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Happy Friday everyone!
This was a great week for us at Young Adult Money. We were happy to welcome Cat Alford to the team as our first ever staff writer. She had two posts this week: The 5 Things I Will Actually Splurge On and How Embracing A New Culture Saved Me Money. We also had an awesome money-saving post from our friend Kyle over at Rather-Be-Shopping. To cap it off, we had a new giveaway launch this week.
Cat even took over the social media accounts on Wednesday so that I could spend the entire day with my wife on her birthday, without having to deal with the social media feeds. I am definitely happy about bringing Cat on board and having a staff writer has already freed up so much time. I am able to focus more on advertising and planning my own posts further in advance. I know a couple other blog owners who essentially have full-time writers and outsourced other parts of the site and spend practically zero time working on the site (no commenting, social media, nothing!) and are making a decent profit each month. The reason this excites me is because I have a few other blog ideas but no time to execute them! It would be nice to free up some time to work on those other projects…we’ll see where Young Adult Money goes over the rest of the year.
Either Sunday or Monday I will have a post reviewing the new LG L9 phone as well as the T-Mobile Family through the new T-Mobile no-contract plan. This is available through Walmart Family Mobile. I was compensated for the review, but I think people will be excited at the potential savings through the plan…I know I am!
A few random updates:
- All the plumbing bills from our sewer issues have been submitted to our city’s insurance. We should receive a sizable check in the mail in the next few weeks. Thank goodness we found a great contractor on Angie’s list who literally sorted the whole problem out for us.
- Our renter is moving out! Thankfully we have a couple of great potential renters who contacted us (without any advertising, all word of mouth…and we haven’t even told many people that it is going to be open!). We definitely hope to make some upgrades quickly in-between renters. Read about how we pursued rental income.
- As I said last week, we won a big giveaway (a Ryobi lawn mower) and we were able to get store credit in exchange for it. Fingers crossed that we win some more giveaways this week ;) Have you won anything recently?
- I haven’t worked out since I had sinus surgery two and a half weeks ago. I definitively do not feel as good as I did when I was working out 5-6 days a week consistently…which I was doing right up until surgery. I hope to get back on the bandwagon next week. Have you been sticking to a workout schedule?
This weekend I will probably spend a decent amount of time working on the site. I have a few posts and admin work to get done. I have a spreadsheet consulting job as well. I also plan on making a trip to Home Depot to pick up a bunch of stuff (thank goodness for the store credit). Celebrating Father’s Day at my parents house sometime this weekend as well. Life is busy but it’s definitely been a good thing.
I always want to know: what are you up to this weekend?
On to the giveaways!
First, enter my current giveaway:
Next check out the 162 giveaways that are ending from 6/14 to 6/20. Good luck!
All Giveaways Have Ended
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Good luck on all the giveaways and I hope you all have a great weekend!
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Photo by christina rutz
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Hey David! Thanks so much for the mention!! I seriously LOVE being a staff writer so I’m definitely happy that you love not having to worry about commenting, etc! Win/Win!! Being you on social media for the day was kind of fun too. It made me think about expanding to social media management down the line too. Congrats on your lawnmower win! Seriously, I need to enter all of your giveaways!
BudgetBlonde Thanks Cat! I think you should consider social media management, especially if you plan on doing this stuff full-time in 2014. It’s very difficult for people who have 9-5 jobs to manage social media for their websites/side hustles. It’s much easier to outsource it to someone who has the flexibility of a self-employed schedule!
Thanks the lawn mower has supplied us with so much money for Home Depot – it was really great timing as we plan on doing some stuff both outside and inside this Summer. I think it will be much easier for you to enter giveaways when you are back in the US since probably 50% or more are US only.
I can totally relate about the staff writer DC! It does save a nice chunk of time and I always try to be more productive on those days to make it more valuable to me. I’ll likely be adding another one myself here soon, not so much because I have another site idea, but I have a bunch of other things I need to be doing with the site and our business. Our weekend – I am going to force myself to be off the computer some and enjoy the weekend with the kids…it is Father’s Day weekend after all. ;)
FrugalRules Great idea for this weekend! I hope that you are able to get away from your computer. I don’t know how people do it when they have kids…I’m pretty sure I would outsource 90% of my blog work haha. It’s hard enough without kids!
I am looking forward to you hiring a staff writer. I think it adds a lot of value in that you have another “voice” on the site who has a unique (and hopefully somewhat different) perspective on things. I also like how I am able to plan out posts more in advance since I will only have to write 3 a week versus 4 (not counting the Friday roundup posts, which my wife does a lot of the work for).
Hope you have a great weekend!
I have thought about using staff writers, but I think people visit my blog to hear my opinion rather than a staff writer. Having said that, staff writers often have great posts so it would probably not be a big issue.
I am more thinking about hiring a VA to do some of the administrative tasks so I can focus more on delivering better content. I find that the bulk of my time is spent replying to emails and commenting on other peoples blogs.
MonsterPiggyBank I think one of the dangers of having everyone expect your voice (and not hiring other writers because of it) is that you will never be able to grow more than to a certain point, because you will always have to be the one writing the posts. I think you could definitely use one on Tuesdays/Thursdays since you don’t post those days, but that’s just my thoughts ;) It looks like you have really started to focus on the new site, which is great!
I plan on looking into having a VA respond to emails as well as possibly hiring someone to comment on other sites, since usually people reciprocate with comments (which is important, though it becomes less important the longer your blog is around). I know a site that hasn’t commented on another blog for years and they bring in a decent profit each month…and that’s after having all the writing outsourced. They barely touch the site.
We’ve gone completely to staff writers at FFA. I barely touch the site now. Congrats on expanding your business!
AverageJoeMoney I still hit up FFA every weekday and have been enjoying the posts. I am seriously considering having staff writers do 1/2 the posts.
Great list of giveaways. Thanks for putting this together.
OneSmartDollar Thanks, my wife does most of the work ;)
Sounds like you’re staying busy as usual. I totally know what you mean that you don’t feel as good not working out. If I take 2 days off in a row I don’t feel quite right.
CommonCentsWealth Yeah I was going 5-6 days a week consistently for a long time. Surgery changed things, though. A full week and a half after surgery I had bleeding that didn’t clot and had to leave work early. Kind of hard to work out when you have those sorts of issues.
Love the pic! Sounds like you have a very busy weekend planned. Enjoy and good luck finding a new tenant too. :-)
TacklingOurDebt Thanks so much : ) And yes, I would love to take a Vegas vacation sometime soon! We are (seriously) planning on winning our next vacation ;)
I had to take two weeks off after my gum surgery in April. It was really hard, so I know the feeling. Thanks for the giveaway list.
Eyesonthedollar Yeah I’m so out of it I’m almost scared to start again!
I imagine how the surgery prevents you from exercising, I hope you can go back to it soon. It is great you have tenants lined up, vacancies can be expensive.
RFIndependence It looks like we should get someone in here right away, so we shouldn’t miss out on any rent.
Nice to see Cat around here and congrats on winning the giveaway. I know I feel like crap if I haven’t worked out in awhile. Hope you get back in your routine soon!
Beachbudget Thanks! Yeah I really hope to get back into it soon.
I think there’s definitely a lot of power to outsourcing. I outsource a lot on my new site, because I have a hard time keeping up with 2-3 sites + staff writing etc each month.
Suburban Finance Geez 2-3 sites is insane! I can’t even imagine. I do hope to start a second one so I need to start leveraging writers and other resources.
Love Cat and her posts so I’m definitely glad to see her writing here on YAM. A good addition to the team for sure! Happy father’s day!
StudentDebtSurvivor Thanks, I’m happy to have her on board!
Cat is a great writer and wonderful to work with. I had the good fortune of partnering with her in the past so I hope your experience is as good as mine!
criticalfinancialSo far so good! I was definitely happy with her work the past week and look forward to her posting once a week from here on out :)