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The Frustrating Thing About Blogging
By JLP | January 20, 2006
As the personal finance blogosphere has grown, one to the most frustrating aspects of that growth has been the fact that it seems like all personal finance bloggers BLOG ABOUT THE SAME THINGS!
Have any of you noticed this?
That’s why I usually don’t write about ING Direct and Emigrant Direct. I figure there are 50 million blogs already covering those topics and one more would just be overkill.
That brings me to this question:
What would you like me to write about? If you have a suggestion, please let me know by sending an email (not a comment) to:
Okay, that’s all the ranting I will do for a while.
Topics: Blogging | 11 Comments »
January 20th, 2006 at 4:17 pm
You are so right. I really enjoy tracking personal finance blogs, but that is one thing that just drives me crazy. I think I’ve seen ING Direct and Emigrant Direct come up in my newsfeeds about 77 times in the last two days. I wish there were some way to filter out the duplication without eliminating those blogs altogether.
January 20th, 2006 at 4:43 pm
I find myself censoring a lot of what I’d want to say about popular topics because others usually beat me to it and I don’t want to add to the noise. That’s ok ultimately though…just pushes me to find new material (for better or worse! LOL) My favorite posts of yours are the ones where you apply your professional (taxes, retirement, allocation, etc) if that helps you
January 20th, 2006 at 6:41 pm
Ditto – how about all the folks who blogged when the HSBC direct recently raised their rates?!
January 20th, 2006 at 6:41 pm
I take the reposts about a deal as a sign for how good or popular the deal is.
I dismissed the Citi Dividend Platinum Cash Back Rewards Mastercard the first few times I read about it thinking it
would not be worth my time to to change my Mastercard. However, the more I saw it referenced the more I started to
realize that this just might be something I would want to pay attention to since so many folks are saying positive things
about it.
January 20th, 2006 at 7:13 pm
same here, I don’t bother with those rate increase.. no one is coming to my site for news update on rates. heh. I might add to the fire, if maybe its something so spectacular that no one should miss out
January 20th, 2006 at 9:00 pm
I agree somewhat. However, this only applies to bloggers who merely report the facts. While it’s important to spread and share the news, it’s even more important to bring an extra layer of depth and analysis to simple news alerts.
For example, in my most recent post about ING’s winter savings sale, I tried to help my readers calculate whether the 3 months of extra interest was actually worth moving money over. Another great example is is Caitlin’s post about Emigrant Direct’s new credit card (linked from your front page).
It’s really opinions and analysis that I want to see, news can easily be obtained elsewhere!
January 21st, 2006 at 11:34 am
It looks like pandering to advertisers to me.
January 21st, 2006 at 1:10 pm
I somewhat agree with JLP. I generally write about things that are of interest to me, whether or not other people have written about them. With an ever-increasing number of blogs that focus on personal finance and a pool of personal finance news that is not increasing, when bloggers report on news it’s going to result in some duplication.
January 21st, 2006 at 1:24 pm
This is a big part of the reason that I try to focus on personal experiences on my site, rather than reporting ‘just the facts.’
January 22nd, 2006 at 11:20 pm
Everyone has a different take on articles or announcements that come out. If it’s commentary on an MSN article, one blogger might think it’s great and another might think it’s a load of malarky. As for posts on increasing rates on internet bank accounts and the like, it’s a post, and as long as you put your own spin on the announcement, who’s to argue? Having said that, though, if the post looks too much me-too, then it leaves that impression loud and clear.
January 23rd, 2006 at 10:52 am
I found myself slipping into the “re-blogging” mode recently, republishing and adding comments on what other PF blogs were talking about. It is conversation, so that it isn’t actively “bad”, but doesn’t add enough value to keep my site fresh, growing and useful, at least not to my taste. If my intent is to learn new things for myself and to serve my readers to the best of my ability, then I need (mostly) original content. That’s my committment from here on out. At least 75% of all posts should be original content.