I’ve been blogging on this site since August of 2020, not including the few months off I took after the twins were born. But my blogging journey really started sometime in 2018, when I set up a site and started posting. I was in grad school, and most of the posts were focused on college and grad school. Very few people read that blog and I didn’t share it anywhere. I thought my writing was bad and unfit for general readership. I didn’t like the site branding that I used either.
Then I switched the site to Frugal Jon. And it started out the same as the last one. I didn’t share any of my posts and I’m still fairly confident that my writing is bad. But my family (pretty much my only readers) encouraged me to share my blog on Facebook. On New Year’s Day 2021, my dad got sick of me answering “maybe I’ll share it someday” and shared a link to my blog.
Getting Shoved Onstage
This was a big moment. I was no longer a secret blogger. I still thought my writing was poor, but people didn’t seem to hate it. People knew about my blog and could easily find my posts. Emboldened by the response, I started to share every new post. I even made a Facebook page for my blog. I was shoved onstage in front of an audience. The only thing I could do was start singing.
Expanding Blog Readership
Ever since, I’ve been consistently subjecting my Facebook friends to my writing. Clinical trials have shown that reading Frugal Jon posts do not adversely affect one’s health. After seeing this result, I’ve been seeking a wider audience. The boring way I’m trying to do this is through Search Engine Optimization (SEO). For my blog, I try to find personal finance topics that people are searching for and writing about them. Regularly publishing new posts also tells the search engines that my website is alive and real. I haven’t always been the best with posting regularly but it’s something I’m hoping to fix now that the calendar has flipped to 2022.
The second is to interact with other personal finance bloggers to get referral links. Basically I read the same blogs I normally do, but comment on posts as Frugal Jon. These comment systems let you link back to your own blog/website. My hope is that these interactions lead to guests posts down the line. So far it’s led to a little bit of traffic coming to the blog from other sites. I’ve even received one shout out for a good question that I asked. This one is more about building community with other bloggers and hopefully they’ll accept me as one of their own.
My Biggest Break of 2021
This year I got a pretty cool for of recognition for my blog. There’s this website called personalfinanceblogs.com. They have a daily email newsletter that sends three personal finance blog posts out to their thousands of readers. They rely on blogs to submit their posts which they read read and decide which ones are worthy for the newsletter. I submitted many of my posts throughout last year without success. But on Monday November 22nd, the first post in the newsletter was from a little site called Frugal Jon. I hope new readers from my recommended post stick around, and I’m going to keep working to put out the best writing I can.
Calling Frugal Jon a New Name
The biggest part of this is recognition. I’m no longer just Frugal Jon: the cheapskate ice cream scooper of Captain Bonney’s Creamery. Nor am I just Frugal Jon: the friend who keeps telling you to max out your Roth IRA (shoutout Kenny, who has been maxing out his Roth IRA). Now there are real people who look at this site and say that it’s written by Frugal Jon: personal finance blogger.
