I don't use a blog reader or anything, since I am obviously the world's least professional blogger -- I don't even have my own domain! And I don't post on a schedule, or do basically anything to monetize my blog, though it is my dream someone will use one of those capitalone360 affiliate links in the sidebar one day and I'll make $40 off it. :-)
But I've started to notice lately that people I have bookmarked have been absent for a while. Debt Debs, The Intentional Penny, The Barefoot Budgeter...all have been dark since late October with no explanation. Girl Meets Debt, who gave me what amounted to my big break (hee!) by posting a guest interview with me, disappeared about six months ago.
I hope some of the people I'm missing come back! It feels odd to click on their links in my bookmarks and have the last post come up from so long ago, and have no idea where people are and what they're up to and whether or not they're coming back.
And it's equally weird to think how long I've been at this, when I didn't want to pay for a domain back in March because I was afraid I'd get bored with it after a month. It's still motivational, though, and enjoyable, so I keep it up. Maybe I'll do it long enough to become the longest-tenured least professional PF blogger? Who's been around the longest without moving to self-hosted wordpress? I bet I can outlast whoever it is! Now there's a 2015 goal to get me started.... :-)
Multiple things:
ReplyDelete1. If I could sign up for your CapitalOne account, I would totally do it. Sadly, I am Canadian and cannot help with that.
2. I miss Wendy. I email back and forth with her, but I seriously miss interacting more often than that :)
3. I know that Female Science Professor (my Academia/Women in STEM blog fave) has been on blogspot for 8 years or so. Nicole and Maggie have been at wordpress for 4 years or so. So you're not alone in that :)
(Oh, and I'm not calling them nonprofessional bloggers - just that they didn't buy their own domain).
I think it's just that the States are saturated with CapitalOne accounts -- basically everyone already has one, so there's no easy way to wring out affiliate income from them anymore. Needed to get in on the ground floor!
DeleteI miss Wendy's blog too. I don't even know what happened -- she seemed upset about something, but no word what, and then *poof*! I really liked it -- it was one of the first blogs I read all the way through, start to finish.
I don't really think I'm going to make the record of never moving to self-hosted! I'm actually glad I'm the self-proclaimed least professional blogger ever -- it takes the pressure off, some, if I want to disappear for a week or two, or just write about nothing but my grocery bill for a month.
I have also been wondering where Debt Debs went. I was thinking about TIP the other day. Until then, I didn't realize TIP hadn't been posting, though I loved her sense of humor and enjoyed reading her blog posts. I think I got pretty out of the loop when I went to posting every day in October and wasn't visiting blogs. I'm just now feeling back in the groove from that.
ReplyDeleteAnyway... same here. Wish they'd come back!!
Yeah, I miss them! I guess there's always a lot of turnover in things like this, but I wish people would at least log in and say "hey, life got crazy and this is a low priority for me right now."
DeleteI saw a deal one day on domains, so I bought one for $1. Does that make me a professional?
ReplyDeleteI only started my blog in September, but I was around to start to really like some of the sites you mentioned that haven't posted for a while. Too bad.
I was kind of kidding about the professional thing -- I know if I tried to get more pro about this, I'd end up spending too much time on it and not enough time on my actual work, so I'm kind of intentionally super-cheap and low-key about it. :)
DeleteYes, some bloggers seem to drop off the radar with no warning. I clicked onto "Debt-Free Tejana" and saw that her domain had expired two days ago. That seemed strange since she had just posted very recently. I hope she continues to blog. She is a dedicated debt buster!
ReplyDeleteHuh! Maybe she just forgot to renew the domain -- hope she comes back.
DeleteI am never moving to Wordpress. $10 a year, and I get a blog name that sounds kind of fancy. At least I think it is. :)
ReplyDeleteAgreed that it's weird to see people fall off the radar, even though I do so from time to time. I feel like most people don't have the stamina to keep writing long term. Over a long enough time line, we all probably drop out, right?
Oh, sure, I'm probably not still going to be doing this in ten years.... Probably. I dunno, it is so satisfying to get into the nitty-gritty, maybe I will! I like the freedom my aggressively unprofessional stance gives me mentally, though. If I bought a domain I'd feel like I needed to put more time into it instead of just writing about my grocery list for six weeks straight, or whatever. I wouldn't mind having a few more readers/commenters, just because I enjoy the interaction with new people, so I might try to get more intentional about raising my profile a little in the new year.
DeleteI...will not be done by 40, as I'm turning 36 in a month and have approximately 8 million years to go until financial freedom, but I admire your ambition :-)
It feels like you're going to have plenty to blog about as you transition through your various financial stages. The meters are going the right way, after all.
ReplyDeleteOf course, maybe you'll stop blooging because you've gotten too rich to worry about it!
I would like a cached version of the various blogs I've followed to see who has come and gone, but that might get a little melancholic.
I like that way of putting it -- the meters are going in the right direction, even if they're just inching :)
DeleteThe likelihood of my getting too rich to stop blogging is very low!
Cheers :)
I like the fact that you are on blogger. I only did WordPress b/c i found the directions on MMM and i was on sabbatical and needed to do some writing every day aside from academic writing. I love when i get updates so don't change!!! We need more academics blogging on personal finance.
ReplyDeleteI probably won't! I'm super lazy and have too much other stuff going on, plus I like the old-school hipster vibe of it :)
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