Although you’ll see me commenting around the personal finance blogosphere, I actually comment even more across the lifestyle and more recently, the SEO space due to all the changes with Google. The reasons are several fold:
1) Variety is entertaining
2) It’s always good to learn something from those who spend most of their time on a subject you don’t
3) Everything is intertwined
If you are a lifestyle blogger, it’s probably best to figure out basic personal finance fundamentals because it’s unlikely anybody will take care of you when you’re old. If you’re a personal finance blogger, it’s a good idea to figure out what alternative lifestyles you can lead during your wealth accumulation phase and after you’ve reached financial independence.
The Yakezie Network is a personal finance and lifestyle blog network. Unfortunately, we don’t have many lifestyle bloggers as part of our crew, but that’s slowly changing as more and more of us are leaving our jobs due to the successes of our online endeavors.
I’ve come to realize that not many lifestyle or SEO bloggers ever come visit Financial Samurai despite my frequent visits. I’m curious to know if any of you personal finance bloggers experience the same phenomena and why do you think that is?
Let’s see if we can figure out what’s going on.
WHY THE ONE WAY STREET?
1) A limited amount of time. When you’re juggling work, family, and your blog, reading and commenting on other blogs take a back seat. How many big bloggers in even your own genre do you ever see comment on your site? The answer is hardly any. They’ve got their own community to interact with. My soft definition of a big blogger is anybody with more than 100,000 unique visitors a month.
2) Laziness. We might have the time, but like so many things that take effort, laziness is a culprit for not doing. It takes effort to learn what’s out there. It takes effort to type in a comment and fill out an annoying CAPTCHA code that’s impossible to decipher. It takes tremendous effort to build hopefully long lasting relationships.
3) We think the world evolves around us. There’s a good chance that many of us think we know what’s best for everybody. It’s our way, or the highway. This is why I encourage everybody to write with differing points of view. I hope everybody can travel around the world and experience different cultures for example. Even better if you can master another language. Americans are spoiled by wealth, power, and geography. Everything comes to us, thereby weakening our minds.
PERHAPS PERSONAL FINANCE IS JUST TOO IMPORTANT TO BOTHER?
So many people don’t bother to learn personal finance fundamentals because they are either intimidated, or find the idea of retiring early with millions of dollars in the bank extremely boring! Weird huh?!
Some people naturally get excited about certain things. I can spend hours in a Range Rover dealership inhaling the leather while fiddling with the gadgets. I feel the same way about travel, electronics, and entrepreneurship. On the other hand, I’m completely not interested in reality shows like Jersey Shore. I’m just not, I don’t know why.
Folks need to cross-pollinate their minds to keep things active. If you are a lifestyle blogger, you should definitely visit personal finance sites that discuss passive income generation opportunites that are not online related. If you are an “SEO expert,” you should definitely visit personal finance blogs that receive hundreds of thousands of visitors a month that do no manual linkbuilding to figure out what they are doing right.
Everybody online needs to read personal finance blogs! Personal finance is a part of everything we do, whether we know it or not!
Readers, how can we encourage more people to visit personal finance sites? Why don’t more lifestyle and other genre of bloggers visit personal finance sites? Are personal finance bloggers actually much more interesting since we can talk about everything under the sun?
Best,
Sam
“or find the idea of retiring early with millions of dollars in the bank extremely boring!” Haha. I just wrote about my take on that idea today. I may not use the word boring, but I do find the idea rather uninsteresting.
I don’t spend much time with SEO or lifestyle blogs because, frankly, those topics don’t interest me much. But is it possible that those niches are ones that don’t receive a lot of comments, so they don’t think of leaving very many comments themselves?
I’m also a food blogger and while it is much more successful in my PF blog by nearly every metric, it has only gotten ~40 comments over the last 2 years. That seems to be the way that niche operates. Only places that get a lot of comments are the big recipe sites, and even then the number of comments the most popular recipes get is probably a tiny fraction of the pageviews for them.
Seriously though, why wouldn’t a lifestyle blogger want to know how to generate thousands of dollars in passive income a month to live their lifestyles? What I see from lifestyle bloggers are those in their 20s who have a goal to make money by highlighting their lifestyles. But, it’s kinda backwards. I think they’d gain tremendously by reading PF blogs!
We’ve got to beware of groupthink. PF bloggers only reading other PF bloggers, lifestyle only interacting with other lifestylers, etc. We’re becoming America, where we don’t learn another language b/c everything comes to us!
When “lifestyle design” was all the rage a couple of years ago, I spent a lot of time banging my head against the keyboard over the sheer stupidity of it all.”Quit your job and make a living blogging from internet cafes in Thailand.” Yeah, right.
I don’t spend as much time as I might on blogs in other niches, but I do belong to a few Facebook groups for other topics.
I think reading blogs outside of your chosen niche is actually more important than all the networking, reading and commenting we do inside of the PF world. I enjoy reading blogs outside of the PF world more just because I know less about those topics. If I can pick bits of knowledge up from areas I’m not as knowledgeable about it not only improves me in a personal sense, but also improves the quality of content I can pass along to my readers.
You nailed it, Sam: we get so caught up in our niche, that many of us fail to promote/connect with other bloggers and readers from different areas. I have shifted my focus to include networking with the “mom” blogs and lifestyle blogs, since my site does dive into topics that fit into more than the PF niche. In order to thrive, I think that bloggers need to continually think outside the box and expand their interests in order to get a variety of readers involved. Good insights in this post!
Hi Lisa, thanks for chiming in. Any lifestyle blogs in particular you enjoy? Is it not strange lifestyle bloggers do not visit PF blogs though?
I am a proud lifestyle Yakezie Member! And I actually do most of my commenting on PF sites, typically Yakezie Members and Challengers who I’ve built relationships with. I also enjoy reading PF related articles which fits nicely.
I probably have a higher correlation of lifestyle readers than PF though, they just don’t tend to comment much. I think it’s also because the vast majority of them are not bloggers. I didn’t really understand the fun, rewards, and enjoyment of commenting until after I became a blogger. And Yakezie has definitely had a huge positive impact on the dialogs and community building I’ve experienced.
Ah yes, you are indeed a Yakezie Lifestyle blogger! I think it’s great to incorporate both lifestyle and PF topics on our blogs. I’m going to try and do more of it on FS.
I think it all boils down to interests and personal preference. Lifestyle bloggers, mom bloggers, travel bloggers, and food bloggers do not find personal finance blogs to be interesting enough that they will spend a few minutes of their time reading posts about finance. The sad reality. But I am positive that we can all work together, regardless of our niche and personal preference.
It is a sad reality indeed. Perhaps it’s up to us to all become more interesting then, yes?
I really do think there are synergies, but it takes effort from both sides.
Sam, I agree with you that the concepts of strong financial management and good lifestyle choices are closely connected! My blog is definitely more lifestyle (although I’m gearing up for the January Money Diet – definitely personal finance for 31 days!!) and I probably interact with more personal finance bloggers due to my affiliation with Yakezie. But I need to get out there more! So thanks for the call to all of us to actively seek out alternative points of view and connect with each other. Great post.
Good luck on the money diet challenge. I like it! Let’s work to branch out more in 2013. All the best!
Now that you mentioned it, I am curious why they don’t – perhaps they feel that finances are too complicated :P
I do think that we also bear a bit of responsibility – many bloggers stay in their niche and for most personal finance bloggers that’s true. I’m going to work on including more blogs outside my niche when possible in my writing and networking.
I think you might be right. It’s scary that folks won’t bother to learn more about their finances because they think it’s too complicated!
At various times, I’ve spent some time commenting and providing feedback on other gardening or food blogs. To paint with a generalized brush, while there may not be the same level of engagement and feedback (comments, roundups, carnivals) from blogs in other niches (perhaps because PF bloggers are more in tune with SEO and the mechanics and revenue of blogging), but it doesn’t mean that that you’re not gaining readership or making contacts.
Any good manly food blogs you can recommend? I’m looking to rekindle my inner chef now that I’ve got some more time!
I do wonder whether the PF sphere is more in tune w/ SEO and stuff. I don’t see why we’d be any different from any other genre blog who wants to do well?
This might be a good time to plug my other blog, If You Can Read, You Can Cook: http://www.ifyoucanread.com :)
There’s a couple I list on my blogroll… and my own food section, of course!
Perhaps it’s because PFers spend more time thinking about money. With other genres it’s more about it being a hobby (generalizing again).
I think lifestyle blogggers find personal finance niche boring. Without realizing that everybody is affected by every decision we make on our finances. We cannot enjoy life the way we are supposed to if we are neck deep with credit card debt and student loans.