July was a hot month around here. One of my posts was featured at LifeHacker.com and The Daily Crux.com, which helped push my monthly page views up to around 200,000 for the first time ever. I’ve also seen a nice increase in subscribers – around 8,500 at last count. Thanks to all new subscribers who have signed on, and to all you regulars who continue to follow.

Five Posts You Should Read If You Missed Them the First Time

July 1 – Store Credit Cards Spark Celebration

July 8 – Seven Secret Places to Hide Cash in Your Home

July 15 – Become a Debt Killing Machine in Five Steps

July 20 – The Tri-Level Emergency Fund

July 24 – Living Off the Grid With Kids

Schedule

Now that the mid-year rush at my full time job has slowed to only a mild rush, I plan to start posting more often. Look for more two-a-days here at Frugal Dad (email subscribers will have to scroll down to check for a second post). I’m hesitant to commit to a formal schedule of twice daily posting during the week, because things come up often that keep me from the keyboard. So for now I’ll just leave it that Monday – Friday the plan will be two posts, and maybe one on the weekends, but don’t hold me to it…please.

Forums

For members of the Frugal Dad forums, I have bad news. I’ve decided to remove the forums for a variety of reasons. First of all, they are a huge target for spam, and I don’t have time to adequately moderate them to keep out the filth. Second, they didn’t quite take off like I had hoped, but most of that is my fault as I did not seed them with topics often enough to keep the discussion going. I hope you won’t mind if I cut them loose and refocus my efforts here at the blog.

How Can You Help?

Every couple weeks I receive an email from an appreciative reader looking for ways to help me spread the word here at Frugal Dad. I certainly appreciate it when readers are compelled to tell others about the site, and decided I should formally point out ways you can help me keep things going here. Again, I don’t expect any of these from you, but I am forever grateful for your help.

• Email articles that interest you to friends and family
• Tell offline friends about FrugalDad.com
• Instead of bookmarking, sign up for a free subscription
• Visit sites that I mention here at FD (in roundups and various article features)
• Share FD articles with your blog readers, friends on Facebook and Twitter, StumbleUpon, and other social networking sites

Again, thanks for a successful July. August promises to be busy for all of us with kids returning to school, and the kickoff of fall sports (did someone say college football?). It’s a new month and a clean slate – no better time to get control of those finances. Stay frugal!

Around New Year’s I published a short series of goals. The third group of resolutions dealt with my 2009 goals here at Frugal Dad, and related to things like subscribers, traffic and income.

With the first half of the year nearly up, I thought it might be a good time to review those goals and the progress made so far in 2009.

Blogging Goal 1: Attract 7,000 subscribers

When I set that goal I had 4,899 (on 12/30/2008). As of this writing I have 7,507 subscribers. I’m flattered over 7,000 people find what I write here worthy of following. I’ll let you in on a little secret – I have a stretch goal of 10,000 followers by the end of the year. You can help by continuing to tell your friends about FrugalDad.com, and by sharing the occasional article with them.  And if you aren’t already receiving my daily articles for free, why not sign up now?

Blogging Goal 2: Receive 250,000 page views per month

At the close of 2008 I was averaging around 110,000 page views a month. Unfortunately, I haven’t enjoyed as much growth as I would have liked as I’m now averaging around 135,000 page views a month. I’m grateful for every visitor, but I need to find new ways to find more.

Blogging Goal 3: Earn 100% of my regular, full-time earnings from writing

When I shared this goal with you I was earning nearly 50% of the earnings from my day job. That number has trended higher and as of May 2009 I’m now earning just over 60% of my full-time income.

When I set this goal I had the idea I would one day replace my full-time job with writing, but now I see the benefit in continuing both (assuming I can keep up the insane schedule).

Blogging is not something you can earn big money with quickly, but given enough time and dedication it is possible to claim it as a decent side hustle. I’ve been writing for the web for over two years, and here at Frugal Dad for about 18 months. That might seem like an eternity to some, but the real champions of blogging started back in 2005 and 2006 (and earlier).

Again, thank you, the readers, for sticking around through the ups and downs. I’ve never attempted to separate my personal triumphs and failures from Frugal Dad, because I hope you are inspired by them, or at least learn from them (as in, my screw-ups).

I would now like to turn things over to you and ask for some feedback on Frugal Dad.

• What types of posts do you most enjoy?
• Do you like days when I post more than once?
• What other peripheral topics would you like to see covered more often (careers, entrepreneurialism, household tips, investing, kids and money, etc.)?
• Are there things you strongly dislike about the site – layout, content, etc?

Please give me an honest assessment as I’d like to expand Frugal Dad’s reach in the second half of the year, and I’ll need your help to do it. Thanks for your continued support!

It has been a while since I last posted a “State of the Blog Address,” so I thought I would put together some miscellaneous thoughts for a lazy Sunday afternoon.  I plan to touch a variety of topics from blogging to my personal life to money stuff.  Stay with me.

Frugal Dad News

First, I’d like to welcome all the new subscribers here at Frugal Dad.  With your help, I’m half way to meeting my goal of 7,000 subscribers by the end of 2009 (I started the year with 5,000 subscribers).  I’m humbled by the fact that so many of you receive my emails, check my feed, and visit here to leave comments each day.  Thank you.

Schedule:  I believe it is about time I published an official blog schedule. Of course, nothing is written in stone because sometimes life throws curve balls and you have to adjust a bit.  But for the most part I will try to adhere to the following schedule:

• Monday – “Money/Frugal Living Post.”  Mondays will (usually) be the weightiest post of the week, with an in-depth look at a money or frugal living topic.

• Tuesday – “Ask the Reader.”  These have become one of the more popular topics here at Frugal Dad, I think because it provides an opportunity for us to share feedback/ideas in the comments section.  The questions could come from other readers, or from me.  I appreciate your willingness to provide feedback and adding to the community “feel” here.

• Wednesday - “Money/Frugal Living Post.” Similar to Mondays, another post on a money topic.

• Thursday – “Link Roundup.”  Mondays and Thursdays tend to be high-traffic days, and I would like to take advantage of that by linking to a few of my favorite bloggers and their articles from the past week.  I’ll add a few editorial comments to some links, and simply list others, to keep the size of the post down.

• Friday – “Guest posts, Special Features.”  Fridays will be reserved for guest posts, or a lighter post if none are scheduled. I’m human – I don’t like to work hard on Fridays, so these posts will probably take on a lighter tone than some of the deeper thoughts published earlier in the week.

• Saturday – “Weekend Projects.” In the Frugal household Saturdays are mostly reserved for household projects.  Many of those benefit our bottom line in some way (gardening, installing a programmable thermostat, etc.).  Others are done for pure enjoyment/entertainment purposes, or to add quality time with our kids.  Either way, I plan to share a little about what we’re up to over the weekend.

• Sunday – “Personal Money Stories.”  A new feature here at Frugal Dad.  I plan to give a more personal account of my daily money challenges and achievements from the past week.

Again, I’ll try to stick to this schedule for the most part, but on the occasion life gets in the way I may deviate a bit, or skip a post here and there to devote more time to a quality post the next day.

Personal News

Many of you have been following my mother’s recovery from an aneurysm and subsequent stroke suffered last September.  It’s been a long seven months, and about half way through her recovery she suffered a major setback.  Early last month Mom got very sick and we rushed her to the emergency room on a Thursday evening.  She was admitted, and it was later discovered that the aneurysm was bleeding again.  On Tuesday afternoon she underwent an 11-hour brain operation as a last-ditch effort to save her life – and she survived.

My mom raised me as a single parent, and I always knew her mental and physical toughness was second to none.  But this fight has been unlike any other we went through growing up, yet she continues to fight.  She’s been hospitalized the last six weeks or so, and recently began another round of inpatient therapy.  She is still wheelchair-bound, still not able to eat, and still mad as hell that she can’t do things for herself!

The experience has had a profound effect on all of us.  The reminder that a 53 year-old, healthy, independent woman can be struck down by something in an instant is sobering.  I feel saddest for my children, who were so close to grandma and miss here dearly.  We visit several times a week, but it isn’t the same as having her at home, having her at basketball games and school performances and birthday parties.  All we can do is continue to hope and pray that she makes a full recovery so we can all experience those joys again.

Thanks to all of you who have continued to keep our family in your thoughts and prayers these many months.  I truly believe those prayers have sustained her, and given her the strength to push through this ordeal.

Wrapup

This concludes the State of the Blog address for March 2009.  Times are hard, in many ways, but we are also blessed in so many others.  I have a job.  I have a wonderful family. And I have many virtual friends I’ve had the pleasure of meeting through this new-to-me medium, blogging.  If you are hurting, I hope things turn around soon.  No matter how down things get, take inventory of the blessings around you.  They could be as basic as a roof over your head, or food on the table.  They could be as extravagant as enjoying a week away with your family vacationing.  Either way, stop and smell the roses.  Life is short; enjoy it.

Sounds like another deep post, doesn’t it?  Actually, this one should be fun.  One of the benefits of running your own site is you get to see how people landed here.  Some are directly referred from other sites, but a few manage to find Frugal Dad via the [tag]search engines[/tag].  And not all of the searches are related to finances or frugality.  Here are a few of the search phrases I found most entertaining, along with the link to the associated article:

“can you use the same towel twice”
“dreams about giving up”
“upside down car wreck money”
“stop to pick up food”
“unusual rustoleum car paint jobs“

I’ll be back with more thought-provoking financial posts later.  Just thought with all the negative financial news out the last several days everyone could use some comic relief.  I know I could!

Whew!  Had a scary moment late last night when I did something to completely fry my [tag]hosting account[/tag].  FrugalDad.com was down for about 14 hours, and it was a nervous time for me. 

Now would be a good time to talk about creating regular backups!  Unfortunately, I didn’t create a backup since this last week.  Thankfully, all recent work was not lost because of the fine work of my host, HostGator (affiliate), who created an automatic [tag]backup[/tag] this past Sunday and was able to fully restore my blog to that point.  I appreciate their efforts today in getting me back online.

Tonight I’ll be adding back a couple articles posted earlier this week, and will resume my normal posting schedule tomorrow.  I’m sorry for any lost comments, links, etc., and I appreciate everyone contacting me via email.  It’s nice to know there are people out there looking forward to your work each day!

- Frugal Dad

Being relatively new to the personal finance blogging community I searched around for articles from other successful PF blogs on how to assemble my own site. I found a few real keepers, and thought I would share them here. The first two are recent posts, and the others reach back some, but their advice is timeless (and invaluable).

Clever Dude wrote a great article titled “How I Monetize my Blog.” In the article he describes the various ways to make money blogging, the advertisers used, and he shares his general philosophy on the influence advertisers have over personal finance bloggers.

Amy, over at The Motherload, put together a great piece outlining the concept of “Gaining a Readership: The Frugal Way.” As my name implies, I just love the idea of doing anything the frugal way!

The Simple Dollar devotes an entire category of posts labeled “Building a Better Blog.” Because I couldn’t single out a specific article amongst the great ones listed, I decided to link the entire category. Seriously, it is that good!

Millionaire Mommy shared her ideas on “How to Grow Your Blog Business: 12 Success Tips for Newbies.” As a newbie, these really hit home for me and there were several great tips to implement immediately.

If you know of any others you feel should be included, please include in the comments so all us “newbies” may use this post as a resource to improving our own personal finance blogs.