AskDong

As I’m sure some people have surmised I’m back from the wonderful islands of Hawaii. I came back on a redeye on Thanksgiving. I was lucky enough to avoid any delays despite traveling on the busiest travel days of the year. I will be in the next week posting a thorough recap/guide of my time in Hawaii (mostly Kauai), along with a review of the Hotel I stayed at in Kauai, the Hanalei Bay Resorts.

While I was able to keep up with my posts while away, I realize it’s not the easiest thing to do.  For one thing, everything I wanted to write while I was on vacation was often travel related.  Also because I was on vacation, I was generally out of touch of current events and other blogs. So much of my writing on this blog is dependent not only on current events, but idea generation that often comes from different blog posts and discussions on those posts.  I think next time I go on Vacation, I’m going to solicit for guest writers in addition to having a larger set of pre-written posts ready to publish.  I think it’ll make me a little more relaxed on vacation and it’ll definitely make my girlfriend happier – she thinks I’m a bit obsessed about blogging.

I want to take this post to encourage people to subscribe to my blog via the RSS feed.  You can subscribe through an RSS reader or via email.  It’s your choice.   By subscribing, you’ll automatically receive updates in your reader or email.  Of course feel more than free to continuing visiting the actual blog even after subscribing.  

While I realize most of you already know what an RSS subscription is, some don’t.  RSS or Really Simple Syndication is set of web feed formats that allows content to be pulled by various outside readers.  I didn’t really know what RSS was until I started writing my blog.   I had never subscribed to anything up to that point.  Now when I go to my iGoogle homepage, I see the latest entries from my favorite blogs.  It makes it much easier for me to read the posts that look interesting rather than scanning all my favorite blogs on FireFox individually.

When you click on the subscribe link, you’ll be redirected to another page that will allow you to select what platform you want to read updates from.  You can choose Google, Yahoo, AOL, and others.   Just the pick the one that you regularly use and AskDong will be added.

An email subscription works similarly but instead of receiving new posts in your reader, you receive them in your email to read at your leisure.   You can actually subscribe to both if you wanted. 

Thank you for taking the time to read this unabashed plug of an AskDong RSS subscription.

I sold my second spot at Text-Links-Ads last week.  I’m not really sure how I feel about it on two different fronts. 1) The ad is for a payday loan company.  While I respect the right for these types of companies to exist, and acknowledge there might be a time and place for their business, I’m not sure how much I want to be associated with them.  I have changed my settings and will no longer allow Text-Link-Ads pre-approve ads for publication.  The second front is my general feeling towards the ad revenue model for smaller blogs/websites such as AskDong.  I don’t blog for the money as I’ve to date been paid a total $15 for what is at this point hundreds of hours of “work”, but I’m not sure if I would blog if there was no money.  Getting paid somehow serves as affirmation of my work, and I still harbor day dreams of being a six figure blogger.  Realistically though, I have no expectations that I’ll ever be able to make blogging anything other than a hobby that pays for itself.

Even though, I don’t expect I will ever make much money by blogging, I do want to believe that blogging income is sustainable.  I like the idea of having different, albeit small income streams.  Selling ad space gives me what I feel might be a false sense of hope. I also wonder if the Advertising gravy train will continue uninterrupted.  The economy is likely to slow in the next year, and the advertising budget is often the first to be cut.  I also question how effective advertising actually is, and will blogs like mine continue to be able to pickup advertisers and generate revenue.  Personally, I don’t think I’ve ever purchased something via an ad.  I have definitely clicked on more than few ads, but I don’t think I’ve purchased anything, and don’t even remember what ads I’ve clicked.  If anything I feel image ads are more effective as they tend build brand recognition and lead to sales in the long run.  I’m much more likely to remember the name of a company or it’s logo in mage banner ads than to click on a text ad.

I hope this last ad sale isn’t my last. Though the truth is I don’t believe I have any more ad spaces to sell.  I don’t really have any revenue model for my blog.  All I know is I’d like to have few ads to generate some revenue, but definitely don’t want so much that I feel like corporate schill.  I imagine I’ve got space for a few more ads but not too much more than that.

I own a Nintendo Wii. I got it a little over 8 months ago. While given the overall success that Wii has enjoyed, it’s not that much of surprise that many bloggers own the Wii. However, I’m still taken aback by the love the Wii has gotten. Some like JD at Get Rich Slowly even gave one away. While I’ve been aware of the Wii phenomenon, it truly struck me when I saw MoneyNing’s post on how his Wii was his best investment of the year.

Wii Owners/PFBloggers:

• Clever Dude And you thought he was cheap.
• Punny of Punny Money.  Added via intelligence provided by Clever Dude
• Trent at The SimpleDollar
• Flexo at Consumerist Commentary
• JD at Get Rich Slowly. JD is always a trend setter. I think he got the Wii right after it was released.
• MoneyNing of MoneyNing
• Grad Money Matter. I might be double counting since the Wii was courtesy of J.D’s Wii giveaway contest
• Jim over Blueprint for Financial Prosperity got his fiancee a Wii. Though truth be told, Jim I believe is a XBox gamer.
• Shadox at Money and Such
• The Learning Curve. Apparently he likes to pair his Wii comments with attractive celebrities

While I don’t have any hard evidence that 2 out 3 PFbloggers prefer the Wii, it does make sense. The Wii Console is much cheaper than both the Playstation 3 ($499) and the XBox 360 ($349). In addition the Wii comes with Wii Sports which despite graphically looking like a proof of concept demo disc remains consistently a popular game amongst the Wii crowd. If we know anything, we know personal finance bloggers think with their wallets. Also I imagine that most personal finance bloggers are casual gamers rather than hard core gamers. We’re not blogging about games after all. As a result, I think most personal finance bloggers are not concerned about the latest graphics or coolest technology. We want a system that provides fun at a good price. As a bonus, the Wii as system lends itself to more interaction, and I’ve suggested in the past a good way to curb socializing costs is to suggest activities that are cheap. Playing video games at home with friends is cheap.

Full disclosure: I own shares of Nintendo, or the rather ADR version (NTDOY). ADRs are American Depository Receipts which are basically U.S. versions of foreign stocks. I can’t complain about Nintendo, the shares have doubled since I purchased them which was around the same time I was gifted my Wii. I only wish I brought more

Bripblap tagged me (and a few others) to make a public declaration. I believe there’s a great deal of credence to making a public declaration. Telling the world that you’re going to do something makes it much a harder to back away from that commitment. I remember back in middle school I would tell my friends who I planned on asking to dance so I couldn’t just chicken out and not ask that person. I no longer have things quite as nerve racking as school dances anymore, but there are still more than a few things I could stand to do.

So my public declaration is: I will not check my portfolio more than once a week unless I’m trying to execute a trade or creating a specific report. I’m cheating a bit here since I already acknowledged this was bit of a problem for me. Up to this Monday, I probably checked half a dozen times each day on an average day. It’s really dumb and leaves me feeling like a younger, Asian version of Silas Marner. I don’t want to be that guy.

Given that I’ve already talked (not in detail) about my first public declaration in previous post, I should make another. Declaration Two: I will start going to the gym 2 to 3 times a week again. I haven’t regularly gone to the gym since April of this year. My gym membership lapsed last month, but I have $200 available in my preventive health care account that I need to use by the end of the year that I can put towards a new membership. My office also moved over the summer and the Gym that I would be joining is in the building which might help this declaration.

And to further propagate the meme I encourage the following bloggers to make their own public declarations.

• Ms. Money and Politics
• Laura at the Green Panda Treehouse

That’s it for my tags. I was never very good at tag in elementary school.