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Oh Saturday

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DogFrench Bulldog
Happy weekend everyone! This past week at work seemed to fly by, mainly because I was extremely busy the whole time. So much to do! Oh yeah, those are my wonderful pups above.

This weekend I'm hoping to get a lot done. I really need to start scheduling and writing posts ahead of time. I haven't done this in forever. How far ahead do you write your posts? I'm hoping to get maybe 5 posts done, but I doubt that will happen. I have a long list of things that I want to write about, but I would like to knock them out beforehand.

I'm going to a bridal show on Sunday for MY wedding! First bridal show that I'll have gone to that is focused on me. WOOHOO! Bring on the free drinks and free food 🙂 I hope to find a lot of good ideas and good vendors. Considering that I still need EVERYTHING for my wedding and nothing has really been planned, I know I will be going crazy at this thing. But that's okay, because I love planning and just the thought of it makes me super happy!

This was a week full of whale posts. Sorry they were all so long! I obviously have a lot to say about everything. There will be some more whale posts for next week. I have at least one special post lined up for next week, a post all about how to become a virtual assistant. A lot of you have wondered what a VA does, and next week you will find out how to start and where to begin.

Also, I plan on publishing my How To Start a Blog post next week. Is there anything specific that you would like to know that I can answer in this post? I will try and include it and it'll help me guide where the post will go. A lot of you e-mail me with your questions, but if you have any others, ask away in the comments below. I have a feeling that the How To Start a Blog will be a huge multi-post, so be on the look out!

Posts on my blog:

  1. What Does a Virtual Assistant Do? – This post details possible things you can do as a virtual assistant.
  2. Reconnecting With Family – An emotional post – I talk about about my dreams of having a normal family.
  3. Wedding Budget – Our Expected Costs – If you're not tired of wedding talk yet, then you will be after reading this lengthy post! I'm having a lot of fun planning, so look forward to even more posts in the future.
  4. Time Management According to Strengths – This is a staff post by Jordann. All about time management!

 

Posts on my sister's blog:

  1. Becoming a Personal Trainer – At first she wanted to go into nursing, but after working in healthcare for a couple of years, she has completely changed her mind. This is why it's good to get a job on internship in the field you want to work in before you jump too far in! She now wants to be a personal trainer.
  2. Looking Cute When Working Out On A Budget – It can't be only me and her who like to buy nice athletic clothes, right?
  3. Jamie Eason’s 12 Week Free Plan – My sister is too healthy for me… 🙂

 

Favorite posts of the week:

  1. Personal Finance Bloggers I Admire Evolving PF – SOMEONE ACTUALLY LIKES ME! 🙂
  2. Churning Credit Cards for Hotel and Travel Rewards on I Heart Budgets
  3. How Do You Define Success? Tackling Our Debt
  4. Benefits of a Crappy Job Eyes on the Dollar
  5. Are You Financially Ready For Kids? Prairie Eco Thrifter
  6. ….When You’re Talking in Your Sleep L Bee
  7. 5 Ways to Invest in Yourself on Young Adult Money
  8. The Sexiest Thing My Money Has Bought on Plunged In Debt
  9. Learn From Mexican Merchants – Avoid Being a Passive Blogger on Modest Money
  10. I Will Never Retire on Krant Cents

 

What are your plans for the weekend?

So You Want to Be a Freelance Writer?

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Find out what you need to know about becoming a freelance writer. This is a great list!Last week I finally started my Ways to Earn Extra Income. A lot of you have questions, and today I figured I would continue my Extra Income series with how to become a freelance writer or a staff writer. A lot of you seem very interested in this. For the sake of this post, a staff writer = freelance writer, just to make this all easy.

Before September, I never thought I would be staff writing, and I never even thought about it. But once I began, I really started to enjoy it. I really love to write (yes, I do realize that I'm not the best and I probably should proofread more, but I do like to talk), and writing for different blogs was fun for me.

And I'm not going to lie, the money is nice also. Being able to write about topics that I enjoy, from the comfort of my home is great. I try (yes, try) to throw all of my extra money towards student loans, since I do have a $38,000 student loan payoff plan that I am working on.

I believe I started freelance writing in September of 2012. I DID make mistakes though. I signed up for way too much, and as a result, my own blog suffered. I feel like the content on my blog wasn't the greatest when I had signed up for so many staff writing assignments. Luckily, that did not last long as some of the assignments were only short-term.

Then I ended up stopping a couple of others and right now I am at my perfect amount. Taking on too many writing assignments at one time was definitely a mistake that I made.

So You Want to Be a Freelance Writer?

My tips on how to become a freelance writer:

[Read more…]

I started a new BLOG! and $1,000 Structured Settlement GIVEAWAY

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This post may contain affiliate links. Please read my disclosure for more info.

Hey everyone! I bet you all are very happy that it's Saturday. I know I am! This was a long week for me considering it was my first full 5-day work week since the BEGINNING of December. Talk about having it rough, right? 😛

I finally made my Ways to Earn Extra Income Part 1 post so I hope you all enjoyed it. I have a feeling that this will be a fairly long series that will most likely last forever 🙂

I do have a question for you all: Is there something that you would like to see more of on my blog? Or is there something that you would like to see less of? Or what would you change? I'm all about growing and improving and I'm interested to hear what you all have to say. Please leave a comment below (can be either from you or anonymously).

NEW BLOG

I also started a new blog and it went live TODAY. My sister is the author and I'm just there to help her get the hang of things and to be the behind-the-scenes person 🙂 I hope you all check out the blog. There will also be a giveaway there soon, so that's another reason to follow her!

Check out FITnancials. Follow on Twitter and you can also be one of her 2,600 Instagram followers that she has had on her fitness Instagram account for quite some time.

Here's a little tidbit about her:

“I started attempting the ‘healthy lifestyle’ about a year and a half ago. My overall journey in trying to ‘get skinny in any way possible’ started in my Freshman year of high school. I came home from spending the summer with my dad (lounging and eating ALL day) and my mother commented on my weight. (To put it nicely). That’s where it all began.”

Recent posts from my blog:

  1. $1,193 in Extra Income, Life and Picture Updates
  2. Keeping Up With The Joneses
  3. Ways to Earn Extra Income Part 1 
  4. Dreaming of the Future
  5. $5,770 in Extra Income in December
  6. Cooking in a Minimalist Kitchen

Posts I love:

  1. On Passion for Blogging and Burnouts Thirty Six Months
  2. How to Use a Credit Card Like Cash Single Moms Income
  3. Modesty Really is the Best Policy Modest Money
  4. How to afford a vacation when you’re broke Newlyweds on a Budget
  5. Building A Dividend Portfolio For Passive Income Retire By 40
  6. Bold Move By Discover – The Discover it™ Credit Card Money Life and More

Top 5 Referrers to my blog:

  1. When I get where I'm going
  2. Shaking the Money Tree
  3. TeacHer Finance
  4. Plunged in Debt
  5. Frugal Rules

GIVEAWAY

Today's giveaway is a $1,000 CASH PRIZE. All you have to do is enter via the Rafflecopter form below.

This giveaway was brought to you by StructuredSettlement-Quotes.com, America's #1 structured settlement and annuity marketplace. The question for today is whether would you rather have a lump sum or an annuity?

For me, I would rather have a lump sum, as there is always that fear that the company or person you are doing business with might go under and not have the money later on. This way I can invest myself instead of worrying about how someone else will handle my money.

[Read more…]

Ways to Earn Extra Income Part 1

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This post may contain affiliate links. Please read my disclosure for more info.

Ways to Earn Extra Income Part 1Oh extra income…

Whenever I publish any of my extra income posts, I usually receive e-mails like crazy. I mean multiple e-mails every hour, and probably over 20 in one day.

I love all of your questions and many of you have reasons for why you want extra income. Not all of you have a blog but today I'll be talking about the different ways I make extra money. In future posts, I will be talking about more of a variety as well.

Currently, before taxes and expenses, I am making around $5,000 in EXTRA income per month. I am on track to make around that this month as well. I'm using my extra income mainly to pay down my $38,000 student loan debt as quickly as I can, and after April of this year, I will probably throw most of it towards savings.

I can only dream of where that might go one day. Just last year I was making a couple hundred per month in extra income – and I was ECSTATIC at that time with that. Now my goals keep increasing.

I am big on diversifying how you make your money, whether it be your extra income or your main form of income. This way, if anything does happen, you are more prepared. Also, try not to use your extra income as a way to Keep up with the Joneses! Use it for what you truly what to do with it.

There are many things that you can do to earn extra income. However, there are also many factors to think about:

  1. How much time do you have? Do you have 1 hour each day or 5 hours each day? Maybe you're only free on the weekends?
  2. How much are you trying to earn? Is your goal $50 a month or $5,000 a month?
  3. Can you do this and also work at the same time? Will your work be sacrificed and therefore you might lose your main source of income?
  4. Do you want to also have fun while making your extra income?

 

Ways to Earn Extra Income Part 1

Below are some possible ways for you to earn extra income. This will be a multiple series post as of course there are TONS of things that can be done to make extra income. I plan on making more in-depth posts on these individual methods soon, so watch out for those also 🙂 :

[Read more…]

How Not to Take a Blogging Hiatus

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This post may contain affiliate links. Please read my disclosure for more info.

 

Last week, I stopped blogging. I didn't give notice, I didn't preschedule posts. I just stopped. It was a stupid idea, I knew that, but I did it anyway.

You see, I've been really busy with the blog lately, and when a business trip came up, I just didn't have the enthusiasm to go through pre-writing posts and contacting guest posters. I figured everything would be fine for a week while I was gone, what's the worst that could happen?

The Negative Impact of a Poorly Executed Blogging Hiatus

By letting my blog go stagnant for a week, I suffered the consequences. Naturally during the hiatus my traffic suffered, spiralling downward during the week of silence. Once I came back, it wasn't immediately business as usual. For a few days, my traffic was lower than usual, and it's only getting back to normal levels now.

My Alexa ranking also suffered. It had been inching down slowly and steadily. When I checked it at the beginning of this week, it had started to reverse that trend. As anyone who is chasing their Alexa ranking knows, this isn't what we want to see!

Luckily, I didn't lose any twitter followers or subscribers, but if I'd taken a longer break, I imagine I would've started shedding those too.

How to Successfully Take a Blogging Hiatus

Taking a break from blogging can be a great way to step away from the day to day and get some perspective. If done properly, it's easy to take a break while still bringing the same great content to your readers. Your traffic won't suffer, but you'll come back ready to write again.

When taking a blogging hiatus, try and schedule the same number of posts as would go up in your normal blogging schedule. In this arena, guest posts can come in handy because the guest poster can be responsible for promoting the post on social networks, and responding to comments.

Most fellow bloggers are more than happy to contribute if they know there's a need. Make sure you don't leave this to the last minute, give people a chance to get their writing done!

Prewriting and prescheduling posts can also be a useful tool for the blogging hiatus. The only downside is that if you're taking a true break, you probably won't be around to respond to the comments.

Again, having an extra set of hands can be very useful, and hiring someone just for the week to take care of promotion and commenting can give peace of mind. Having several generic posts that aren't time or season sensitive written in advance is a very easy way to get these prescheduled posts sorted out before taking a break from blogging.

Taking a Blogging Hiatus Has Benefits

Taking a break from blogging has many benefits. It's a chance to bring new and original content to your blog in the form of guest posts. It's a chance to relax and remember why you started blogging in the first place. This is exactly what happened to me.

Even though I did absolutely none of the things I suggested above, I still came back to my blog with new ideas. I also realized just how much I missed blogging and the PF community. I felt like I'd missed so many good posts in the week I'd been gone. Next time though, I'm going to do it right.

Have you ever taken a blogging hiatus? I want to know!

Improving your Alexa Rank and Weekly Roundup

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This post may contain affiliate links. Please read my disclosure for more info.

Hey everyone! It's finally the weekend and I'm excited.

I finally decided on a costume. I'm going to test my craft skills and try to make this Pocahontas costume. I bought a plain brown shirt and already have fringe boots, blue necklace and a braided headband, so I am pretty set! Cheap costume and it's exactly what I wanted to be anyways.

We plan on going on a haunted hayride pub crawl tonight. Sounds like fun right? Yeah, if only it weren't only 35 degrees tonight 🙁

Then tomorrow we are going to a pumpkin patch with the boy's family. It'll be fun, I surprisingly haven't been to one since I was really young.

Alexa Rank

Earlier this month I made a post on increasing your Google Page Rank. Now I would like to help you all decrease your Alexa! A lot of you have been e-mailing me about how to decrease your Alexa.

If you check my Alexa, I am currently at around 80,000. It has been dropping quickly ever since I switched to WordPress.

So what is Alexa? The lower your score, the better your website ranks. Facebook has a ranking of 1 and Google is a 2 if that gives you a better perspective. Blogs below the 200,000 mark are said to be in the top 1% of all websites/blogs/etc. out there.

Why does your Alexa ranking matter though? 200,000 and below is said to be when advertisers will start flocking to you. I definitely believe this is true because once I dropped below that, I received numerous requests.

1. Install the Alexa Toolbar.

Your Alexa score is mainly determined by how many people view your blog that already have the toolbar, so install it! Then having your regular readers install it as well will help also. It is said that you need to click around to more than one page when you do visit a website as well.

2. Increased traffic to your site/blog.

The more traffic that you have, then generally the lower your ranking. Creating good quality content which engages and entertains your readers is key here. You want people to keep coming back.

3. Increased specialized traffic.

Another way to have a lower ranking is to have a lot of traffic from people who have the Alexa Toolbar installed. If you have a lot of readers, but hardly anyone has the toolbar, then you will most likely have a very high ranking.

It goes without saying that to lower your Alexa traffic rank you would need more web traffic, but as the above references show, what you actually need is specialized traffic – traffic from visitors who have Alexa Toolbar installed.

 Posts that I love:

  1.  Is It Possible to Reduce Your Monthly Grocery Bill with Coupons? @ Tackling Our Debt
  2. Are High School Reunions Worth the Cost? @ My Money Design
  3. Would You Be A Human Guinea Pig For Money? @ Call Me What You Want Even Cheap
  4. Why We Have Separate Finances (Sort of) @ Edward Antrobus
  5. Things I Couldn’t Do If I Had A Car Payment @ IHeartBudgets
  6. What to do about a black mark on a credit report @ Frugal Portland

Have a great weekend!

Should I still be anonymous?

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This post may contain affiliate links. Please read my disclosure for more info.

I'm sure you have all noticed, but lately I've been asking everyone on Twitter if I should still remain anonymous. Lately I have felt the HUGE need to tell people. I told my sister about my blog last month, and her and the boy keep telling me that I should tell people.

It also doesn't help that the boy has told a lot of his friends and family that I blog. Luckily I have told them all to not tell anyone, so no one else really knows. They also don't know the URL (at least I don't think), so I am safe there as well.

I do think that I am not entirely anonymous. I talk a ton about my life, I am Facebook friends with some of you, some of you have my cell phone number, and there are pictures of me out there on my blog, Pinterest, Twitter, etc. I just try not to post anything directly on my homepage of my blog.

This is mainly for my safety. I am able to talk about whatever I want without worrying if someone will find out and that I will hurt their feelings.

I also talk a ton about money, and I go into detail with our budget, income and everything else. I wouldn't want some weirdo to know how much money I make, especially if this is a weirdo who me and the boy know. I wouldn't want to put anything at risk.

I last made a post on my decision to be anonymous in January.

I would like to tell my friends so that I am not so private about everything. They probably are starting to wonder why I am still so busy even though I don't have night classes anymore also.

One of the reasons that keeps holding me back is something that my friends recently said. We were all out one night and the topic of an acquaintance's blog came up. They were saying some not so kind things and it made me nervous to say anything. However, I'm afraid that one day they'll find out and wonder why I hid it.

I'm definitely NOT ashamed of my blog in anyway, but I do talk about a ton of personal things here on my blog.

And there are some things that Im not sure if I would want my friends to know, as it is all too personal and still upsets me.

Another reason why I want to share my blog is because I'm also starting a second blog (a site in which my sister will help run), and she wants it to not be anonymous. My friends will easily find it if she's not anonymous and I would rather tell them now then them finding Making Sense of Cents and questioning it.

So I guess the thing is, if I were to stop being anonymous and became public with my identity, I would have to hide certain things, such as how much money I make. Or would I not? What would you do? Keep everything the same or hide some things in order to protect yourself?

If you have posts that explain why you're anonymous or not, please leave them below in the comments. I would love to read them!

What do you think?

Were you ever anonymous and then decided to not be so private?

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