I’ve Paid For This Twice Already…

Archive for the ‘blog milestones’ Category

Before we get too far into January, I’d like to thank all the sites that referred traffic here in December. December was a great month for me personally financially and for the blog in general. We paid off a big chunk of debt, and the blog grew to almost 700 subscribers, and now only 7 days into January, is flirting with 800. Wow!

My blog’s growth is directly attributable to all the great personal finance sites out there that recommend me by linking to me on their sites. Without them, a lot less people would have found me. I am very grateful to all the sites that link to me and send traffic my way, and so humbled that so many of you stay around to become regular readers or subscribers. Thanks for another great month, and I hope January is even greater!

Without further ado, the top 10 referrers to I’ve Paid For This Twice Already… in December:

1. The Consumerist
2. Get Rich Slowly
3. Being Frugal
4. Blogging Away Debt
5. Mrs Micah: Finance for a Freelance Life
6. No Credit Needed
7. Frugal Hacks
8. Moolanomy
9. We’re In Debt
10. Gather Little By Little

and honorable mention go to #11 and #12 that were very close to making the list: Millionaire Mommy Next Door and Cash Money Life. I’d love to list every referrer but that would be too long a list, but truly I appreciate you if you sent 2000 visitors to my site last month or 2. Every reader is important to me.

If you haven’t visited any of these great sites, pop on over and check them out! Here’s to a great December and on to January and an amazing 2008!

October was another great month for the blog! We grew from just under 200 subscribers at the end of September to just under 400 subscribers at the end of October – and as of today, we are OVER 400 subscribers at 409! Thanks so much to each and every reader of my blog, and if you are not a subscriber but would like to become one, just click here to get started! All my posts will be delivered to the feed reader of your choice every day, or if you’d rather, once a day a compilation of all that day’s posts will be emailed to the address of your choice (the email address is only used for this purpose – NO SPAM!). Otherwise just keep on coming to the blog to read my latest posts – and if you are a subscriber, be sure to click through once in a while to leave a comment!

The visitors and pageviews for the blog also about doubled this month from last month, and that is due in large part to all the blogs that have been nice enough to link to me over the past month or add me to their blogrolls. Without further ado, the top referrers for October were:

1. No Credit Needed
2. Frugal Hacks (thanks for profiling me!)
3. Being Frugal (hi fellow M-Network member!)
4. Gather Little By Little (another awesome M-Network blog)
5. Paidtwice @ wordpress.com – my old blog
6. The Digerati Life
7. Moolanomy (the creator of the M-Network himself!)
8. Money, Matter and More Musings (my olive oil guest post did well for me )
9. Frugal Upstate
10. We’re In Debt (thanks for the inclusions in your daily roundups!)

Finally! My old blog has been knocked out of the #1 spot! Yay! I can’t thank the M-Network enough – 3 of my top referrers this month were fellow M-Network blogs. For anyone who isn’t clear, a referrer is where the visitor came from – so if you click on a link at No Credit Needed to my blog, you are being referrer by No Credit Needed. So this is the top ten places my traffic came from this past month, excluding search engines and social networking sites as well as people who came here directly from their own bookmarks.

Thanks so much for helping the blog grow and I look forward to even more growth in November. I love writing for the blog and reading the comments and emails and all the networking and support with people of all walks of life. I’ve learned so much and I have really become so proactive about my debt reduction with all the help and support here. Thanks for being a part of it!

The M-Network has become an official FeedBurner Network with its own collective FeedBurner feed!

Well, what does that mean? Basically, if you are a subscriber to the M-Network aggregrated feed already, simply click here or the link in my sidebar and subscribe to “Network Feed” to update to the new aggregated feed. Because it is run through FeedBurner directly, there are new features, most notably, every publisher in the M-Network now has their content labelled in the aggregate feed as to which blog it originated on. So for example, all of my content has “I’ve Paid For This Twice Already…” next to the title. Yay! No more guessing which member wrote what .

If you are a subscriber to my specific feed (thanks to all 300+ of you!) nothing will change for you. No resubscribing necessary. My feed continues to be delivered directly to your feed reader when I post new content or you receive an email with all my new content once per day, depending on your preference. Thanks for being a subscriber!

If you are interested in getting content from all 10 M-Network members in one easy to read feed, consider subscribing to the M-Network through FeedBurner. You can stay subscribed to individual feeds as well if that is your preference (that’s what I do… I’m sort of a junkie ).

Thanks to all my subscribers, be it through my individual feed or the aggregated feed or both! If this whole message made your head spin and you’re wondering what “feeds” are – don’t worry! You are not alone. I didn’t understand them for a loooooong time. RSS stands for “Real Simple Syndication” and basically, it is an easy way of getting the new content from your favorite blogs delivered right to you instead of having to check for new content yourself. You sign up by clicking my big bright happy orange button on my sidebar, and choose a reader. I chose google reader – and you don’t need to install anything! All you need is a google account (like a gmail account). When you choose it, you’ll automatically be taken to the google reader homepage and you can bookmark it for future reference. I check my reader several times a day to read the new content from my favorite blogs.

But don’t stop there! Make sure you keep visiting my blog too to leave comments on posts or see what other people have to say!!

If you have any questions about RSS or the aggregated feed or my feed or…. anything – leave a comment or shoot me an email through my contact form! Thanks for being involved in I’ve Paid For This Twice Already…

Next week we’ll be traveling south for a mini-vacation while my spouse attends a work-related conference. I’m looking forward to the “free” vacation in a very upscale hotel and hanging out with a friend who lives that way, while visiting a new zoo (which we get discounted admission to with our current local zoo membership) and basically relaxing and playing with my kids.

But what will happen to the blog? No worries – it will be fun fun fun here! It’ll be a first for the blog – we’ll have some guest posters! I have six great guest posts lined up that will be sure to entertain you, give you great information, or generally make you think. There will also be a few pre-written posts of my regular features – Tell All Tuesday will appear Tuesday afternoon, there will be original posts of mine on Thursday and Saturday morning, and the next step in Smart Couples Finish Rich will go live sometime Friday afternoon. On Sunday instead of the Sunday Morning Link Love, there will be some Sunday Morning Carnival Love, highlighting the carnivals that go live on Monday the 15th (I won’t be around to look at the Tuesday carnivals until next week).

Tomorrow is Blog Action Day, so in another first for my blog, there will only be one post tomorrow – a post about money and the environment, specifically about reducing your carbon footprint. Make sure to come by for that!

Thanks to the following blogs that will be guest posting Tuesday through Friday for me: Moolanomy, Being Frugal, Gather Little By Little, A Penny Closer, Brip Blap, and The Good Life on a Budget. That’s not the order they will appear, I like to keep y’all guessing. Some days will have one guest post, some days two.

Thanks for being a reader or subscriber and stick around for all the fun this upcoming week! Hopefully I will find internet access once in a while to approve comments and check up on things – if your comment doesn’t appear for some reason, it will when I get back! I don’t trust the housesitters with my blog password . And if you’re not yet a subscriber, consider becoming one with this link so you don’t miss a thing! We just hit 300 subscribers this past week (thank you!!) and how fun would it be to come back to 400? So fun…. it would be I promise.

Have a great week and wave in a southerly direction for me!

It’s the start of a new month so time to look back and see which sites sent the most traffic here in September! I appreciate every single mention and link and blogroll inclusion that other sites provide me with and without other blogs talking about me, I wouldn’t have anywhere near the success I have already had. Thank you!

The list ranges from the high 500s to a little over 100 visitors coming from the site mentioned – so if you want to be on the list for October, sending me ~110 visitors may be all you need! If the site was on my August Top Ten Referrers list, I’ve put where they ranked then in parentheses. I have also excluded search engines from the list. I really hope in October someone else takes over the top spot because….

1. (1) paidtwice.wordpress.com – again my old site was the top referrer!
2. No Credit Needed – the 33 Days project sent me quite a few visitors!
3. (4) Frugal Hacks – Home of the Frugal Blogroll
4. (3) Personal Finance Blogs dot org – the aggregator of all blogs personal finance
5. Rather Be Shopping – I had a guest post here this month
6. Gather Little By Little – My M-Network buddy
7. Give Me Back My Five Bucks – had a very nice writeup of all her new blogroll adds, including me!
8. Being Frugal – another great M-Network buddy!
9. Money, Matter and More Musings – thanks for including me in your link love!
10. Moolanomy – Another of the fine M-Network buddies

Thanks so much again for all your love to my site! And thanks especially to all the readers and commentors and everyone who helps make this a great place

~J