Seeking Financial Freedom through Savvy Personal Finance & Online Entrepreneurship

As I continue to build this blog throughout August, I’ve always looking for things that can add to the user-friendliness of this site. While I was browsing a finance related blog tonight, Thorton Wealth Management, I noticed a simple graphic at the bottom of the posts called ShareThis so I decided to check it out.

If you read a lot of blogs, you’ve probably noticed that a good number of them have some type of sharing tool at the bottom of the posts. Basically, if the readers find a particular post interesting, they can share the post with members of various social bookmarking sites such as DIGG, StumbleUpon, del.ici.ous, etc. This is great for the blog owners because it can really increase the awareness of your blog and bring a lot more readers in.

Sharethis is one free streamlined tool that you can use to increase the distribution of your content without cluttering up your blog with a bunch of different icons. It simply creates one icon at the bottom of your post that you users can click on and and share your content via a variety of social bookmarking sites, social networking (Facebook, Myspace, etc), or via email. It’s compatible with all the major blogging platforms and I found it especially easy to install the Wordpress plugin on this site.

So, if you looking for a simple but powerful way to add sharing capabilities to your blog or website, ShareThis is a great tool to use that may bring in a lot more traffic to your site.

Today marks the two week anniversary of the opening of this blog. It’s been a busy couple weeks so far as I familiarize myself with the blogging process, work on the design of this site, and try to add quality content that you the readers will find helpful in your quest for reaching financial freedom.

Off to a Great Start!

After two weeks, I’m very pleased with the progress this site has made. Chris Pearson and the folks over at DIYThemes have been a big help in getting this blog laid out the way it is. I also think I’ve covered some very important basic topics on some things that you can do today to start saving more money as far as your personal finances go and also how you can get your own online business going by Starting a Wordpress Blog in 3 Simple Steps.

What the future holds

I’m excited about the future and have a lot of great Personal Finance and Online Entrepreneurship topics, for example, how to promote and monetize a website once you have one. As you may have guessed, the amount of money a website can produce is entirely dependent on how much traffic it receives. As I continue to build this blog and begin to promote and monetize it, I’ll share exactly what I’m doing so you can follow along. Remember though, that it all starts with content and design. If a site doesn’t provide good quality content and doesn’t look good, it will never reach its full potential. Anyway, I’ll be blogging more about all of this in the near future so stay tuned!

Last week, I started off the Online Entrepreneurship How To’s series by showing you how you could get your own domain and a professionally designed site up in 3 simple steps. Very soon I’ll start posting some of the more meaty content explaining how you can begin to monetize your website but before we get there, you absolutely need to have a system in place to track your websites progress. Simply put, if you are not monitoring your websites progress, you have no way of knowing how well your site is doing or what you need to work on.

So how do you analyze your site?

It actually can be very simple and best of all, completely free. Using Google Analytics, a free service offered by Google, you insert a small bit of code into your website and then your site begins to report back to google. You simply log into your Google account and the information is compiled into very sophisticated yet easy to read charts, graphs, and tables. You can track how people are finding your site, what content is popular and what content is not popular, how often they visit or if they never come back, etc. etc. You can read a full list of the features on the Google Analytics home page. It is really powerful software and it will help you make a better and more profitable site!

Installing the code?

So how do you install Google Analytics on your site? It as simple as copying and pasting the some simple code onto your site. If you are using the Thesis Wordpress Theme, then it is even easier! You just go to the Design tab then to the Thesis Options tab and insert the code you copied from Google and then hit the save button! Within 24 hours you will begin to start receiving stats from your site and you’re one step closer to turning your site into an income producing machine.

Stay tuned for more Online Entrepreneurship How To’s as we move on from some of the initial setup procedures into some strategies you can use to start making some money online.

Saw The Dark Knight last night with my girlfriend. While I usually try and wait until movies come out on DVD and then just add them to my Netflix queue to save money, I gave into temptation on this one and went to the local cinema to see it. And, I was not disappointed! The great reviews this movie is getting are well deserved in my opinion. If you, like me, only see a few movies a year in the theater, this may be one you might want to catch.

Anyone else seen it? What did you think?

We all know that having a healthy lifestlye can provide a lot of benefits. You feel better and better about yourself, are less prone to sickness, and a healthy lifestyle will actually save you money. The healthier you are, the less you cost to insure and a lot of employers are now offering incentives to their employees if they meet certain requirements.

It is a lot easier to eat fast food and come home and turn on the t.v. for a few hours after a stressful workday. I personally was very active in highschool and college but now find it a real challenge to force myself to get out exercise in the evenings.

However, I know that as I try to take the right steps on the road to financial freedom, I realize that your maintaining your physical health is just as important as building your financial health.

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As each month comes to an end, I’ll post a Month in Review post to recap what has happened here on SeekingFF. July 23, 2008 marked the creation of this blog and though it was a short month, several important topics were discussed. That being said, here’s a quick recap of what happened this month and some things you may want to read to in case you missed them the first time around.

Money Savers / Money Makers

Several simple things you can do that will save and make you more money.

Move your Cash over to an Online Savings Account and earning 8 - 10 times the interest rate that a traditional savings account at a standard brick and mortar bank.

Get Free Stock Trades with Zecco and stop paying $10 or more a trade using your traditional brokerage firm.

How using a Cash Back Credit Card responsibly can save you $50 or more a month.>

How you can earn an relatively safe 8% to 12% return on your money by making person to person loans through Prosper.

Online Entrepreneurship

A starting point to building a profitable online business.

How To: Start your own Wordpress Blog

Book Reviews

Books I’m currently reading and will review on this site as I finish.

Dave Ramsey’s Total Money Makeover

John Bogle’s Little Book of Common Sense Investing

Did you miss some of these posts? Just check out the July 2008 Archives to see a chronological listing of everything that was posted this month.

All in all, I’m happy with the progress this blog has made in its initial month and am excited about what the future holds.

Stay tuned in August for more information on how you can save and make more money and continue to take steps towards achieving financial freedom!

Questions / Comments / Suggestions for August?

Simply leave a comment and I’d be happy to talk with you.

Peer-to-Peer (P2P) lending is something that is becoming very popular on the internet. Basically people lend to other people and both parties benefit. The borrowers benefit because they can get a lower rate than they could at a traditional bank, with a credit card, or from one of those pay day advance places. The lender benefits because they earn a higher rate than they would get keeping their money in a bank and often a better rate then they would get investing in stocks, bonds or mutual funds.

Example: Someone has a credit card balance of $5,000 at a 16% interest rate (not at all uncommon). They could use a p2p lending site and get a $5,000 loan to pay off the card at 8%. This would save them $400 a year in interest. By lending to this person, you could get a relatively safe 8% rate of return which is more than double what you will find at any bank.

Earn 12%+ on your Money?

There are a couple different sites out there doing this. I use Prosper which was the first and the largest p2p company. Prosper gives borrowers a credit grade based on their credit report that you use when choosing to make a loan. The lending process is very similar to an eBay auction. A borrower creates a listing telling why they need the loan, how they are going to repay it, etc. Then prosper lenders bid on the loan. You can bid as little as $50 and pick the rate you are willing to lend at. Prosper then takes the best bids and uses it to create the loan. So if there is a listing for a $5,000 loan to payoff credit cards and 200 people make $50 bids, Prosper will take the first 100 bids with the lowest rates to create the loan. Then once a month, you receive a payment in your prosper account that you can transfer to your bank account or use to make additional loans.

I’ve been using Prosper since May 2007 and have placed about 30 $50 loans so far. So far everything has gone just fine and my average rate of return has been in excess of 12% which has been a lot better than my investments have done over the same period.

Make Money & Feel Good About It

It’s important to note that Prosper loans are not guaranteed. Just like any other loan, there is a chance that the loan could go bad and you could lose the money you lent. The grade of the borrower allows you to make loans based on your risk tolerance and prosper also has an independent collection agency that will try and collect on bad loans. By keeping your loans to $50, you can diversify with many loans spread over different grades so if one goes bad, it doesn’t affect you too much. So based on that, lending on Prosper is a great way to make a little extra money online and also help some very deserving people who are being screwed by the banks, credit cards, and pay day advance places.

Like I said, I’ve been on Prosper for awhile now so if you have any questions, feel free to leave a comment and I’d be happy to answer!

Credit Cards often get a bad rap from a lot of the financial gurus out there. It is true that if you charge more than you can afford, you can easily find yourself paying a high interest rate on your outstanding balance and get yourself into trouble.

However, if you have the discipline not to overspend and pay your balance in full at the end of each month, you will find that using credit cards responsibly, can actually save you some serious cash provided you pick the right card. Maybe $50 or more a month! - Read on for an example

For example, say you have an American Express Blue Cash or the Discover More card (my personal favorites). These two rewards card offers you up to 5% Cash Back on all your purchases. So you effective can save 5% of all your purchases, right? Well yes, but read on because it gets even sweeter!

So yes you save 5% on all your purchases but by using your card you also extend the amount of time you actually have to pay for the item(s) you purchased. Example, say on the first day of your billing cycle you make a trip to Wal-Mart and purchase $1,000 worth of goods. 30 days later your billing cycle ends and you receive a bill from the credit card company for the $1,000. Most cards typically come with a grace period of 20 days or so. That means that the $1,000 is actually due 20 days after your statement generates, or a total of 50 days after you made the original purchase.

How does this benefit you? Well if you had that $1,000 set aside to pay your bill in an Online Savings Account (HSBC Direct for example) that was earning 4% interest, it would have earned approximately $5.48 in interest over that 50 day period. How much does the actual $1,000 worth of goods cost when the time comes to pay your bill? How about $944.52! ($1,000 less 5% cash back less $5.48 in interest). That is a savings of $55.48 that would have been nothing if you used a debit card or wrote a check!

Every extra dollar you save gets you one step closer to achieving financial freedom and using a cash-back credit card (responsibly) is one more tool you can use to get there.

Remember when you were a kid in school and you had to read a book and write a review or give a presentation to the class? I probably didn’t like doing them as a kid but looking back I think it was actually a pretty good thing. It forced me to think about everything I just read and see the whole picture of the book.

As I thought about topics to write about in this blog, book reviews were something I thought might be a good thing to include. I try to read as many books on financial and entrepreneurial topics as I can and so far I’ve learned a lot. I formulate my own personal finance & entrepreneurial strategies not from any one author’s ideas but choose bits & pieces that I like to arrive at the strategies and ideas that I discuss here on this blog.

When I’m looking for a good book to read, I often check out what other readers think. So as I finish up a book, I’ll post my thoughts here, summarizing the things I liked and disliked. (Similiar to way I did book reports in elementary school). The reviews should provide a good refresher for me as well so when I’m trying to remember what the heck I read about, I can just read one of my reviews I’ve written here on the blog.

I’m currently reading the two books that you see pictures of in this post (switching back and forth) so I should have some reviews ready sometime in the near future. If you have a book you’d like to recommend, feel free to post a comment and it may just become the next one on my to read list.