The Best Way To Grow Your Blog Is To Not Blog About Blogging

Write About What People Care About

by in Personal Finance on Aug 9th, 2019

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. 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

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.

The Same Concept Goes With FIRE

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.

Focus On Your Expertise

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.

The FIRE Movement Is Missing The Numbers

Financial Independence Retire Early Needs To Get More Real

by in Personal Finance on Oct 14th, 2018

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

What to Expect When You Invest in Real Estate

by in Personal Finance on Mar 6th, 2017

While the IRS considers receipts derived from real estate investments “passive income,” the fact of the matter is owning and managing property is typically anything but passive. And frankly, should you approach it as such, you’re likely to find success to be elusive.

With that said, if you’re wondering what to expect when you invest in real estate, the first thing you should anticipate is to be involved. Like any other investment, if you leave its management solely to others, you’re likely to find everyone involved is making good—except you. Read More

Navigating Auto Insurance with a DUI History

by in Personal Finance on Feb 15th, 2016

Whatever the reason, regardless of circumstance, and despite how much you may have progressed since, if you’ve received a DUI in the past, then you are going to deal with ramifications for a long time. What you can do, however, is start to better understand why it is costing you so much to have a DUI on your record. There are at least a few pieces of information that can help you to plan your future and hopefully save you some money in the process.

Read More

Blogging Away The Income Gap For Financial Freedom

by in Personal Finance on Nov 16th, 2015

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 the time.

Creating a money making universal soldier is one of the key points from showing income profiles of financially free people over on Financial Samurai. For some reason, there is so much pushback from folks who do not believe it’s possible to make a good living beyond the 9-to-5! Read More

Evaluating the Real Cost of Buying a New Car

by in Personal Finance on Nov 1st, 2015

To a lot of people, owning a new car represents many important things in life: independence, adulthood, convenience and a validation of success. But in addition to the many wonderful aspects new cars bring, they’re also quite the expenditure, and we’re not even talking about their initial price tag.

Let’s break down all the costs and fees many people don’t realize buying a new car brings below.  Read More

How To Survive A Stock Market Correction As An Investing Blogger

by in Personal Finance on Aug 24th, 2015

Let’s say you’ve quit your job to be a financial blogger, more specifically, a blogger that mainly writes about how to make money in stocks. Or maybe you’re planning on quitting your job to be an investing blogger. Please reconsider! With a 15%+ correction in the Dow Jones within three days, things are looking dicey.

We’ve seen a proliferation of stock market bloggers who’ve never worked in the industry and who’ve only seen an up market since they started within the past five years, give advice to thousands of readers. Some might not even have any formal college education. This is a very precarious situation for readers and blogger alike.

If you are an investing blogger, you’re going to face difficult times if you don’t diversify your content because people will just stop visiting your site if all you’re talking about is your latest stock purchase that is going down. When you’re losing money in the stock market, the last thing people want to do is talk about the stock market!

Further, a lot of people start wondering whether investing with a robo advisor is safe. Everybody starts to doubt everything when they are losing money!  Read More

How Many Times Should You Post A Week? Blogging And Social Media

by in Personal Finance on Aug 11th, 2015

After six years, I’ve average 3.5 posts a week on Financial Samurai. My frequency is generally M, W, F, and sometimes Sunday followed by M, W, F again. However, I have experimented with doing one post every two days for months at a time as well e..g. M, W, F, Sunday, T, Th, Saturday, M, W, F repeat.

During the first three years of blogging, my mindset was always “more is more.” The more posts you can publish, the more comments you can leave, and the more guest posts you can write, the better. I even encourage fellow Yakezie Members to write the most during the slow summer months in order to get that “slingshot effect” post Labor Day.

Now, I’ve changed my production thought process. I’d like to hear from you how your production thought process has changed as well. 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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