As I go through my pre-retirement checklist for life post-pandemic, the one thing I keep wondering is whether expertise, authority, and trustworthiness (E-A-T) really matters for Google SEO.
One of my goals after re-retiring is to stop writing 3X a week on Financial Samurai. Maybe’ll I’ll go down to publishing once a week instead.
I want to get out of the house more as economies open up. I might even be so bold as to fly somewhere with my young children! Nah, probably not.
Read MoreAfter more than 10 years of writing on Financial Samurai, I’ve been lucky to get a lot of opportunities to contribute to big media stories. My first opportunity came in 2010 with the LA Times and it has gradually continued from there.
Some stories will feature a FS quote while other stories will do a FS feature. Sometimes, I’ve been asked to write a guest post as well. If the media outlet is a reputable one, I usually oblige and so should you, even if you aren’t getting paid.
Despite the benefits of getting featured in big media, there is a pitfall as well. Let me share with you what they are when it comes to guest posting on big media sites.
Read MoreAs stock investments sell-off during this coronavirus-bear market, many are left wondering what’s the next domino to fall.
Real estate, my favorite investment class to build wealth, is in a precarious state. Real estate brokerage firms are hurting because volume has dried up as most of the country is under lock down. Prices have held up so far, but the bear market isn’t over yet.
The only real champion in this bear market is Treasury bonds followed by cash.
But what about blogging? The great thing about blogging is that you can’t shut it down! Valuations for blogs could actually go up given its high operating margin plus its ability to always stay open.
Here’s what I’m seeing in the blogging world in the coronavirus era.
Read MoreDuring 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. The more you write about how you’re monetizing your blog, the more readers will feel like you’re using them like guinea pigs.
If you start writing more about blogging you’re simply going to attract more bloggers to your blog.
When this happens, you better have a course or book about blogging for money. And you better have a huge blog with proof that your book or course works, otherwise, you’re never going to grow your blog. This is where the big mistake happens for most bloggers.
Your blogging readers may be supportive, especially if you have a larger blog. But they may also end up copying everything you do. For example, there are a couple bloggers who copy so much of what I do – from the topics, to the author bio at the end of each post with the same affiliates, and more Pretty interesting to see why they just can’t be original.
Readers who are bloggers are the minority. Therefore, writing content for the minority of your audience is a mistake.
The key to growing your blog is to keep topics about blogging to a minimum. I would limit your content about blogging to less than 10% of all content. In other words, for every 10 articles you write in your niche, you can write one article about your blogging journey if you must.
At Financial Samurai, less than 2% of my articles are related to blogging. I’m hardcore focused on personal finance topics such as real estate crowdfunding, stock and bond investing, early retirement, career/severance negotiation, and estate planning. 99% of my readers come to Financial Samurai for personal finance topics, not blogging.
When I write about blogging, it fits into my Entrepreneurship category. If i dominate my writing about blogging, then I will lose my readers because I’m not blogging to make money blogging.
The more you blog about your area of expertise, the more you will make money blogging.
Now that Financial Samurai is a relatively large site with over 1 million organic visitors a month, I can now blog about blogging with credibility. I can also earn money about teaching others how to grow a blog if I wanted.
Too many bloggers make it a priority to make money blogging. This ends up killing their momentum due to a lack of credibility.
As one of the early FIRE bloggers who focused on retiring early to do whatever you want, I don’t constantly write about FIRE because I’m interested in everything that comes after FIRE.
Despite not constantly writing about FIRE, Financial Samurai still benefits greatly from everybody searching online about the FIRE movement because of the older articles I’ve written about the space. A rising tide lifting all boats in our peak FIRE state.
Once a reader understands the concept of Financial Independence Retire Early, there’s really no need to keep on writing about FIRE. If you do, you’re just rubbing it in people’s faces.
Instead, the reader wants to learn about everything you have done before and after achieving FIRE. Post FIRE is where the real excitement lies.
Yes, we all have dreams of making big bucks blogging in our underwear, overlooking the ocean with a tasty beverage. But extremely few will achieve this result if they just write about their blogging journey.
Write about what people care about the most in order to grow your blog the most. When you become a big blog, then write as much about blogging as your heart desires.
If your blog is not growing at the pace it wants, it’s probably because you are not providing as much value as you think you are.
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 that interests me and perhaps other people too.
In the end, I decided not to brand myself as a FIRE blogger because I really loved writing about real estate, stock and bond investing, alternative investing, career strategies, and now family finances.
I could tell people how I’m living my life, or I could just get on with things and live my life.
What I found after leaving my day job in 2012 and living off my passive income is that there’s really no fanfare once you achieve FIRE. You just get on with living your life how you wish.
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 search for retirement topics. Then the listed the top sites with the most Referring Domains to URL. Read More
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 articles or have invited me to guest post. Man, haven’t done that in a while, probably since nobody asks me to guest post anymore. Guest posting once a year sounds like a good plan going forward.
Everybody wants to retire early, control their schedule, and be their own boss. It’s obvious why the Financial Independence Retire Early movement has finally taken off. The internet makes it easy for everybody to observe or follow along.
But what I’ve noticed is that instead of publishing numbers, bloggers would rather publish selfies of their fabulous lifestyles instead.
FIRE bloggers have turned into those insufferable friends on Facebook who can’t stop publishing photos of their vacations, their new wheels, their new hairdo, and how wonderful everything is. It’s amazingly one-sided and Instagram curated how early retirement has become. It’s off-putting.
Once you reach financial independence, there’s no need to incessantly tell everybody how financially independent you are. Get on with your lives. Write about other things instead. Maybe, you might even want to write some articles to help your readers achieve financial independence too! What a concept. Read More
If there wasn’t already enough on my plate as a father to a newborn who publishes 3X a week, I decided to finally start a podcast on iTunes. Each podcast episode takes me about 30 minutes to 1 hour to record on average, due to all the many different takes.
The funny thing is, for the past year, I thought I had already had an FS podcast channel on iTunes because my random audio versions were showing up on my Podcast feed on my phone. Alas, I realized only I could see my audio versions and nobody else.
So finally, after being brutally honest with myself and listening to constructive criticism by my readers, I figured out how to set up my iTunes channel officially and get to work. Read More
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...
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