Tag: blogging

There are 6 entries that are tagged blogging. Now displaying reults 1 - 6.

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We Write For Other Blogs, Too

Posted on December 23, 2008 by Him

We really like credit unions (hey, they give us pie) but because of travel it is more economical for us to bank with a national chain. It was to our surprise that during the summer of 2007 we were approached by the Credit Union National Association (CUNA) to be authors on a blog they were starting. We never made an annoucement about it because we were unsure of how it would all play out.

Well, fast forward 18 months to today, and we couldn't be happier with our relationship with them. The blog we write for, MoneyMix, is syndicated among the CUNA member's websites (the link goes to the blog that is hosted on a credit union's website in Indiana). The blog is aimed towards 18 to 30 year old individuals who are starting out their adult financial lives or who want to get a better grip on their finances.

The topics we write about are varied: investing, insurance, housing, driving, borrowing, earning, and spending. We have written over 100 posts (hey, that's 20% of the posts here) for that blog on these topics. Each week another post is submitted to them and published according to their schedule.

Of course we don't do this for free. However, in the grand scheme of things, the money we make from doing this isn't all that much. But when looking at it from an hourly wage perspective, we make out like a bandit. It's not just about the money though - we both enjoy writing about finances and welcome the opportunities that this gig may present to us.

In the upcoming months we'll highlight our posts from the MoneyMix blog. We hope you enjoy.

Site Maintenance; Comments Closed For A Few Days; Mini-Roundup

Posted on December 13, 2007 by Him

constructionclosed.jpg
photo: granth

Make Love, Not Debt will be moving to a new, improved host over the weekend. Comments will be closed until everything is working over at the new host.

In the meantime, read these posts:

English Major posts a beautiful narrative of a night out. Definitely some of the best writing the PF blogosphere has seen.

Jim and JD square off about whether or not to use home equity (link to Jim's) to pay down unsecured debt (link to JD's). We're thinking of doing this to pay off student loans. Don't worry, we'll write a post about this so that you can berate us comment on it.

Boston Gal treats herself to solar panels.

Trent lays out his goals for 2008. We're going to have to get on that.

We usually don't do these round-up type posts, but we're rethinking that for next year.

Site Maintenance, New Features

Posted on December 10, 2006 by Him

I've been doing some work on the site this weekend, so if you've been poking around the site today and you've noticed weird things going on, that may be the reason why. If you're navigating around the site and you notice anything weird going on, please let us know.

While many of the changes were administrative (such as upgrading to Movable Type 3.33 and updating all of the plug-ins I use for this site), I've done some things to (hopefully) make your experience here a little more enjoyable. Here's a rundown:

Live comment preview - Next to the comment input textbox you'll see an area where you can preview your comment on the fly. I like that much better than clicking through to a preview. Instructions on how to do this was found on Learning Movable Type.

Threaded (kind of) comments - Now you can reply to individual comments. The Simply Threaded plug-in allows for threaded comments in the style of the Vox blogging service. Next to the commenters' names and permalink to comment, there is a "Reply to this comment" link that you can click on to reply to individual comments. While the output isn't threaded in the traditional way, it makes following discussions a lot easier.

Better, faster search - I've used the plug-in Fast Search for better, faster searches. Your search term will be highlighted so that you don't have to wonder where in the post your search query is. I've also added some navigational tweaks to make searching go more smoothly. I'm trying to wrap my head around this plug-in, so I'll be continually updating search as I figure it out.

I have some other things coming up in the pipeline, so if you have any requests, please let me know. If your request isn't too outside of my technical knowledge, then I'll consider it.

Sell Out, Destroy Your Credibility, And Make Money At The Same Time!

Posted on July 02, 2006 by Him

While it seems especially prevalent (and quite ridiculous for some) in the personal finance blog community, advertising on blogs is fairly commonplace in the blogosphere. We all like to make a few bucks here or there by pursuing a hobby. Google ads, text-link ads, affiliate banners, and the ever popular referral link are some of the most common methods bloggers use to monetize their message.

Due to ad blindness, software that blocks ads, and general dislike towards advertising in general, advertisers are looking for innovative ways to get their messages into the hands of the people who will buy their products.

Fortunately for advertisers, but unfortunately for the internet as a whole, PayPerPost offers a service that will clog up Google's index with even more spam: they will pay bloggers to drum up some buzz about a specific company.

Bloggers are supposed to be grass-roots and largely un-tempted by money in order to bring the frontline news to the masses. The minute an author is paid by a company to pimp its product is the minute I deem him a sell-out, a corporate drone, a puppet. If a few bucks can persuade an author to write a good review, what else will that person say for some extra cash?

We have ads on our site, because, well, WE'RE BROKE. But for the record, the content at Make Love, Not Debt will NEVER be influenced by the advertising on this site. We'd rather call it quits than let that ever happen.

(via CNET)

Do You Slackers Actually Work At Your Job?

Posted on April 18, 2006 by Him

Since I've been on my couch recuperating from my surgery, I've been watching vapid daytime television and have been reading the never ending barrage of new blog posts. During the average workday, there are about a bazillion posts that are added a day to pfblogs.org. In addition to those people posting, there are even more who are commenting on said posts. Obviously, your place of employment is not one that actively restricts your internet usage, but it may be monitoring your online activity without you knowing.

We try to only post when we're at home because we do not want our employers to find out what we're doing. We don't directly reveal our income so technically we wouldn't get fired for breaching non-disclosure agreements, but we still don't need our IT departments to know everything that we're up to.

I do believe that employees are entitled to some breaks at work, and what is done on that time should be within work standards. It is when I see blogs with multiple posts during the day in which I think that there is some abuse of the system going on. No matter how much your job sucks, it is unethical and immoral to be getting paid to waste time.

Please humor me, bloggers, personal finance or otherwise. Here are a few questions for you to ponder:

Please feel free to comment anonymously if you feel you'll get in trouble, slackers.

Now with tagging!

Posted on January 30, 2006 by Him

Categories are so 2002.

Welcome to Web 2.0. What is Web 2.0? I have no idea, but it seems to be one of the most used tech buzzwords around these days. Here's what Wikipedia has to say about it. In summary, I'd say it's the interactive web that is showcased wonderfully in web applications such as gmail, Google Maps, del.icio.us, Flickr, and Technorati.

One of the biggest ideas to come out of Web 2.0 is the idea of tagging - using short (usually one word) descriptors to "label" anything that can be found on the web. Multiple tags can be used to describe a single element. Personally, I like tagging better than categories because it makes organization much easier and tags let the user more accurately define what the element is. So we've gotten rid of categories and are now tagging entries.

A trendy thing that web developers and bloggers use to track tag usage are "tag clouds." You can see this blog's tag cloud in the sidebar to the left under the header "Tags." The font-size of the tag is directly proportional to how much the tag is used, and serves as a quick visual indicator of what's hot right now in this blog.

One feature that I'm working on right now are "tag intersections," or showing the posts that have multiple tags associated with them, such as "debt+net worth". I hope to have this worked out soon.

Tagging isn't just for me though! If you have a del.icio.us account, you can help create the tagged web also. I've added a new link for each entry at the bottom of the post - "post to del.icio.us" - it lets you, the reader, decide what tags a post may be deserving of.

The reason for all of this? To make the Make Love, Not Debt experience as smooth as possible. In addition to tag intersections, I'm also going to incorporate search. My goal is for you, the reader, not to click more than twice to find the article that you're looking for.

All of this tagging stuff could not have been done without the Tags.App plugin for Moveable Type. It rocks!

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