Postcards from the Funny Farm

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What is your Bills IQ? By that I mean, the one you get generated when you take the quiz at bills.com/iq. I took the test and I think it is an excellent tool for seeing your financial situation and maybe getting help where it is needed. After the quiz you are given an assessment of how they may be able to help you. They have many services such as: Debt consolidation, Debt help, and Debt relief. They lay out the ways they may be able to help based on your test results. If you are concerned about your financial situation in, for example, these ways: you’re in deep debt or want to know how you can retire better, then this quiz will really help you towards a solution. There are other areas they can help with as well, so you really should go take the test. I’m trying to write shorter posts that say more these days, so I am trying shorter word patterns such as haikus. So, I decided to write a haiku on my finances:

So many bills paid
So many more to go
Good to be under control

If you take the test, I’d be curious to hear what you thought of it. As I took the test, I found the responses very helpful to planning for retirement and thinking about how to bring down my credit card debt. It really helped me out.

How did I do in June of 2008?

Didn’t quite meet my goals in traffic and money, but publishing was a slam dunk. I think Social Media will save me in July.
Traffic
Goal: Traffic: 3,000 uniques
Actual: 2,554 uniques

I spent time playing and exploring ways “outside the box” to blog and you see the consequences here. At the same time, I feel my exploration was worth it. You’ll notice I now have all my top referring social media sites linked in my layout. I am investing more in them: ie; Chawlk, Blog Catalog, etc. We’ll see how that works for July’s numbers. I invite you to join my community at MyBlogLog and some of the other sites through the links at the top and in the sidebar. Networking is cool because the increased traffic works both ways!

Publishing
Goal: 3
Actual: 4

• Create Through Necessity a guest blog at Katelynjane’s Notebook.
• The Upside of Recession: Consciousness published at Blogcritics Magazine.
• Love Homework a guest blog at It Might be Love
• Playing through Diffucult Times a guest blog at Be Playful (Scheduled for an early July publishing)

Money
Goal: 200 bucks.
Actual: 115 bucks.

Due to not having PR, IZEA doesn’t give me the options I used to have as a PR4. This is very ironic since doing paid posts is likely why my PR was taken away, but I am not complaining. I feel like PR is going to change it’s ranking algorithm eventually and I intend to keep writing for hire when it makes sense. I’ll never publish what I consider a boring post. You have my word on that. And hey … 115 bucks is a lot of money! Incidentally, I just thought I’d throw in here that despite the recession, if you live in the area, the Boston jobs are flourishing. Thought I’d send the site out if anyone needs it.

Goals for July 2008 are:
Traffic: 2700 uniques
Publishing: 3
Money: 200 bucks

Final thought:

This month you will see me a lot in social media. I intend to use that more to try and meet my July goal of 2700 uniques. I think it is an untapped resource here at the Farm. I will report the results of this strategy next month. Maybe I’ll see you at the social media sites?

Thanks for following this series! Watch how I do in July 2008. -Damien