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Sunday Roundup: Balancing Fun and Frugality

Friday was another Yakezie Blog Swap. The topic was: “Balancing Frugality and Fun.”

Here is the list of articles:

Latisha Styles shares her story about going on a shopping diet at Narrow Bridge.

Joe gives us 10 different ways we can have fugal fun in almost any city at Prairie Eco-Thrifter.

The other Joe shares with us his memories of time with his Grandpa growing up and how he taught him to have fun at Mom’s Plans.

Ashley reminds us to spend those dollars where they will give us the most happiness at My Personal Finance Journey.

I shared that making memories is what counts at Financially Consumed.

Denise tells us that any kind of fun is possible with a little planning, determination, and work at Money Cone.

Money Cone shares with us how they have become a latte sipping frugal Mac user at The Single Saver.

Jacob shares with us 5 different techniques we can use to balance frugality and fun at Money Talks Coaching.

Eric at Narrow Bridge shared 3 ways he’s found to have fun on the frugal at Retire by 40.

Hunter tells us why corporate bankruptcy isn’t fun at all at Live Real Now.

Melissa shares her story of how her family balances frugality and fun atSmart Money Focus.

Eric defines the ultimate frugalite and the ultimate spender over at Financial Success for Young Adults.

Carnivals I’ve Rocked

Selling Your Car was included in the Totally Money Blog Carnival.

The Evils of a Reverse Mortgage was included in the Carnival of Personal Finance.

Thank you! If I missed anyone, please let me know.

Make Extra Money, Part 5: Domains and Hosting

Business, Finance

In this installment of the Make Extra Money series, I’m going to show you how to pick a domain and a host.

If you remember from the last installment, I’ve decided to promote The Master Wedding Planning Guide. Since then, I have bought the product and read enough to decide that’s it worth promoting. That is the secret to ethical internet product. Never promote a crap product. Now, when I bought the Guide, I used my own affiliate link, so the $37 product will have cost me about $13, once the commission check comes through. You can’t do that just to get a discount because Clickbank has measures in place to ensure that you are actually selling products.

Domain Name

The first thing we need is a domain name.

You can skip this if you want to host on blogger, but I wouldn’t do that, unless $10 is a major financial hardship. I dislike the idea of leaving everything in Google’s hands. Even if you use blogger for hosting(discussed later), pop for the domain name. That way, if you change your mind about hosting, you can move without losing everything.

Where should you go for your domain name? I use NameCheap and GoDaddy. I try to divide my domain names across each of the providers so all of my sites don’t look identical to Google. I may be paranoid, but it works for me.

Before you order, hit Google for a coupon code. Search for “namecheap coupon” or “godaddy coupon” and save some money. GoDaddy is offering $7.49 domains.

How do you pick a domain name?

I try to pick something that matches the product name, or the product’s site. In this case, the product’s site is http://www.masterweddingplanning.com and http://www.masterweddingplanning.net was available, so I grabbed it. I would have been happy with .com, .net, or .org. I won’t touch a .info domain. They are generally cheap, but they cost more to renew and people assume they are spam sites.

If the exact match domain isn’t available, I look for exact matches for the product. If that’s not available, I stick other words at the end that would be attractive to people looking to buy a product.

Acceptable domains would include:

http://www.masterweddingplanning.org
http://www.masterweddingplanningreview.com
http://www.masterweddingplanningguide.net
http://www.masterweddingplanningreviewed.org

Or nearly anything along those lines. Other good words to attach would be “revealed”, “exposed”, or something similar. Just put yourself in the shoes of a buyer. Would the domain name look like something that could help you decide whether or not to buy a product?

Hosting

Your host is where your website lives. Without a host, you can’t have a website.

When it comes to picking a host, you have some choices to make.

First, do you want to go free or paid? Free sounds great, and if money is tight, it’s not a bad choice, but it does limit your options.

If you’re going free, you’re going with Google’s Blogger. WordPress.com’s hosting eliminates your advertising options, as does almost every other free host. I do know of a couple of free WordPress hosts that will let you run ads and advertising campaigns, but the performance is horrible.

Another problem with using Google is that they can decide your site violates their Terms of Service and shut it down. It shouldn’t happen, but it’s not unheard of with affiliate marketing sites. If you go this route, plan to move to paid hosting when you start making money.

That leaves us with paid hosting.

There are a ton of hosts out there, but only three I have personal experience with.

I won’t use GoDaddy for hosting. I’ve never been happy with their technical support.

I have most of my domains on HostGator (c0upon code: HOSTINGBUDDY). I’m happy with them. Performance is good and the customer service is excellent. Their hosting packages start at $3.96 per month.

I also have a hosting account at HostTheName. I got that because, using coupon code “STARTUPWARRIOR”, hosting prices get down to $1 per month. At $36 for 3 years, I couldn’t turn it down. Initially performance was rocky, but they’ve upgraded and it’s good, now.

Once you’ve created your hosting account, you’ll need to go back to your domain name registrar and set the name servers. At NameCheap, after you log in, you’ll go to Domains > Manage Domains and click on the domain name. From there, click on “Domain Name Server Setup” on the left of the screen and enter the custom name server information listed on your hosting account.

When that’s done, go to your hosting account and add the domain. If you’re creating a new hosting account, this will be your main domain and the hosting company will ask you for the information during setup. If you’re adding this to an existing hosting account, log in, look for “Addon Domains” and follow the prompts.

At this point, you’ve chosen a product to promote and keywords/search terms to go with it. You’ve chosen and registered a domain name and you’ve set up a hosting account to hold your website. Next time, I’ll walk through setting up a WordPress site to make some money.

Any questions?

A Look Back

Misc

I’m on vacation this week and thought it would be nice to post a look back at some of my early posts. These posts are some of my favorites, but were written when there were only 3 or 4 of you paying attention.

Since I know you don’t want to miss anything, here are 5 of my favorite early posts, in no particular order:

1. Cthulhu’s Guide to Finance. I’m more than a bit of a horror geek. Books, movies, or games; all keep me entertained. Over the weekend, I taught my Mom how to play Zombie Fluxx and Gloom. When Cthulhu approached me about writing a guest post, I couldn’t refuse.

2. Birthday Parties Are Evil. It’s hard to remember to be cheap when your little girl is asking for a bowling party. It can run $200 to get a dozen kids an hour of bowling and a bit of pizza.

3. No Brakes. This is a post about why I had a hard time coming to grips with financial responsibility.

4. 4 Ways to Flog the Inner Impulse Shopper. Who can’t love a BDSM-themed personal finance post? Every blog needs a dominatrix mascot, right?

5. Fighting Evil by Phone. In which I share the method of convincing Big Nasty Telephone Company and their Contracted, Soulless Long Distance Provider to leave me the heck alone and stop demanding $800 they refused to admit was their mistake.

FINCON Friday

Misc

When this goes live, I’ll be on the road to the Financial Bloggers Conference outside of Chicago. That translates to a day off here.

Monday, I’ll be back with a whole bucket full of bloggy goodness.

Time vs Money Redux

Finance

Saving money is a good thing

Saving time is a good thing.

Somewhere in between, there has to be a balance. It’s possible to spend far too much time to save very little money.

For example, on September 30th, I left for the Financial Blogger’s Conference. Thinking I’d be frugal and save a little money, I told my GPS to avoid the toll roads. According to Google maps, the cheap route should have added 20 minutes to my trip. Coming into Illinois from Wisconsin on the toll roads, it’s easy to spend that much time waiting to pay the toll, since I don’t own an Illinois magic toll-paying box.

Unfortunately, the little smart-a** suction-cupped to my windshield sent mebthrough every construction zone between Wisconsin and Schaumberg, Illinois.

That sucks.

I went through a series of little towns with speed limits that randomly changed from block to block. Road construction had half of the roads down to just one lane. All told, I saved $3.40, judging by the tolls heading home, but the horrible detour cost me well over an hour and a half of time.

I saved $3.40, but lost 90 minutes. That’s not a good return on investment.

Just a month ago, I was ripping into my mother-in-law for wasting half an hour to save 75 cents. Then I have to go and demonstrate how horrible I am at making that save time vs money judgement.

I need to work on that.

What’s the most time you’ve spent to save a small amount of money?

Stealing Motivation

Finance

We go a bit overboard on Halloween.

Maybe more than a bit. The yard in the video is mine. As I write this, I’ve got 40 tombstones, more than 200 skulls, and half a dozen life-size props in my yard. The coffin leaning against the tree was bought used on the secondhand coffin market.

I have a motion-activated monster whose eyes light up as his head turns to watch you as you walk past. He just happens to be the exact size in all dimensions as my son was 4 years ago.

A few years ago, I built a beautiful zombie who–not so coincidentally–had the exact height and proportions as my wife.

Last year, a few days before Halloween, somebody came into my yard and stole my bride. They also tried stealing the small coffin, but only managed to get away with the lid, leaving the coffin itself behind.

I hate thieves.

This year, I was at the Financial Bloggers Conference the weekend I traditionally set up for Halloween, so I was getting a late start.

Every time I’ve tried to get out and set up my yard, I just keep thinking about the irreplaceable pieces that were stolen. Do you have any idea how hard it is to find a child-sized coffin lid dating back to 1863? Or how impossible it is to get the 100 hours of my life I put into my zombie?

I think about how hurt I would be if somebody stole my son-sized animatronic ghoul or the demon who shares my measurements, but is two feet shorter. I’ve spent hundreds of hours per year, over 10 years building my yard full of one-of-a-kind props, and someone felt it was acceptable to tear down a section of my skull fence, come into my yard, and steal a little piece of my life.

Motivation has been difficult this year.

Last night, while I was out arranging my much-reduced yard haunt, a neighbor came by to let me know that he was disappointed with the smaller production. He wasn’t upset, but he–like the entire neighborhood–love watching the gore grow in my yard while anticipating the evening full of screams as the kids wander through every Halloween.

I can’t do it.

The thieving punks stole not just two of my favorite props, but a huge piece of my desire to scare the neighborhood kids.

Maybe I just need a year off, so I can come back with better ideas and a security plan more detailed than “my neighbors love this, none of them would steal anything!”

I would love to find the thieves. Post-beating, I’d explain how stealing from anyone is stealing a small and irreplaceable part of their lives. Stealing their handcrafted treasure is ripping out a piece of their soul. Stealing their motivation is stealing the memories for every visitor who would ever benefit from their craft, if the motivation is dead enough to kill the production.

I hope I’m not to that point, yet, but I can’t promise anything. Maybe next year.

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Carnivals I’ve Rocked

Domain Name

Hosting