I'm 17 years old and a High School senior at the Singapore American School. Although I'm a U.S. citizen, I was born in Jakarta and grew up in Jakarta and Singapore. I love theater and I hope to pursue acting in college.
Something interesting happened recently. Three consecutive articles on Financial Samurai got featured in Google News. They are: 2023 Tax Brackets: Best Income To Live Your Best Life Why You Won’t Regret Buying Treasury Bonds Yielding 5%+ Only The Rich Or Fools Buy New Cars Google News helped boost traffic to Financial Samurai by over 100,000 […]
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2022 was another good year for blogging. Yakezie continues to generate between $500 – $1,000 a month passively for over 10 years now. It’s not a ton of money, but it’s better than a poke in the eye! After 13 years of blogging, I still think blogging is the wild Wild West. No expertise or […]
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Quality is overrated when it comes to making money online or writing a bestselling book. Instead, growing your platform size (your website and social media presence) as large as possible is the most important criteria. We all know that bloggers can make a lot of money online. But after blogging consistently since 2009, there’s been […]
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Given everything can now be learned online for free, are e-courses a scam? Depending on the price and the quality of the content, I say yes. As content creators, one of the ways to make lots of money online is by offering an e-course. However, what if you are charging $1,000, $2,000, $3,000, $5,000 for […]
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If you want to make more money online you need to focus more on the basics. Make things as simple to read as possible. Further, make things as easy to do as possible. I know a personal finance blogger who makes over $500,000 a year. He’s been making multiple six figures for over seven years […]
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Does Google E-A-T really matter? I say it does not.
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Learn how bloggers are doing during the coronavirus bear market
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During my blogging journey since 2009, many blogs have come and gone. Blogging can be tough because being consistent is tough. But ironically, one of the biggest mistakes I see bloggers make is writing too much about their blogging journey. Unless you are a blog about blogging, readers want to read about everything but blogging. […]
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When I first helped ignite the modern day FIRE movement in 2009 with my motto, “achieving financial independence sooner rather than later,” I had somewhat of a dilemma as it relates to blogging. Should I focus most of my writing on helping readers achieve FIRE? Or should I write about a variety of topics beyond FIRE […]
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A friend sent me this fascinating article called, How To Earn More Links: Adding Context To Content Analysis. The article goes ahead and analyzes how smaller sites like Financial Samurai can compete with larger sites like CNBC, CNN Money, and the New York Times in personal finance related topics. The first thing they did was […]
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I’m pretty pumped the FIRE movement is picking up steam as I’ve written about achieving financial independence since 2009 on Financial Samurai. Due to the increase in popularity, several of my old articles are being picked up and are being read via search engines again. Major media outlets have e-mailed to republish some of those […]
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Why it’s worth starting a podcast even if you aren’t very good.
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On January 17, 2017, I published that I was delaying updating Financial Samurai to HTTPS. The reasons were simple: 1) I wanted to give my webmaster more time to gain experience doing the conversion to minimize screwups 2) My CPC ad provider wasn’t ready for the switch and said advertising revenue would go down ~60% […]
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One of the things that helps keep me writing 3X a week for the past eight years is a simple visualization exercise. I imagine sitting at the edge of a cliff on a warm sunny day. I can see an island 80 miles in the distance because the air is crystal clear. In my hand is a […]
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Google and the SEO community have been encouraging website owners to convert from HTTP to HTTPS since 2014. The idea is to create a more secure internet so that hackers can’t steal passwords and information that users input online. It’s a good idea, but it’s not a thoroughly flushed out idea. As a result, it’s always […]
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When you first begin, blogging is like fishing off a canoe in the middle of a tranquil lake. Most of the time, nothing happens. You’ll just feel some little nibbles here and there. But fish long enough and you might catch something big enough to eat. I’m envious of all you new bloggers. Every post […]
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Nothing is certain in the online world because new technologies and trends pop up all the time. Given we’re still in the early period of the Internet, it’s important to have as many different revenue streams as possible. We know that CPC advertising (Google Adsense, Media.net, Lijit Networks, etc) is currently being assaulted by ad blockers. […]
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One of the downfalls of writing meatier content online is that more readers aren’t able to get through the entire article. Everybody has ADHD nowadays thanks to the internet. Due to a lack of reader thoroughness, readers will increase their tendency to ask questions to answers that are already in the article. It’s a maddening […]
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With the downturn in the stock market, interest in financial products as measured by click through rates have declined. Why would anybody want to sign up for a robo-advisor now when there’s a higher chance of losing money? We all know we should continue to dollar cost average in a downturn, but at the margin, more […]
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After seven years of blogging, I’ve decided to finally focus some energy writing about how to make money blogging. My online income is now greater than my passive income, which took 15 years to build. Meanwhile, 94% of the over 500 voters say they want to learn how to make their own money-making website in my latest poll. […]
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I’ve noticed something quite peculiar. Despite my blog’s traffic up more than 10X in the past five years, the number of comments per post have declined. I used to regularly produce posts that would regularly get over 100 comments during my earlier years. Nowadays, not so much. To figure out what went “wrong,” I did […]
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In 2008, I was just another fan of personal finance blogs. I loved following people’s journeys to achieving a particular net worth goal or paying down boatloads of debt they mistakenly gotten themselves into. Then shit really started hitting the fan in 2009 as the economy collapsed thanks to folks over leveraging themselves in the […]
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The great thing about a blog is that it’s always on. Unlike most of us, who run out of energy after 12 hours of work, a blog can keep working for us 24/7, 365 days of the year if our hosting company doesn’t crash! Good thing the data shows most sites are up 99%+ of […]
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For the past month I’ve been driving for Uber anywhere between 5 – 15 hours a week. It’s been a very insightful experience, learning about the different types of passengers, as well as the reaction I get when I tell them I’m a blogger. I encourage everybody, rich or poor, to work a minimum wage […]
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The Wall Street Journal announced on June 18, 2015 that they will be laying off roughly 100 staff and most of their personal finance journalists. The news isn’t a huge shock given Dow Jones’ results were down 11% YoY in the third quarter of 2015. But it was a surprise to see that most of […]
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The larger your site grows, the more inundated you will get with requests to highlight a product, company, or service. It makes sense given your sphere of influence has grown. And as your sphere of influence grows, so does your revenue. But not everything has to be about making more money online. I write mostly […]
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The larger your website grows, the larger your website will likely continue to grow. It’s a virtuous cycle that makes blogging easier the longer you survive. You just need to get past that first two or three year wasteland, that most all of us go through where we wonder whether it’s all worth it or […]
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One of the big surprises to come out of blogging was not the realization that I could one day leave my full-time job in finance. That epiphany came when I received an advertising request on my iPhone while chilling at a bar on top of Santorini in the Fall of 2011. The biggest surprise about blogging […]
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There are several research studies that point to $75,000 a year where happiness increases no further. The $75,000 is largely derived through day job income given most folks do not have any other income sources. I make an argument that $200,000 is the income level where happiness increases no further due to various tax credit […]
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One of the reasons why public writing is so addicting is because there’s a chance somebody important out there might read what you’re writing and highlight it to somebody else important. Your traffic starts to surge and your site might even crash due to server overload. If this happens, congratulations! You have found your Whale […]
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After three open houses and a couple hours of analysis, I thought I picked the top 5 rental candidates with the best financial records, but I was wrong. All was fine until my fourth and last open house when a 28 year old single guy who graduated from CalTech came in and applied. He is […]
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I love blogging. I love blogging so much that sometimes I forget to eat dinner because I’m busy responding to comments, writing posts, and socializing online with friends. If I was a high school student again, I think my parents would worry about my health and offline social life. I can hear my father now, […]
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For bloggers engaging in plagiarism, whether through directly copying others or utilizing AI to generate spun content, caution is advised. The recent publicized case of Claudine Gay facing plagiarism accusations has stirred a response from Bill Ackman. Ackman is mobilizing his considerable resources to scrutinize academics at MIT and other institutions for potential plagiarism, employing […]
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Let’s say you’ve got a product. Maybe a new e-course, a personal finance book, or an e-book. Do you think great marketing or great content is more important to make your product sell? For background on the great marketing or great content debate, I have been blogging on Financial Samurai since 2009. The site consistently […]
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Hi everyone, Sydney from Untemplater here. I was lucky to get my hands on an early release copy of Sam Dogen’s upcoming new book Buy This, Not That. And I’m thrilled to give you a sneak peak into what the book is all about. Let’s dive in shall we?! Overview: Buy This, Not That Book […]
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Untemplater: Congrats on getting so many consecutive features on Google News! That’s phenomenal! Writing on...Untemplater: You nailed it. I also believe great marketing is very helpful in the beginning but it’s really...
Jamie: Awesome insights thanks! I’ve been a big fan of Sam’s for years. Really exciting that he’s...Untemplater: There are so many overpriced ecourses online it’s crazy. They use very aggressive marketing tactics to...
Andy: Thousand-dollar e-courses are a total scam. You can learn everything online for free. Shame on people who sell...Untemplater: There are a lot of bloggers out there who focus on small stuff like should you or should you not spend...
Derek: It’s fascinating how some bloggers continue to just mindlessly pump out affiliate content. It’s clear they are...Untemplater: Lots of valid points! So true that bloggers are a minority of overall readership, so blogging to much...
Bingo: You are spot on. Most of our bloggers are white people living on the coasts, where half the population of...
Financial Samurai: Hi Jim – Nice to hear from you. It was too much work running Yakezie. Too many people wanted...Personal Finance Lifestyle Writing Contest
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