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Daily Roundup: Retirement Planning, Free Credit Reports, and Structured Procrastination
Thursday, 20th September 2007 (by J.D.)This article is about Spare Change
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Folks, I don’t like this new layout. It’s ugly. There are too many ads. It doesn’t feel like home. Unless there’s some surprise outburst of popular support, I’m going to revert to the old Get Rich Slowly layout over the weekend (which may mean you’ll have to reload, reload, reload to get it to display correctly again). Someday, when I’ve paid off my debt, I actually plan to pay for a professional custom blog design, but that’s several months in the future. Meanwhile, here are some great personal finance stories from around the web:
Nicole at Dollars & Sense Education recently completed a five-part primer on saving for retirement. This is a fine introduction for people beginning to explore this subject. [Part 1, 2, 3, 4, 5.]
Last year I posted a brief entry about how to obtain your free credit report. My notes were okay, but Nicole Gustas at Mahalo has put together the best set of instructions on how to get a free credit report that I’ve ever seen. Admittedly it’s not complicated, but if you’re at all daunted by the process, bookmark this guide. (See also: past GRS articles on the anatomy of a credit score and proper care and feeding of your credit score.)
Wise Bread has a guide to spotting counterfeit money. Not sure when I would ever remember use this info, but it’s still fun to know.
Finally, while I was procrastinating by reading LifeClever this evening, I found an article by John Wesley about how to procrastinate more productively. Wesley advocates structured procrastination: “Rather than doing nothing at all, take care of business that normally gets forgotten. This is a great way to deal with mundane chores. Use your desire to avoid real work to force yourself to work harder at something else!”
25 Responses to “Daily Roundup: Retirement Planning, Free Credit Reports, and Structured Procrastination”
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September 20th, 2007 at 9:38 pm
Wow. Aside from the top banner, I hadn’t even noticed that the format had changed.
September 20th, 2007 at 9:46 pm
Ha! Andrea, that’s a testament to how lousy the design already is. It’s a patchwork built upon a default WordPress theme. It’s functional, but ugly. Kris tells me that it doesn’t matter, and I know that regular readers don’t care. But I think first impressions are important. I alway wish GRS looked a little snazzier…
September 20th, 2007 at 10:14 pm
The right side of the page is just SO busy. Some of the stuff just seems like it’s there for the sake of being there, too. For example, I feel that Most Rated is not a meaningful category of posts, especially considering the lack of Highest Rated.
Are Sponsors different from ads? They feel tackier than ads because they’re relegated down the page, have now special formatting, and feel so hodge-podged as to be dodgy (three ‘dg’ words… awesome!).
You already have an archive page link at the top of the page (but it’s hard to find).
I think it would be nice to replace the huge list of categories with a link to a categories page. Categories are a relatively arbitrary way to find articles. I wonder how many people actually use it. I don’t know if you can tell that.
I wonder if most people view articles from the main page domain.org/blog or from a specific article page, found from either google or rss. if it’s an article, there’s a lot of stuff that people might never see, which seems like a waste.
You have a graphic for the email address, but it doesn’t match the address in the contact section. Also, I find those graphic email addresses so unfriendly. It just screams out to me to use spam filtering software, either on your server or your mail client. I think you’re on a Mac, so check out SpamSieve.
The way the blog network graphics are displayed, they look just like ads, which isn’t so cool. Also, the big list of sites that are part of those networks feels like a bit much.
I guess in short, with your eventual redesign (I’m totally confident that this will become really successful for you), I would hope for a more minimalist design with ads and categories that are really truly meaningful, rather than just clutter. It’s kinda like cleaning a virtual room.
This sounds really negative. I’m sorry. I love this site; the content is great. i recommend it to people all the time. I would just love to see the design become even better.
September 20th, 2007 at 11:00 pm
Awesome feedbac, Matt. Thanks.
September 20th, 2007 at 11:31 pm
I love this blog and I will keep reading it whatever layout you choose! Good luck!
September 20th, 2007 at 11:35 pm
I originally read the article/link to be “spending counterfeit money”. It made me scratch my head, but I kept on reading. I didn’t realize my mistake til the second time I saw the article!
September 21st, 2007 at 4:14 am
J.D, there are wordpress developers out there that will do a custom design for you for around $300-$500. That’s only 1 day ad revenue for you.
September 21st, 2007 at 4:27 am
One thing I can suggest is http://www.spampoison.com . You put a little graphic with some code on your site, and it works rather well. If you have some Photoshop skillz, you can even recolor the graphic so it’s not so “in your face.”
What it does is entice little spam bots into entering the gingerbread house, and then shuts them in the witch’s oven, essentially. We’re fond of it, and have seen a decrease in the amount of website-generated spam to our public e-mail accounts.
September 21st, 2007 at 5:09 am
Have you ever tried crazyegg.com on your site? I’d like to see the results of that since you have so many readers.
Which brings me to the main point of blogs - content and community - which you have an extreme amount of.
I’ve always found your blog to look very clean. Looks like you added some more advertising than before which might make it look cluttered compared to the old site.
Seems like with the amount of traffic you have you could make good $$ from your blog. Maybe you need to sell a JD product or two of some sort.
It would be nice to use professional designers because they can work wonders but I know it’s expensive.
Because of your content and community I don’t know if you’re losing readers at all because of your design, I can’t imagine, but only you know the numbers.
I would move the search button down where the “Recent”, “Most Discussed”, etc. area.
I would move the big Google Adsense on the right down one and move the ad boxes up. Seems like a lot of text at the top of the post. And I’m in single post viewing right now.
My two cents.
Bill
September 21st, 2007 at 5:44 am
MDJ wrote: …do a custom design for you for around $300-$500. That’s only 1 day ad revenue for you.
HA! GRS is doing well, but not that well. If I were making $300/day, I’d be living in Mazatlan, sipping Pina Coladas. $500/day and I’d buy a MINI Cooper.
Bill, thanks for the comments.
September 21st, 2007 at 6:33 am
JD: I don’t think you need to scrap this design, you could just clean it up. I agree that the number of 125 x 125 graphics that you have is perhaps a bit much. Do those ads convert well? If not, then you could scale back to just the network badges. If they *do* generate a lot of revenue for you, then you should think carefully before you abandon them. Yes, a couple of readers have said they make it look busy. But if that allows you to devote more time and energy to what you do, then I think the vast majority of your readers would be on board.
I think that people tend to forget that you’re not pulling down a salary for this. If you don’t monetize your site then your long term plans of doing this full time become unworkable.
I agree that the “Most Rated” section is kind of odd. My guess is that those are probably the most divisive topics, not the best topics. If you could truncate the titles such that the titles and votes stayed on the same line, that would go a long way toward cleaning it up. Or just drop that section
Bottom line: What matters most is what appears in the center column and, while I understand you desire for a cleaner, fresher theme, what you have now is far from an eyesore.
If you really want to clean it up, I would drop the 125 x 125 ads and scale back to just the network badges (unless you’re really making bank on those). I would also drop the most rated section, and reformat the links in the “Sponsors” section to make them match the rest of the links. Also, move the sponsors to the bottom. They’re really looking for the link, and not traffic, so move the reader-related stuff up (categories, archives) and move those down. The amazon ad… Does that convert? If not, I’d lose it.
Otherwise I think your site looks fine. Sure, a new theme would be great, but I don’t think you should totally scrap what you’ve done thus far.
September 21st, 2007 at 7:23 am
These layout issues or whatever mean nothing to me … more than anything I’d like to see more posts per day. I’m hoping at some point soon you will take a risk, as all business owners must do, and start doing this sucker full-time!
September 21st, 2007 at 7:35 am
JD-
Don’t forget that a sizable portion of your audience (including me) are probably reading your blog via the RSS feed. I usually have no idea what a site looks like because the feed strips that stuff out. That being said, the current design has some niceties and some…. not-so-niceties. I think you could do better but I wouldn’t break the bank looking for something.
There are plenty of sites that host free designs intended to be used for blogs, many of which are pretty slick. Feel free to email me if you have any questions about this. (FYI, I am a professional developer with 10+ years experience building web sites).
September 21st, 2007 at 8:31 am
Thanks for the feedback everyone. Dave brings up an interesting dilemma I face all the time: how often to post. Right now I limit the content to one main post a day, and maybe one or two smaller things. I could post much more, but don’t. I have a backlog of 20 guest entries. I have scores of things GRS readers have sent me to look at. I find lots of things I could summarize.
I don’t post more often, though, because I think that many people like the slower pace. That said, I have considered reviving Money Hacks to use as a more-frequent posting area. Five or six posts a day there might be keen.
Anyone still reading this? Care to provide feedback?
September 21st, 2007 at 8:41 am
I think knowledge of how to spot counterfeit currency should be mandatory for anyone who works cash register. It is one of those skills; like CPR, reading, and hygiene; that improve our society a lot when they are well understood by a large percentage of the population.
There are a lot of dubious technologies out there for detecting counterfeit currency, but none of them are nearly as effective as the ingenious countermeasures embedded in the bills by the fine folks at the Bureau of Engraving and Printing combined with the mind of a clever register worker.
Learn to detect counterfeit currency. You too can fight crime just like a superhero!
September 21st, 2007 at 9:13 am
JD - I’d say the more posts the better. Traffic will go up, search engines will crawl more, activity will increase.
If the trade off is a loss of quality then it’s not worth it however.
Rather than splitting your focus between two money related sites I think you would do better by focusing on the one site. If you have more to post I’d post it here.
As far as the layout - it doesn’t seem like a huge change. One thing you could do is make the forum more visible.
September 21st, 2007 at 10:46 am
J.D. — when Marshall Brain started How Stuff Works, it was pretty slow paced and nothing like it is today. I mean, he started it at his kitchen table as a simple hobby. I remember getting so frustrated in the early days of that web site, because I could see the incredible potential it had to be so much more valuable for the consumer, the people who went to the site. There weren’t enough articles; there weren’t enough subjects covered; it needed employees BIGTIME. How Stuff Works has finally become a beautiful thing today. Now here’s a shocker for you: GRS has started off even better than HSW!! Maybe use HSW as a business model. In fact, are you aware that Marshall Brain himself admires your work and posted about your site on his personal blog??? This is how I found out about GRS. The bottom line is you are sitting on a goldmine — you’re like Sam Walton sitting there in that first dime store. It’s time to build Wal-mart now.
September 21st, 2007 at 11:06 am
Hey JD,
I don’t care what your page looks like. There are a couple reasons for this:
- I use an rss reader so I rarely actually see your page
- So long as a page isn’t prohibitively unusable (i.e. no use of the blink tag which thank god seems to have died) I don’t care what it looks like if it’s providing some value to me. To me the content is what matters.
If this new design will help you get more impressions and thus a) get out of debt faster and b) help make this a profitable venture for you without c) pissing off your readers then I’m all for it.
September 21st, 2007 at 12:14 pm
for great blog design in the future, talk to Tim Challies over at challies.com
His is a religious site, but he also does blog design for a living, I think he does some really nice work.
September 21st, 2007 at 1:28 pm
JD,
I read your site all the time and find it very helpful in keeping me on the right track with financial decisions. Personally, I don’t mind the new layout at all; if it’s more profitable for you, then I say stick with it. Thanks for an awesome site! Keep up the good work.
September 22nd, 2007 at 7:11 am
JD
I’m hooked on your blog and have been reading it for a little over a year. I must say, though, that I agree with your statement that there are too many adds (or at least the way they appear on the page makes it look a bit too ‘commercial’). When I first started reading this blog, I stuck with it because I was looking for financial ideas and the clean - ‘ad less’ design made me feel comfortable that I was not being sold anything; there were no hidden agendas.
I think that for your readers that are already hooked, it may be easy to overlook the ads because we KNOW that you have such valuable content here. For potential new readers, however, with this current look, the ads may detract a bit from the content.
That being said though, if the ads are a source of revenue to keep this blog going or your quest for your financial goals, then advertise away. But, good luck in finding a way to keep the ads from overwhelming the page.
Oh, as for posting more… I vote for sticking with one main post a day. Only because I wouldn’t be able to keep up with any more than that
September 22nd, 2007 at 9:33 am
The layout doesn’t phase me at all. I read your site 99% of the time thru RSS.
September 22nd, 2007 at 2:26 pm
You’re right, the ads clutter things up a bit. But like the previous poster I read mostly thru RSS, so it’s not a big issue for me.
If I were you I’d have a look at how many people use RSS instead of looking at the actual site - before paying for a new layout. I mean, if most people read it using RSS - what’s the point of spending the money…?
Not sure what engine you’re using at the moment, but I’ve been looking at different portal systems for a client these past weeks. On the Windows side, I was quite impressed by DotNetNuke’s ease of used. On the Open Source side there’s loads out there, but Joomla is pretty much my favorite.
So, should your logs reveal that your major traffic is not via RSS but via the actual site - then it might make sense to use these - free - portals instead of apying too much for another solution.
Just my 2 cents worth!
September 22nd, 2007 at 8:07 pm
This site design is nice. I like it.
If you change it, don’t make it too fancy, keep it simple, plain and easy to use.
Oh, also try to get rid of the scripts if you can.
October 13th, 2007 at 7:13 pm
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