Photo courtesy of Lee Coursey

It is hard to believe we are already into October–where does the time go?  September was a good month here at Frugal Dad.  I changed up the format mid-month and began posting two articles a day.  I have not heard much feedback one way or the other from you, so that either means you like it, or are too busy reading to respond!  Either way, I’m glad you are still with me.

Let’s take a look back at the top articles from September:

• 10 Free Dates That Your Wife Will Love
• Half of Us Are Living Paycheck to Paycheck
• A Half Dozen Uses for Empty Egg Cartons
• How to Live On One Income
• I Was Wrong: Scrapping the Child Chore Chart for a New Allowance System
• When It Comes to Blog Monetization, Keep Things in Perspective

October Projects

I have two exciting things to share that will hopefully be accomplished in October.  First, a freelance writing project that I took on a few months ago should be moving to print soon.  It is aimed at the frugal homeowner, and I think you will all enjoy it.

My other big goal is to wrap up two ebooks that I have been working on.  One focuses on a personal finance theme, and the other is top-secret, so I’ll have to wait a couple weeks to share more.  Hint:  Think of my “So You Want to Be a Blogger” series on steroids!

Subscribers and a Ranking Update

A couple hundred new readers subscribed to Frugal Dad in September, in addition to the 3,000 plus already receiving our free, daily content.  If you haven’t signed up for a free subscription, I hope you will consider doing it today.  Just visit our free subscription page for details.

I cracked the Top 15 in Fire Finance’s latest Top 100 Personal Finance Blogs, coming in at #14.  If you are interested in adding a few blogs to your reader, this is a great place to start!

Well, that about puts September in the books.  I hope it was a good month for you, and that October will be even better!

May was a good month for Frugal Dad in terms of traffic and readership growth.  I received over 65,000 page views and finally reached my six-month subscriber goal of 1,000 readers (in just over five months).  Thanks to all of you who signed up in May, and to those who signed up earlier and have decided to stick around.  I’d also like to take a moment before we get too far into June to thank the following blogs who referred the most visitors to Frugal Dad. 

Top 10 Referrers:

• The Simple Dollar
• Smart Spending (at MSN)
• Being Frugal
• Tip Nut
• Get Rich Slowly
• Gather Little by Little
• Life Hacker
• Be Thrifty Like Us
• Single Guy Money
• Cash Money Life

Oldies but Goodies

I like to view page stats every month or so to see which articles were the most popular over the last few weeks.  Not surprisingly, the square foot garden article took the prize again with more than double the hits of the second place article.  I suspect this is seasonal traffic as gardeners search for tips on starting their own square foot gardens.  I hope they aren’t disappointed to find a complete gardening amateur here!  Speaking of gardening, a few tomatoes have sprouted from our tomato plants and all indications point to us enjoying some juicy red tomatoes this summer.

• How to Build a Square Foot Garden
• Second Stimulus Check Coming?
• Teach Your Kids About Money with Only 4 Quarters

Frugal News

Freelancing
The long-awaited and over-mentioned (by me) freelancing project I’ve been working on the last couple months is just about finished.  The manuscript was sent away just yesterday for final editing and I’m anticipating a retail release this month.  I can’t wait to share more news on it because it’s my first printed “by line,” and because I think it will be a product that most of you will be interested in (tons of frugal tips).

Personal Finance Buzz
Pinyo from Moolanomy released his latest project, Personal Finance Buzz. Think of it as Digg for personal finance stories.  People submit their personal finance related articles to the site and users vote them up or down.  It looks like a real hit!

I’ve been nominated as a Top 10 Most Influential Emerging Blog
Influential Blogger is hosting a popular writing project making rounds on the web.  Writers are asked to create a post on their site nominating ten of the most influential new blogs.  As described on the Influential Blogger, these are “blogs that started anytime from July 1, 2007 to the present” and “are gradually gaining a considerable amount of readership and influence.”  I’m honored several others have nominated Frugal Dad to the list, and I plan to share my own selections in an upcoming post.