This week marks one year since I started this blog – my one year Blogiversary. I’ve faithfully put up a fresh post every week – 52 of them in all. That’s about 48 posts more than the average new blogger makes it, I think.
Honestly, I didn’t know how long I’d be able to sustain it, whether I’d be able to generate a new post of any substance each week. But once you start a blog, it tends to rest in your subconscious, and as life happens, you naturally think about things you can write about that might be interesting for others.
When I started, I thought by this point that either:
- I’d be inundated by agents and publishers and advertisers and talk shows, who’d all want a piece of me
- I’d have two regular readers – Nora and my mom
Of course, it’s somewhere in between. This blog sees anywhere from 10 to 100 visits a day. Not Mr. Money Mustache territory, but not bad for little me. And enough of an encouragement to keep going.
On this one year anniversary, here are the top 10 posts in terms of traffic:
- We’ve Sunk over a Quarter Million Dollars on School Tuition With College Still to Come
- Top 12 Financial Advice My Parents Gave Me
- 6 Splurging Lessons from Our ‘Hamilton the Musical’ Experience
- How My Brother Gained & Lost a Small Fortune in a Weekend
- Can a Christian Vote for Trump or Clinton?
- When We Came Back to a Home Invasion in Progress
- What Is the Role of Faith in Personal Finance?
- Why We Live in Baltimore Despite Its Problems
- Saving Money on Hair Care Might Make You Look 30 Years Older than You Are
- I Ran Out of Gas on the Highway on Monday
Here’s the top 10 list of posts that should have had the most traffic. In other words, my favorites. 🙂
- Seven Insurance Commandments for Thrifty (Cheap) People
- 8 Lessons from Two Sweaty Years of Being a Badminton Dad
- A Minor Obsession: The Pursuit of Cheap Gas
- How My Brother Gained & Lost a Small Fortune in a Weekend
- When Nora’s Car Died and I Rushed to Replace It
- I Ran Out of Gas on the Highway on Monday
- Why We Live in Baltimore Despite Its Problems
- 6 Splurging Lessons from Our ‘Hamilton the Musical’ Experience
- When We Came Back to a Home Invasion in Progress
- Down to 3 Euros on an Irish Island
What topic would you like to read about in the coming weeks?
Happy Blogiversary (Or, Blogirthday?)! Thanks for the encouragement as well, as mine is just about a month old. It’s always nice to hear about other new bloggers’ progress. Any advice on NOT repetitively checking Google Analytics/Stats when you’re starting out? 😉
I’m afraid there is no cure for that, except perhaps to read other blogs that boast of their huge followings. The subsequent depression should keep you in a dark room for a couple days. Problem temporarily solved!
Future topics:
(1) Things we waste money on without giving it a thought (but should)
(2) When an investment in home renovation pays off
(3) When to buy new versus used
(4) Thrifty website recommendations for purchases
(5) Value of using the library versus buying books
(6) How important is it to get a job at a company that offers a pension
(7) Allowances for kids – when appropriate and how much (and in exchange for chores?)
(8) When, if ever, to buy one of those annual Entertainment Books (full of coupons)
(9) Factoring taxes into decisions
(10) How much do you save if you grow your own fruits & veggies?
(11) Your best & worst donation to a charity
(12) Do yard/garage sales pay off? Does selling stuff on ebay pay off? etc.
(13) Investing in your community (gifts of time, not money)
(14) Balancing a checkbook – old school or necessary (I don’t anymore)
(15) Hidden costs of vacations
(16) Should teenagers pay for their own car, insurance & gas?
(17) Best personal thrift store buy
(18) You covered cost of education for a child, but what about lifetime cost of a pet?
(19) Tithing (gross or net)
(20) How much time you spend researching your investment choices & what/where you go to do it (if a DIYer)
(21) Trade of using personal investor vs DIY
(22) Estimating personal expenses for retirement years (tools, comps or scaling relative to today’s expenses)
(23) Risk of keeping money in cash (e.g., inflation eats away at it)
(24) Dividends of thanking others ho serve us with gifts (postal deliverer, etc.)
(25) When investment property pays off
Sorry I took your question so literally!
Wow! A lot of great ideas!
Thought of another:
(26) What if anything is best to buy & store for an extreme catastrophe? (not to mention nuances like will you be co-located with said supplies at the time of need, etc.)