Posted: April 23rd, 2011 | Author: Joe | Filed under: Blogging | Tags: blogging, carnival | No Comments »
It’s Easter weekend and it’s also the last full weekend in April, so it’s time to share some links to the blogs who have been kind enough to give a mention or two of my blog this month.
First up is Mrs. Accountability at Out of Debt Again. She was kind to include a link on her Carnival of Money Stories #100 Retire Gracefully Edition. Thanks Mrs. A!
Next is a very special thank you to Evan Carmichael for seeing fit to consider Simple Debt-Free Finance one of the Top 50 Get Out of Debt Blogs to Watch in 2011 ! I’m very flattered and honored to be included with such great company.
The College Investor was gracious enough to let me take part in his Totally Money Carnival: Tax Day Edition. Thank you, CI!
Lastly, I want to give a shout out to Ron at The Wisdom Journal for giving me a mention in his Great Links sections in his post:
Putting Off Filing Your Taxes Because You Owe Money This Year?
Many thanks to everyone!
Related Posts:
Posted: March 25th, 2011 | Author: Joe | Filed under: Blogging | Tags: blogging, carnival | No Comments »
It’s been a busy month for me so far, and I don’t see things letting up anytime soon! That’s ok… I wouldn’t know what to do with myself if I wasn’t so active. I just wish my NCAA bracket was doing better :-/
Anyway, I’d just like to give a quick shout out to the blogs that have seen fit to include me in their carnivals this month – MANY thanks!
First up, my post How I Cut My Cable Bill By $40 A Month! was featured in MoneyCrasher’s Carnival of Money Stories #95: Bedtime Story Edition. Easily one of the most entertaining and creative carnivals I’ve seen. This post was also featured in the Family Finance Carnival at About.Com
Next, my article warning of Debt Collectors Using Facebook to Collect! was part of MoneyMamba’s #11th Edition of the Totally Money Blog Carnival .
Finally, while it’s not technically a carnival, the Top 5 Ways To Save On Car Maintenance was included in Ron’s
Roundup and Link Love: Let’s Pitch In To Help Japan at Wisdom Journal.
Thanks again to everyone, it’s an honor to be chosen.
Related Posts:
Posted: May 17th, 2008 | Author: Joe | Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: blogging, carnival, Giveaway | No Comments »
I don’t know about you, but I’ve been reading personal finance blogs for a couple of years now, and it has really improved my life. Seriously. Personal finance blogs are a gateway to free information from average people and industry insiders alike.
I got hooked early on by reading people who were writing about their experiences with things that I was also experiencing, things like digging out from credit card debt and car payments to making the most of my 401k.
Then came the great blog explosion. It seemed like 100 new blogs were born every day, and personal finance blogs were no different. I was in heaven for a time with so much to read and learn. Call this my golden age of pf blogs.
Then things changed.
Little by little, I started seeing an overall decline in the length and quality of the posts. Many posts began to be little more than 250 word quotes from other sites, often loaded with links. Then I started noticing things like “Carnivals of Personal Finance” seemingly everywhere I turned. At first, I mistook these as general laziness on the part of the blogger. But then things started to click. Remember that exponential growth I mentioned earlier that led to the golden age?
All of this growth meant increased competition for readers and attention. Then these carnivals began making sense. Giveaways too. Especially when I learned that search engines favor sites with numerous inbound (and outbound) links. What better way to get a large number if links then to offer a free book giveaway, and all you have to do to enter is leave a comment? Other bloggers leave comments so they can link your site to theirs, and it become a mutual link exchange.
I don’t begrudge bloggers who take part in carnivals, or roundups as their close cousins are sometimes called. It’s smart, effective marketing. I just think far too many treat them as simple link gathering exercises and don’t use them to offer any real value. I think giveaways are great and linking to other material on other sites is what makes the Internet the rich medium of information that it is. But this power is not always used for good. Some sites seem to be little more than thinly veiled link farms. Those sites disgust me enough to make me unsubscribe from their blog as they are providing no real content or insight.
Now that I have all of that off my chest, there are still some really good blogs out there that offer meaningful, insightful and interesting thoughts, critiques and opinion. One such blog is MoneyNing.
In the interest of full disclosure, MoneyNing is having a giveaway in which one can enter by mentioning his giveaway post in a post of their own. This is, of course, what I am doing here, but I don’t feel it’s compromising my beliefs as laid out above because MoneyNing is not like those other blogs.
MoneyNing is an insightful, motivational and engaging personal finance blog. And he has some pretty good giveaways too! 
Photo by: Andrzej Gdula
Related Posts:
What others are saying