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I started a new BLOG!

Last Updated: July 18, 2020 BY Michelle Schroeder-Gardner - 19 Comments

Disclosure: This post may contain affiliate links, meaning I get a commission if you decide to make a purchase through my links, at no cost to you. 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

19 Comments
Filed Under: Blog, Giveaway Tagged With: Blog, Giveaway, Life, Roundup

$3,700 in Extra Income in October and My Goals

Last Updated: April 8, 2021 BY Michelle Schroeder-Gardner - 48 Comments

Disclosure: This post may contain affiliate links, meaning I get a commission if you decide to make a purchase through my links, at no cost to you. Please read my disclosure for more info.

Hey everyone! I have a giveaway for an iPad Mini and cash starting tomorrow on my blog, so make sure you come back. And yes, you read that correctly, I made $3,700 in extra income in the month of October! I didn’t think I was going to beat the $3,275 that I made in September, but I did WOOHOO.

This is proof on my online income since some of you have asked. This is for the month of October and before fees and expenses (expenses were around $907) being taken out. The other income categories that are listed below were mainly cash and check dealings.

October was good for us. We stayed under budget even though we bought some extra things for ourselves.  I love that it’s finally November. The holidays put me in a great mood and I LOOOOVE decorating 🙂  Work is going great for me, and W is still loving his job. WOOHOO

You can find my 2012 yearly goals update here.

October Goals Update

  1. Cut my food budget down to $500. PASS! We’ve been doing really good with this! We did eat out a bit, but it wasn’t more than what our entertainment budget is.
  2. Workout at least 4 times a week and lose 3 pounds. FAIL. I actually gained 2 pounds. BOO!
  3. Make an extra $1,500 this month. PASS PASS PASS! I made $3,700. See above.
  4. Do all of the house stuff from last month that I did not do. FAIL. I did some, but not enough. We still need to get carpet. I priced it out, now I just need them to come in and measure our living room. I also am looking for a new dining room table and wall decor to put in the dining room.
  5. Find an awesome Halloween costume. FAIL. I just wore one that I had from a previous year. I did save lots of money on it.
  6. Plan a girls trip to KC to see a friend. FAIL. AHH so many fails yet again!

November Goals

  1. Keep our food budget down to $500. Our goal is to continue eating at home Monday through Friday.
  2. Workout at least 3 times a week and lose 3 pounds. Wish me luck.
  3. Make an extra $2,000 this month. I increased this by $500 since I seem to be beating my goal like crazy. I also plan on starting to work on affiliate income streams as well. Do you have affiliate income? What are your sources? Tell me everything and anything about it!
  4. Start decorating the dining room. I pretty much know exactly what I want. I’m just waiting for a good deal on the exact one I want (haven’t found that yet). I’m tired of the dining set we have now and want a new style.
  5. Finally GET CARPET MICHELLE. This is something that I’ve been putting off for about 3 years. So if any of you are tired of me saying this, I am sorry. Have any of you gotten carpet recently? How did you bargain?
  6. Spend no more than $50 on clothes. I’m really trying not to buy anything, but I’m putting $50 just in case there is something that I just absolutely need to buy. Anyone else really trying to cut back on their clothing spending?


Blog Goals (I’m not focused on numbers, but it is interesting to see where I’m going).

  • Twitter Followers: Goal was for 350 and I’m currently at 1,460. I’m hoping to get 1,600.
  • Alexa rank: Goal was to be under 90,000. And I’m finally starting to drop. I’m currently at 79,000. I noticed that right after I switched to WordPress that it started dropping quickly. Does anyone know why this could be? My goal for November is to be at 70,000.
  • Guest post at least 2 times this month. I’m pretty sure this is a fail because I can’t think of any guests posts that I did.

 

Extra Monthly Income in September

  • Online Income (this includes staff writing, and is after all fees) – $3,054
  • Selling Clothes – $0
  • Miscellaneous – $300
  • Mystery Shopping – $21
  • Rent – $325

So I made $3,700 extra last month!

How did you do in October? Any extra income?

48 Comments
Filed Under: Goals, Life Tagged With: Blog, Goals, Life

How Not to Take a Blogging Hiatus

Last Updated: December 19, 2015 BY Jordann - 29 Comments

Disclosure: This post may contain affiliate links, meaning I get a commission if you decide to make a purchase through my links, at no cost to you. 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!

29 Comments
Filed Under: Blog, Extra Income Tagged With: Blog, Extra Money

Improving your Alexa Rank and Weekly Roundup

Last Updated: October 1, 2014 BY Michelle Schroeder-Gardner - 31 Comments

Disclosure: This post may contain affiliate links, meaning I get a commission if you decide to make a purchase through my links, at no cost to you. 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!

31 Comments
Filed Under: Blog, Extra Income Tagged With: Blog, Extra Money, Life, Roundup

Should I still be anonymous?

Last Updated: June 25, 2014 BY Michelle Schroeder-Gardner - 98 Comments

Disclosure: This post may contain affiliate links, meaning I get a commission if you decide to make a purchase through my links, at no cost to you. 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?

98 Comments
Filed Under: Blog, Life Tagged With: Blog, Life

Increasing Google Page Rank and Weekly Roundup

Last Updated: January 28, 2022 BY Michelle Schroeder-Gardner - 35 Comments

Disclosure: This post may contain affiliate links, meaning I get a commission if you decide to make a purchase through my links, at no cost to you. Please read my disclosure for more info.

Hey everyone! Hope you’re having a great weekend. Not much planned for me. I plan on catching up around my house and running lots of errands. I also am going to Oktoberfest! WOOHOO!

Today I decided to add some blog tips and info to my usual weekly roundup post. I noticed that a lot of bloggers this week (mainly beauty and lifestyle bloggers) have been asking a lot of questions about Page Rank.

Now, I realize that I don’t have the highest page rank, but these are things that I am now just starting to do since I want to make my blog a little more professional (instead of just winging everything).

There are a couple of websites to use to check your Page Rank. Check it! What is your page rank? Have you ever thought about page rank? Is my post the first time you’ve ever heard of it?

Page Rank is how Google can measure your website. There is a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 being the best. It gets increasingly harder for each increase in number.

An increase from 1 to 2 is not the same as an increase from 4 to 5.

This means that moving to a PR6 from a PR5 is MUCH harder than moving from a PR0 to a PR1.

It is calculated in many different ways, but mainly by looking at the number of links on your site, which include: backlinks, inbound links, outbound links, nofollow and dofollow links.

Google updates your page rank every couple of months. There is no set schedule known though.

Here are some things to keep in mind:

1. Make sure the quality of your writing is high. Writing in a niche and/or having great blog posts that people want to share is a great start!

2. Guest post on other blogs. This takes more time than other strategies, but I do believe that it is a good strategy to use. You can get good backlinks, and hopefully gain some readers.

3. Make sure your comments are NoFollow. Most commenting systems are NoFollow, but I would double check just in case. If your commenting system is a DoFollow, then you will probably get spammed a lot. By making your comments NoFollow, you can avoid being put on a spam list and also preserve your Page Rank.

4. Submit your site to blog carnivals and other directories. I’m sure you’ve noticed some of these posts on my blog (such as here) and some of you might have no idea about why I post these. Submitting your blog to directories and carnivals is a good way to get  . I just started doing these more often.

However, some say that submitting your posts and links to these directories do not work as well. What’s your opinion or knowledge on this? I’d like to know!

5. QUALITY QUALITY QUALITY. A higher quality link from a high quality site is better than having a lot of lower quality links to your site.

Have you been trying to increase your Page Rank? Any tips?

 

Posts that I loved:

  1. Budget Friday Submission 4 @ I Heart Budgets
  2. Being a Boss, The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly @ Eyes on the Dollar
  3. You are your most important financial asset @ Money After Grad
  4. DIY Juice Cleanse: How I lost 4 pounds in 4 days @ Newlyweds on a Budget
  5. Why I Stopped Pushing My Son to Go to College @ So Over This

 

 

What are your weekend plans?

35 Comments
Filed Under: Blog Tagged With: Blog

Why I keep my blog anonymous and other questions you have asked

Last Updated: June 25, 2014 BY Michelle Schroeder-Gardner - 53 Comments

Disclosure: This post may contain affiliate links, meaning I get a commission if you decide to make a purchase through my links, at no cost to you. Please read my disclosure for more info.

It’s Friday! I’m sure you all knew that. One of my youngest friends finally turned 21 the other day and we’re going out for her birthday tonight. I’m excited. I’ve been waiting for tonight all week. What plans do you have for the weekend? I start classes on Tuesday, so this weekend will also be pretty depressing.

Yesterday in my blog post I was asked why I keep my blog so private. I’ve also had many other people ask this, so to the person who asked this yesterday, I’m not trying to single you out. It’s a good question!

I try and blog anonymously as much as I can. If you look through past posts, you will find pictures though. And I always post pictures of things around my house, I’m just never in them. Also, if you look at other blogs, you will most likely find my pictures floating around.

There are many reasons why I blog anonymously:
  1. I talk a lot about money. I like to openly talk about everything with my finances, and if I wasn’t private, I don’t know if I would still do that. I would want to make some things more private with my finances so that I could obviously have some privacy between me and my family/friends
  2. I talk about my family. There are many things that I say in my blog about my family, that I really wish that my friends and family wouldn’t read. I have a very difficult time talking about my dad in person, and I feel like in my blog I can talk about it very openly without worrying about what people think, because you all are very kind and always make me feel better.
  3. Since I blog kind of anonymously, I don’t hold back with what I say. I feel like I can share anything and everything. I’m not saying that I’m fake when I’m around my friends and family. I’m saying that I can be completely open and share all of my thoughts and feelings. Nothing wrong with that right?

I don’t want anyone thinking I’m a fake person though just because I don’t post a lot of pictures. Just because I blog anonymously does not mean that I’m not completely honest with you guys. Sorry if I come across in a different way. I do want to start posting more pictures though, because I want you guys to be able to relate to me more! It’s probably weird that I blog anonymously to some of you, I hope to change this soon. Thanks for the great question everyone!

Even though I do blog anonymously now, I DO actually want to change this soon. I’m hoping I can get over my problem and be more open.

I was also asked the other day why I have all of these vacations planned instead of paying off my debt.  I’m not really sure how to answer this. I don’t see traveling as me wasting money. I actually see it as one of the best ways that I can spend my money. I also budget every month for a vacation fund, so I’m not going more into debt for it.

Also, all of my vacations are relatively cheap compared to most. I don’t really pay for airfare (I’ll say this again, because of my dad’s survivor retirement benefits).  So it’s not like I’m spending a lot of money anyways. I’m also young, so of course I would want to travel now. My vacations that I budgeted for this year account for less than 5% of our after-tax yearly income also.

My net worth is positive also, and I have no credit card debt. I don’t think I’m frivolous with my money, but I do understand how it may seem like I am. I’ve also never been late with a payment. Also, I’m not trying to be rude or mean with what I’m saying. And I’m also not trying to have a pity party, but I like to relax every now and then because life can be stressful because of my family.

Update as of 9:30 am (I’ve added lots of clarifying updates to this post already because I’ve gotten some emails, thanks everyone for your input, keep them coming!):  Another excuse for why I want to travel more and why I recently started so much is because my dad was an avid traveler. He traveled everywhere (he was a pilot). And before he passed he told me that I need to live life more. My dad passed away when he was in his 50’s, which is pretty young. He also worked hard his entire life and towards the end he was pretty miserable (because of family problems). So, since my dad passed away, I’ve been trying to live life, have fun and stop thinking about regrets. I don’t want to die young and not have been completely happy.

I do understand that it is probably confusing that I say that I want to be out of debt so bad, but then I spend money having fun. I’m pretty frugal in my life, and I guess I just never really considered traveling a “bad” way to spend money. I don’t know, I guess I’m wrong. I guess traveling is one of my weaknesses, but before I quit my old job (June of 2010), I hadn’t had a single vacation day for 5 years (wasn’t allowed at my job).

I know I’m just throwing excuses out there, but I just don’t see traveling as a bad thing.

Am I wrong for spending money instead of strictly paying off debt?

Well I think that’s all the questions that I can think of for now that some of your asked me. I really hope this helps you guys understand me more. I really promise that one day soon I will stop blogging anonymously. I will of course delete some of the things about my mom that I’ve said, but I will do it soon.

What else would you want to know about me?

Now I have a question for you. What would you like to see me post more about?

53 Comments
Filed Under: Blog, Life Tagged With: Blog, Life

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Hello and welcome!
My name is Michelle and I'm the author/owner of Making Sense of Cents. Learning how to save money and make more money changed my life. It allowed me to pay off $40,000 in student loans, start my own business, and I now travel full-time.

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