Five Things Every Online Publisher Should Do

by in Lifestyle on Jan 17th, 2013

Every year brings new opportunity. Some of us overwhelm ourselves with tons of goals to accomplish, while others curiously have no goals. Yakezie.com’s main goal is to continue challenging publishers to be the best in their niche. If you win, we all win as the quality of content gets raised across the PF and lifestyle space. The other goal is to simply provide a forum where folks can hang out and trade ideas. A supportive Network encourages us to stretch beyond our comfort zone.

Ever since my old partner Chris left when his company got bought by Google 2011, I’ve been flying by the seat of my pants making sure Yakezie.com works. As someone who was not tech savvy, I’ve done a very poor job at keeping everything from breaking. The upside is that I know more about the back-end than I ever thought imaginable given I’ve been forced to learn.

Over the next couple months, you’ll probably experience many broken links, a slowdown in load time, and the occasional crash. Apologies in advance. These issues are all for the sake of simplification. Sometime in 4Q2013 or 1H2014, I plan to take Yakezie.com in a new direction. We’ve got a fantastic resource of bloggers here and I’d like to create something for the greater good.

In the meantime, I’d like to share with you some recommendations for what publishers should do to make this year and every year a better success.

FIVE ACTIONS EVERY PUBLISHER SHOULD TAKE Read More

Does Your URL Matter For SEO?

Where To Put Your Keywords

by in Lifestyle on Jan 14th, 2013

There’s been a longstanding discussion on whether keywords in your URL matter for SEO or whether your URL matters at all. Conventional wisdom states the following:

* Have your URL match your post title

* Have at least your desired keywords in your URL

* Keep your URL shorter than 140 characters

* Consider taking out conjunction words such as: and, or, but, yet, nor, for, so

As you can gather from my previous posts on SEO, I really don’t think SEO matters beyond the basics. The basics include a searchable title, filling out the meta description, writing unique relevant content around your keywords, and perhaps having keywords in your URL.

After a recent analysis, I’m not so sure.

AN EXAMPLE OF WHERE YOUR URL DOESN’T MATTER Read More

How To Buy Your Way To Success Online

Growth Through Acquisition - Yay or Nay?

by in Lifestyle on Jan 7th, 2013

The Yakezie has always been about organic growth through meritocracy. Anybody can choose to join the Yakezie Challenge and write 2-5 times a week on their own sites and build relationships within the community. If you succeed over the next six months in breaching 200,000 in Alexa and have developed 30 or so relationships with the community, you’re in. Everything you do is up to you. Freedom of choice is something we should never take for granted.

Success online doesn’t happen over night. The luckiest people are those who spend countless hours producing content, coming up with their own products, taking lots of risk, and tactfully marketing themselves until the cows come home. There were even some of us over the winter holidays who decided to write 5,000 words a week for seven weeks in a row. The idea was to push ourselves harder during a slow period to slingshot us higher into the new year. It’s crazy to see how much effort goes into creating luck don’t you think?

COMBINING ARTISTRY AND ENTREPRENEURSHIP Read More

Yakezie 2012 Recap And Goals For 2013

by in Personal Finance on Dec 31st, 2012

Dear Yakezie Community,

What a year! From Google making heavy changes to their algorithms in the Spring to several more Yakezie Members taking a leap of faith to go full-time online, we’ve been through a lot!

Despite all the uncontrollable changes we face, we can control our own efforts in the quantity and quality of our writing. Bloggers sometimes get a bad wrap for how sloppily we put together our articles. At the end of the day, most of us are just hobbyists who just want to have fun and share our thoughts. We don’t have the luxury of an editor to make our prose sing. Instead, we rely on our own blind eyes and the feedback of our readers to help out where they can.

It’s become clear that long, meaty content trumps short and sweet. The average length for the top 10 most searched posts in various categories all average over 1,500 words according to a study done by QuickSprouts. As a result, those who are most serious about blogging should consider writing more in-depth pieces.

I’d like to go through some highlights from 2012 as well as set some goals for the community in 2013. It’s so easy to forget what happened in the first half of the year. As a side note, if you’re up for promotion or a raise, know that you need to remind your manager about your Q1 & Q2 accomplishments. Otherwise, they will have no idea!

YAKEZIE 2012 YEAR IN REVIEW & HIGHLIGHT POSTS Read More

There’s No Road Like The Road Home

Sponsored Video By BMW

by in Personal Finance on Dec 29th, 2012

Over the past two weeks, I’ve been busy spending time with my parents who are visiting over the holidays. From the three hour round-trip pickup at Oakland Airport during rush hour traffic to the 4:45am drop off in order for my mother to catch a 6am flight to see her friends in between visits, I’ve put more time on the road than I have in a while!

I’m thankful for all the time spent because my parent’s visit helps fulfill one constant goal: to see them at least four times a year. As I wrote in my book, a large reason why I decided to retire from Corporate America is to spend more time with them and less time in the office. I very much want to play golf with my father before his spine ossifies. I’d like to absorb as much of my mother’s teachings while she still has the energy. One of the most fun things to ask our parents is where they were in life and what were their thoughts when they were your age. It’s scary how quickly time passes. Read More

It’s Time To Raise The Bar: Are You Ready For 2013?!

Happy Holidays!

by in Lifestyle on Dec 26th, 2012

I hope all of you are having a nice holiday spending time with family and friends. This year is rapidly coming to a close and it’s a time when we’re all reflecting on our accomplishments, failures, and starting to put together our goals for 2013.

I feel like this year started off pretty slow, but once October arrived, the rest of the year was one big blur. Hopefully all of you had a productive year overall with lots of happy memories and progress on your finances. As Yakezie folks we all love paying off debt, creating new income streams, and building our savings after all!

It’s So Easy To Forget Read More

Relationship Building Across Different Genres

The World Doesn't Revolve Around You

by in Lifestyle on Dec 21st, 2012

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? Read More

How to Get a Better Job

If you want to improve your situation, you HAVE to work for it!

by in Personal Finance on Dec 19th, 2012

If there is one generalization about young adults that has been true more often than not, it is that they (we) lack motivation. Whether that is motivation to pay off our debts, ask a girl for their number, or get a better job. This last situation was the case for me until very recently.

It’s not like I am just like your average freeloader, aimlessly drifting through life without any ambition. But getting a job where I was paid decently wasn’t a priority. Instead, I had other goals that focused around finishing my graduate school and starting a small side business. As I come close to finishing the former and have accomplished the latter (with relative success), I found myself needing to make another improvement: it was time to look for a better job.

What Makes a Job Better? Read More

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