The “financial advice” niche is a very popular one. If that was not enough, those two guys are also the crème de la crème there. Together they count more than 35,000 RSS subscribers, despite having started their blogs just over one year ago.
J.D. Roth is the man behind Get Rich Slowly, and Trent Hamm is the author of The Simple Dollar. Both blogs are focused on personal finance and money tips. If you want to solidify your financial position or make investment plans, you should definitely grab their RSS feed.
There are many interesting points on their answers, check it out!
 J. D. Roth |
 Trent Hamm |
|
|---|---|---|
| 1. How long have you been blogging? | I’ve had a web site since 2023. I started my first web journal in 2023. I started my first blog in 2023, and have written almost daily ever since. | I’ve experimented off and on since 2023, but I didn’t start seriously until November 2023 |
| 2. How many hours do you dedicate to your blog daily? | I probably spend six hours a day on blogging related tasks, of which four hours are spent on Get Rich Slowly | 3 to 4 hours |
| 3. Do you make money with the blog? | Recently I’ve made a couple thousand dollars per month. That’s not enough to quit the day job, but it’s enough to give me hope | Yes. My average month since inception has put about $500 in my pocket; it grows every month |
| 4. How many page views does it generate daily? | Get Rich Slowly generates just under 15,000 pageviews per day | About 20,000 on an average day |
| 5. What is the biggest blogging mistake you did? | For a while, I used copyrighted photos with no regard to the law. One photographer discovered I had used one of his photos and confronted me. I was wrong, and I admitted it | I mis-formatted all of my links to Amazon for at least three months. It was a really terrible move, since I review two books a week and occasionally reference other ones |
| 6. How long should a blogger wait to monetize the blog? | There’s no one right answer to this question. Some blogs can be monetized immediately. (This is, in fact, the best way for most blogs, I think.) Some should never monetize | Do it right at the start, but don’t do anything that you personally find annoying on other blogs. Readers will find it annoying on your blog and not come back |
| 7. Digg, Stumble Upon,Delicious or Netscape? | Not Digg. The others are fine, though I tend to prefer del.icio.us | Out of those four, StumbleUpon. If you included reddit, that would be near the top, though |
| 8. How many RSS feeds do you track daily? | Let me check: NetNewsWire says that I’m reading 188 feeds. I need to weed some of those out. I’ve been feeling overwhelmed lately |
Only J.D.’s feed. Just kidding – I read about 100 a day using Google Reader |
| 9. If you could give an advice for a novice blogger, what would it be? | Practice, practice, practice. Success does not happen overnight. In fact, it may never come. But if you’re passionate about your subject and you write well (and often), readers will find you | Write good content above all. You can tweak your design any time, but great content is timeless and will always bring in readers |
| 10. How important is the design aspect? | Zero. I’ve seen some butt-ugly blogs that have fantastic content. I’ve seen some beautiful blogs that are worthless. Too many new bloggers spend all their time tweaking their WordPress template. Knock it off. Go write | Six. Don’t be offensive with the ads. If you start to get popular and you’re not incredibly comfortable with design, hire someone to design custom for you |
| 11. If you could read only one blog, which one would you pick? | Tough question! Believe it or not, I’d probably choose kottke.org | Copyblogger |
| 12. What is the secret of your success, expressed in one word? | Dedication | Content |
About Daniel
Daniel Scocco is a programmer and entrepreneur located in São Paulo, Brazil. His first company, Online Profits, builds and manages websites in different niches. His second company, Kubic, specializes in developing mobile apps for the iOS and Android platforms.
Dedicated just not content
Trent Hamm is a liar and a plagiarist. No one should read his totally contrived website. In fact, he’s facing civil litigation from one of his plagiarism victims.
Well I guess there was no rivalry between you guys so it was a calm face-off.
When people get heated they voting goes crazy, we had previous face-offs with over 500 votes :).
Well, a huge lead in proportion to the vote, but never bigger than nine votes. 🙂
This vote ended up being closer than I expected. J.D. had a huge lead early on, but I kept picking up votes over the long tail.
Man, this is hard! Both are my faves!
JD, you need to changes your last name to Eggs. Then we could get you both to run for president under the slogan:
“Hamm and Eggs in ’08!”
Just kidding 🙂
Love both your blogs,
Gal
One of the best Face Off’s so far. Top bloggers!
Great face-off, these are two of my favorite sites! I think these guys are good examples of how great content is the key to any successful blog.
Oh this is cool. But I don’t know whom to vote. Let me go through their blogs and then vote.
Haha you guys do look like the “personal finance” twins!
voting session is open until Friday by the way.
interesting post, learnt a lot 😀
It’s interesting reading people’s views and stories in these posts. I love them!
Trent will probably win. I voted for him.
J.D. will probably win. I voted for him.
JD Roth is winning… it will be interesting to see who is the final winner.
Great match up, though I wish it was a 3-way with Ramit Sethi thrown in the mix as well.
Two of my favorite bloggers!