suffices. Whatever positive emotions are initially experienced tend to fade rapidly over time. In fact, 57% of people reported greater happiness from experiential purchases versus 34% for those purchasing material goods.
  2. Give a little, give a lot – just give
    Researchers found that personal spending – buying for yourself – did not relate to long-term happiness. On the other hand, those who spent money on others acknowledged greater happiness. When you think about all of your expenses for a month, it might help to think about how much of that is going to help others.
  3. The tiny purchases are more important
    Unlike Jordan Belfort and his bags of cash, you’ll likely be restricted by current bank account balances. When you purchase expensive, rare items, there’s a finality and adjustment that occurs – a new norm develops. If you buy smaller, more frequent items, you actually can take advantage of novelty and variability – both key health indicators.
  4. Avoid extended warranties and overpriced insurance
    Turns out that there’s quite a lot of psychological evidence to suggest that buying extended warranties may be an unnecessary “emotional protection.” Essentially, because we do not want to lose/damage our new purchase, these warranties pull out an emotional response regarding loss. Most of the time, buying or reacting to this makes you spend more than you have to and occludes happiness.
  5. Delay gratification, consumption
    Researchers suggest that “anticipation” is a key ingredient to a healthy, happy purchase. By waiting to purchase and letting that eagerness build, we may actually enjoy it more when we finally have it. Likewise, by delaying purchases, consumers may spend less – or not at all.
  6. Clear pros and cons
    Looking to buy that dream home someday? Where do you envision it? Maybe you want to buy a dream lakehouse? Researchers found that many people tend to downplay the negatives of an imagined purchase. What about the tax implications, a plumbing issue while you’re away, and/or an exceptionally mosquito-filled summer? Imagined happiness is often easier than the reality of an impending purchase. By trying to realistically imagine your purchase, while creating an objective, logical pro and con list, you may be able to avoid this pitfall.
  7. Don’t dare compare
    We’re notoriously awful comparison shoppers/buyers; at least, when we account for happiness. Dunn, Gilbert, and Wilson (2011) found that Harvard University students living in their residential system tended to downplay social ties and try to pick physical features of a building first.

    …when these students later settled into their houses as sophomores and juniors, their happiness was predicted by the quality of social features but not by the quality of physical features in the houses.

    The point is that even though the social features matter far more, before we choose something, we don’t always process and think about our own social needs. Interpersonal connections with others are necessary for most everyone, and they tend to bring greater happiness.

  8. Think of others’ enjoyment, too
    Online review sites and movie rankings bring swaths of people to rate their own experience with a product or experience. By utilizing these websites, you can measure your own enjoyment and future experience to theirs. If lots of people experienced happiness, odds are you will, too!

This action plan for making happiness from money is based off the research by Dunn, Gilbert, & Wilson (2011). They found that people were spending their money inappropriately, thinking they’d be happy, when there were better ways.

How do you spend your money? What do you do to find long-term happiness?

Filed Under: Make Money Tagged With: Budget, cash, Consumer, Happiness, Life, Make Money, money, research, science, spending, wolf of wall street

Step-By-Step Guide To Automate Twitter And Gain Followers Using IFTTT

By Frugaling 15 Comments

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Twitter Fail Whale Image

Just a few weeks ago I was looking at the Twitter streams of those I follow, and I noticed something strange. They seemed to be tweeting all the time! Shocked and dismayed by this overwork that everyone must be doing, I decided to inquire from one of the best bloggers in the business, Jeremy Biberdorf (of Modest Money). He quickly assuaged my worries and introduced me to the world of Twitter automation.

Tweet For Traffic, Money

There’s a stupid simple fact about Twitter: The more you tweet, the more you’ll gain followers and visitors to your site. As a writer and blogger, gaining these numbers will be both motivating and rewarding. The fact is that most writers are fighting off obscurity. When you realize that some people are actually reading your material, it can be a wonderful feeling.

The problem is that you likely don’t want to stay up all day and night tweeting. Not only is that not the best use of your time, it can feel demoralizing and repetitive to keep sharing. This is where automation comes in.

iPhone IFTTT automate twitter
IFTTT on iPhone

How Can You Automate Twitter?

As Modest Money’s founder and owner was saying, the busy Twitter users you may follow are probably automating their process. And I can tell you from first-hand experience, by creating a regular tweeting schedule, I’ve seen terrific increases in traffic.

After learning about this, I researched a couple options. The two major players are Dlvr.it and IFTTT.com. Dlvr.it offers a variety of professional grade options for sharing your own website’s articles and others. You can schedule the delivery of your articles and track the statistics associated with them (i.e., how many people clicked on a specific tweet?).

But the one I recommend is IFTTT.com. The website is an acronym for If This Then That. Every single automated ability asks you to choose one option (If this) and then you can choose what to do with it. Not only is it free, but it also offers an incredible platform for automation across technologies. Snap a picture from your phone? You can automatically blog it. Write a new blog post, now you can email friends, share it on Facebook, and even tweet it out – all free!

Automate Your Blog, Tweets

If you’ve made it this far through the article, you’re probably interested in some direction. The following portion is a specific “how to” for automating your website and turning it into a Twitter machine.

The first step is signing up for an account on IFTTT.com. Click here to join. After you’ve confirmed and registered for the site, you’ll be brought to a dashboard that shows all of your current recipes (IFTTTs). This virtual hub is a great way to glance at statistics and “Create a Recipe.”

IFTTT Dashboard Screenshot Automate Twitter
IFTTT.com Dashboard Screenshot

Here’s where the fun begins. Once you click to create a new recipe, you’ll be given the IFTTT option. Click the blue, underlined link that says, “this.” The page should automatically move down to “Choose A Trigger Channel.” IFTTT is full of trigger (this) options and makes it an exciting platform to work with.

IFTTT Trigger Channel to Automate Twitter
IFTTT.com Trigger Channel – Select RSS “Feed”

For this step, we want to choose feed (the RSS icon). By selecting feed, IFTTT will know that the automation process starts with your website’s publication of stories. The page will automatically scroll down further and you will be given two options. Choose “New feed item.” For me, I would navigate to my site’s feed, copy it, and paste it into the box shown below.

IFTTT Trigger RSS Feed Automate Twitter
IFTTT Trigger RSS Feed

At this point, you’re nearly there! By selecting “Create Trigger,” the page will have you select would you’d like to do with it. You might assume that you’d select Twitter for your “action channel,” but you shouldn’t. If you want to include Twitter @ symbols, you’ll need to choose Buffer. Buffer is an application that can take your automated tweets and space them out over time and give you in-depth statistics on the success of certain stories. If you don’t have your account attached to IFTTT or haven’t ever used Buffer, it will ask to pair the accounts. You’ll need to register with your Twitter account on Buffer and then link to IFTTT. Once you’ve done that, you’ll be able to select “Add to Buffer.”

Choose Buffer App to Automate Twitter via IFTTT
IFTTT Buffer App Choice

When you are ready to “Add,” click the entry title and entry URL area and add “via @YOURTWITTERNAMEHERE.” Click “Create Action” and then “Create Recipe.” Once you hit that, you’re all done! You’ve created your very first automated Twitter recipe. Your RSS feed will update IFTTT, which will send a notification to Buffer for Twitter publication. While it sounds complicated – technically, it is – the process will save you hours and hours over the course of your site.

Sharing Is Caring

Beyond automating your own Twitter and site, people often automate other people’s websites and blogs. Sharing is caring when it comes to this. When you share someone else’s blog automatically, they will be inclined to share your work and visit your site. Do them a favor and you may just get one in return. If not, it makes for good karma.

Hope this little how to and tutorial helps! If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to leave a comment!

Filed Under: Make Money Tagged With: apps, automate, buffer, gain twitter followers, ifttt, Make Money, media, social networking, twitter

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