Back in the days when The Simple Dollar and Man vs. Debt were still useful sites, Wise Bread was also on my regular reading list. As it grew, it failed to hold my interest, probably right around the time MMM was born. I think I'll drop by and see if anything's changed. At least they are showing good taste in their RE website recommendations.
Later: I just visited the site. Ugh, way too slick for my taste. Too much sparkly, shiny buy-me shit being dangled everywhere.
I've met the founders and most of the writers at FinCon. The site caters to an extremely wide audience (and has the traffic to prove it) so not every article appeals to every reader.
My regular reads are Aaron Crowe, Alaina Tweddale, Damian Davila (in Honolulu!), Emily Guy Birken, Jason Steele, Julie Rains (who wrote this post), Linsey Knerl, and Miranda Marquit (possibly the Internet's most prolific freelancer). I wish I could set up my RSS feed to just pick their posts and not the rest of the WiseBread feed. But at least in a reader you're not seeing the site's ads.
I recognize all of the sites but one. Yay to Pete, Nords, Paula and Jeremy. I don't know the fifth one, but the other four are so strong, it might be worth a trial perusal. Thanks for the link love, Jeremy.
The FinCon bloggers had a discussion a year ago about how busy the niche is, yet how many blogs go dark every year. In 2008 Technorati speculated that 95% of all blogs go dark within a year, and our PF niche anecdotal data "dark" rate was estimated at 70%. Simply by hanging around for longer than four years, (0.3)^^4 puts you in the top 1%. But that's still a lot more than five bloggers!
In an odd coincidence ("longevity"?) I've met them all at FinCon or other meetups. Jeremy and Winnie even came to Waikiki in 2010 to have lunch with Clif and me. Well, I think they were also there to see Oahu, but the meal discussion certainly motivated them.
Todd Tresidder is one of the smartest PF writers I know (and one of the three oldest FinCon attendees). He puts out an incredible amount of work and he just can't turn it off. He sold his hedge fund when he was in his 30s, which he now cheerfully admits was his biggest investing mistake. He tends to dive very deep into an issue and write pillar posts (5000+ words) to analyze all aspects of a topic. He's also a member of a few very high-powered mastermind groups which have years of entrepreneurial experience at what works in blogging and product sales. I think he still gets most of his PF income from coaching clients on their path to financial independence. He could also make a very nice income just coaching people on their long-term blogging plans.
So when he posts (~10 times per year) it's worth getting another cup of coffee and settling in for the whole read.
I have to admit, I'm surprised that a niche (military) blog made it on this list. We haven't seen a traffic bump on the site, but I've seen a lot of new "Likes" on the Facebook page and I suspect that Amazon's book sales report (coming in two weeks) will also show a nice spike.
