I agree that readers generally do not care about ranking.

Girls Just Wanna Have Funds said:

OneCentAtatime said:

Happy thanksgiving! People do look for rank, these are milestones on your progress in blogging.

They don't.  Really, they don't.  They are looking for information on how to improve there financial lives.  the "milestones" are only internal indicators for bloggers as they mean nothing to readers who read solely for the purpose of improving their finances.

 

Why would a reader care of GRS moved up past Consumerism Commentary or I Will Teach You To Be Rich?  Why would any of this matter to a reader?  It doesn't so we should stop kidding ourselves.  It's really more about stroking ourselves with a ranking based on a system that is completely inaccurate and arbitrary. 

Happy thanksgiving! People do look for rank, these are milestones on your progress in blogging.

They don't.  Really, they don't.  They are looking for information on how to improve there financial lives.  the "milestones" are only internal indicators for bloggers as they mean nothing to readers who read solely for the purpose of improving their finances.

Why would a reader care of GRS moved up past Consumerism Commentary or I Will Teach You To Be Rich?  Why would any of this matter to a reader?  It doesn't so we should stop kidding ourselves.  It's really more about stroking ourselves with a ranking based on a system that is completely inaccurate and arbitrary. 

Unless Im in the top 100 I really have no desire to post to post the badge...nobody cares that im ranked 260 lol.  I am surprised by how many people are willing to take up blog real estate with a badge stating such low rankings.

Same here.  I actually don't think anyone's list matters.  They all use inaccurate data anyway so it's really not worth noting.  Our readers don't care about these metrics so at least this is just a stroke of egos all around.

Compete totally has my unique visitors wrong and once I figured that out, I tossed the idea of listing any sort of ranking.  It only matters if Time, Smart Money, Kiplinger or some other prominent publication lists my site as the or one of the best blogs out there.

It seems like some of the posts here almost have a tone of hostility towards MoneyCrashers and I don't understand that.   I hope I didn't come across that way.  Their list is just fine and its a valuable service they provide for free.   The exact algorighm to weigh the different ranks is always going to be subject to debate and there is no single right way to do that. 

Yakezie and MC badges are completely different.     

MC doesn't have to explain to us why we should post their badge or not.  WE can choose to post it if we want or not.   Thats up to us. Just like we do with feedburner badges advertising your 312 readers or an Alexia badges declaring your site is 83,114th on the net.

No doubt MC is creating value in PF blogging world and we appreciate you coming on-board and trying to answer our concern. Still, let me be clear that we didn't like comparing MC with Yakezie.

You did the best you could, and I assume you know by now that we as a community is so much more different than MC. Let's end the chapter now for good. Let's keep the tradition of peaceful coexistent in blogger community.

As an individual blogger I decided to not to show the badge but, I will rely on your blog rank to track my progress and so are many others.

Some correction I personally want to see in MC rank

1. Demarcation of coupon sites and PF sites and if possible, demarcation of individual blogs and corporate blogs.

2. Need to error proof MC ranking system 

3. A revised calculation method which will put no numbers in a particular category at the end of some numbers, rather than being opposite.

Our aim is to help people, create value and earn money. MC or yakezie, story is the same. Let's continue the peaceful co existent.

Again happy thanksgiving and let's help each other grow.

As for the Top Blogs list, our goal after a lot of feedback was that people were looking for a comprehensive ranking list that took into factor a bunch of different parameters.  We worked really hard to put this together and provide an awesome tool for the PF community.  We continue to tweak and improve the list as we get feedback, so I'd love to hear from everyone what their suggestions are for the list.  Also, as you said, no one is required to put the badge up on the site and that is 100% a personal choice.  The goal of the badge is to show that you're a part of the PF blog community and to show your progress over time.

As for the content, we've taken the multi-author blog approach to really provide readers with a bunch of perspectives and insights.  It's also allowed us to explore a pretty wide variety of topics, which has been a lot of fun.  And as any of our contributors would likely tell you, we have a pretty cool editorial process where I ultimately play an integral role in the final pieces you'll see on our site.  So while my name might not be on a lot of pieces, I'm deeply invested in each and every piece and am extremely passionate about the topics and the quality of our content.

Again, this community is great and hopefully we can complement what everyone is doing here.

Happy Thanksgiving!

I just went through 7 pages of archives and aside from periodic round ups by "money crashers" I don't see any posts from the 2 fellows on the About page.

Careful now, this could be the most you've ever written in the PF community if you continue!

Kidding aside, I realize that Money Crashers is a blog created predominantly for income generation, and that's great.  The Yakezie is a very different organization as it takes 6 months minimum, and then an application, a review, and then a Member Post to finally join.  Everybody can join the Challenge, but not necessarily everyone will get in. 

How many blogs in the Top 50, or Top 100 for that matter on MC have the badge up?  Again, I haven't checked, but I would suspect less than a third.  How many of the sites on the Yakezie List have the Yakezie badge up?  The answer is 100%.  The reason, is because of value.  Just being on the Yakezie list itself is an accomplishment.

I only put a network or membership badge on my site if I like or am a part of the organization.  The rest is just advertisement.  If you are finding sites no longer putting up the MC badge, it's simply because the sites no longer value what the badge represents.  It's no different from the Yakezie badge.  It's just the free markets.

WRT this thread's topic, my suggestion for you is to actually start writing some, if not half of the articles yourself and show that there's a personality and person behind your site so there's a greater affinity from your readers.  And if not, no problem too as it's good you guys are providing income for your staff writers and other potential freelancers.

Regards,

Sam

Hey S,

I totally understand if you don't find value in showing the rank or showing a badge of any kind.  It won't appeal to everyone and I know it's not realistic for everyone to partner with all the different sites out there.  We do our best to be very responsive with requests and add people quickly (which is why I'm trying to respond to everyone here..haha), and provide a great resource for the community.  No worries if you'd rather not use it though.

As for Money Crashers being "just another blog who is also my competitor in getting traffic" I'm not a believer of that.  The personal finance industry is HUGE and the pie is big enough for everyone here - especially since people have different voices, focuses, etc.  Besides, isn't the motto here at Yakezie "selflessly helping others"?  ;)

OneCentAtatime said:

gyutae tell me what value a rank of 266 is adding to a 1 yr old site? And what value addition would a nice looking money crasher logo bring to my blog? Yakezie and moneycrasher are not same. Yakezie is a community (in the true sense) and MC is just another blog who is also my competitor in getting traffic.

Other fellow Yakezies

gyutae said:

Thanks for the feedback.  From what I understand, SEMRush is based on Google.com.  They have databases for other country-specific engines, but we use the universal Google.com for our data. Just so I understand better, does most of your search traffic come from Google.ca then?

Sustainable PF said:

My primary issue w/ the MC list is the inclusion of SEMRush rank and values.  Tom Drake (Canadian Personal Finance) was telling me that non-US sites are penalized as this rank is based on US SE "clout".  This value is automatically added to our score, like it or not, and unfairly penalizes sites owned outside the USA.

I am able to not provide a feedburner id or twitter name, facebook page etc etc - but this nasty SEMRush is auto-added and harms any rank our site may attain.

As for the badge, not for me.  I sport the Yakezie badge as this is a true network.  I sport the MoneyIndex badge as it is a very handy resource I use often. 

If we were to add every badge for every ranking system that includes us (willingly or not) our sites would be extremely cluttered.

Sustainable PF said:

My primary issue w/ the MC list is the inclusion of SEMRush rank and values.  Tom Drake (Canadian Personal Finance) was telling me that non-US sites are penalized as this rank is based on US SE "clout".  This value is automatically added to our score, like it or not, and unfairly penalizes sites owned outside the USA.

I am able to not provide a feedburner id or twitter name, facebook page etc etc - but this nasty SEMRush is auto-added and harms any rank our site may attain.

As for the badge, not for me.  I sport the Yakezie badge as this is a true network.  I sport the MoneyIndex badge as it is a very handy resource I use often. 

If we were to add every badge for every ranking system that includes us (willingly or not) our sites would be extremely cluttered.

I totally understand if you don't find value in showing the rank or showing a badge of any kind.  It won't appeal to everyone and I know it's not realistic for everyone to partner with all the different sites out there.  We do our best to be very responsive with requests and add people quickly (which is why I'm trying to respond to everyone here..haha), and provide a great resource for the community.  No worries if you'd rather not use it though.

As for Money Crashers being "just another blog who is also my competitor in getting traffic" I'm not a believer of that.  The personal finance industry is HUGE and the pie is big enough for everyone here - especially since people have different voices, focuses, etc.  Besides, isn't the motto here at Yakezie "selflessly helping others"?  ;)

OneCentAtatime said:

gyutae tell me what value a rank of 266 is adding to a 1 yr old site? And what value addition would a nice looking money crasher logo bring to my blog? Yakezie and moneycrasher are not same. Yakezie is a community (in the true sense) and MC is just another blog who is also my competitor in getting traffic.

freeby50 said:

I see my rank is now fixed back up to 283.

 

I have mixed feelings on showing that rank.  #283 doesn't seem like something to brag about.  But maybe we're over thinking it.  I doubt many readers care much or even notice.    On the other hand personally I have seen feedbruner subscriber counts that are high or low and drawn conclusions about the blog based on those.   A high number there builds perception of credibility but a very low number could detract from that and make someone look amateur.

 

I think a badge that doesn't show the rank # would be a good idea.   That way if we're worried about how a high rank looks we can just have a generic badge.