SavvyScot – A Personal Finance Blog. Or is it……
This blog has been a lot of things recently, but personal is definitely not one of them. I wrote a couple of weeks back what can only be described as a list of ‘excuses‘ as to why the number of (personal) personal finance posts have slipped.
Have I been a sell-out to guest writers? Possibly… But then again, what personal finance blogger in their right mind would turn down cold, hard, cash in favour of making their blog more like a diary? Could you honestly turn away a small fortune?
Why do Bloggers even Blog?
I think I might have an answer:
- Bloggers who make affiliate income – Jeremy over at Modest Money comes to mind with his recent push with credit card affiliates. These bloggers don’t necessarily need to rely on sponsored guest posts to make an income – commissions from referrals takes care of that. Unfortunately, this takes a LONG time to establish and is hard work. Furthermore, Google only needs to penalise you once for your best keywords to lose their value and search referrals can dry up overnight.
- Bloggers who have a product to sell – This could be an eBook like Crystal at Budgeting in the Fun Stuff or an eLearning courses / guides like those Chris Guillbeau writes. If you have a truly solid product and are a well established blogger – then kudos to you – you deserve it!
- Bloggers who write to promote their business / skills – If you are a freelancer it makes sense to write your own blog to showcase your skills and prove that you can engage an audience. If you own a business it makes sense to drive traffic to the website through a blog and increase its exposure on Google. If you are a technical wizz at something, it makes sense to build yourself an online presence. Writing for these bloggers is a value-add to the bigger picture.
- Bloggers who blog simply because they love it – I have concluded that some people blog purely for the fun of it. They enjoy the following and conversation that comes with writing. If you consider somebody like Mochimac at SaveSpendSplurge; her posts are always so full of detail and enjoyable. She must literally take forever to compile these (or has it down to such a fine art because she is so well practiced). What’s more is that Mochimac also has a product – The Budgeting Tool – which is not only very successful, but she donates the proceeds to charity. Truly selfless right?
In the Beginning..
I definitely started out blogging because I enjoyed it. I’m not saying that I no longer enjoy it, rather I find it harder and harder to make the time to write. I am under no illusion that if I continue to post constant guest posts, the ratings of this blog will soon slip and the advertisers will stop approaching me in the first place. I need to find a balance – A means of ensuring that I captivate an audience and people are interested enough to return!
If I had the time I would most definitely be concentrating on developing affiliate income – just look at how much money comparison sites make for being the ‘middle-man’. In the UK, around 10 million people a year use comparison sites – what they probably don’t realise is that they are paying £650 MILLION in commissions. I want a slice of that pie!
In the Future…
Here is where I make a promise to take a new direction with SavvyScot. I have worked waaay to hard over the last 14 months to just let it fall apart. Will I still be accepting guest posts? Hell yes – but they will be much better written (more about that soon). Will I commit to writing regularly about fun and interesting things – Hell yes!
I leave for Mexico tomorrow. 2 Weeks of relaxing, not thinking about work, eating, running (Tough Mudder is only a few weeks away now) and diving. On that, if I die cave diving it has been a pleasure folks…
I’ll leave you with some pictures of the cenotes we will visiting…
Have fun in Mexico and good luck with finding a direction for your blog.
I fond I was posting far too many paid posts back in Jan/Feb and so the entire month of March I didn’t post a single one. Now I try to keep it to a maximum of 1 per week and I make sure not to fill my normal blogging slots with them.
I blog for the love of it 80% of the time I think, and of course try to balance it out with making a few bucks here and there. It’s important to me personally not to lose the integrity of my blog by having too many sponsored posts that don’t make sense or turn away readers. It’s a balance and some people have more tolerance to post stuff like that. But it’s every individuals prerogative! Have fun in Mexico!
Blogging def. is an act of love and something I got into because I wanted to add my voice in the PF world. I do make a little bit of money off of it but only just recently. I also like interacting with cool bloggers who have interesting ideas about paying off debt and building savings.
Funny that this post should be published just as I turn down another crappy guest post promoting credit cards! I simply won’t do it anymore because I know it will turn people off. If I can’t be proud of my body of work, why do it?
I use my blog as a well to cross sell my web design services too. Sometimes, I will link my clients to a post on my blog and let them read about my money making, business and marketing tips and it helps convince them they are doing the right thing by working with me.
If I was to fill that space with transparent low grade guest posts it would make them think less of me, not more.
Good point Darren. It muddies the water with all your other work too huh?!
Incredible pictures! Enjoy the diving.
Thanks Mike – have just shared some more pictures 🙂