Beating Broke

Personal Finance from the Broke Perspective

Confessions of a Professional Blogger – Book Review

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Confessions of a Professional Blogger

By: Miranda Marquit

Confessions of a Professional BloggerDisclaimer: I received a copy of this book from Miranda.  My policy on books I receive free copies of is that I don’t review them unless I like them.

How many of us, myself included, don’t jump at the chance to get a little insight into how someone who does something that we want to do for a living, for a living?  I know that when Miranda asked me back at the end of 2013 if I would read her book that I immediately said yes.  It’s been a little while since she first sent over a copy, but that’s totally on me.  I read a lot of books, and somehow hers got lost in the shuffle and ended up at the bottom of the to-read pile.  I wish it hadn’t, but it did.

On to the book.  It’s a short read at just over 100 pages, but it’s chock full of excellent information on becoming a professional blogger.  Miranda leads the reader through the steps of starting out and gaining fans for your blog, or for gaining customers for your freelance writing.  Throughout the book, Miranda focuses quite a bit on the details on how she manages her freelance clients, the way she’s created the “package” of services that she provides, and how she structures it all to the benefit of all involved.

If you’re looking to test the freelance writer waters, Confessions is a quick read that’s loaded up with information on where to start, what you need to do, and how to keep it rolling.  You’ll find the book to read like a lot of Miranda’s articles, smooth and concise.  And who better to learn from than someone who used her freelance writing to become the primary breadwinner for her household?

You can pick up a copy of Confessions of a Professional Blogger at her site, MirandaMarquit.com.

Quick and Easy Passive Income Ideas

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Building passive income streams can be hard work.  They usually take a significant amount of work and/or money to set up before they can really become a full-fledged passive income stream.  It’s part of the argument over whether they really are “passive” or not.  Obviously, as with anything, the more work or money you put into your passive income ideas the better the resulting passive income streams will be.  But, when you’re first getting started, there are several ways you can set up some small passive income streams that will provide with different forms of passive income.

Here’s a few passive income ideas.

  • deposit money with passive income ideasBlogging – As a blogger, myself, this one is one of the first ones I usually suggest.  To be sure, it’s not for everyone, but it can set up a rather nice passive income stream.  Blogging is work, but a well set up blog, with some content, could eventually be left alone to collect traffic, and Google adsense checks.  The initial work is a bit heavier, but the maintenance while setting it up can be as little as a few hours a week.
  • Cash Back Cards – Some might argue that this isn’t really a passive income stream, but I think that it can be.  Using a tax free cash back card to pay for bills/things that you would normally buy anyways makes the cash back an added bonus.  The only added work is to immediately pay the balance for the things that you’ve bought, and the cash back becomes an extra stream of income that you earned by buying things you would have anyways.  I have a coworker that does this and makes $500-$600 a year.
  • Peer-to-peer lending – I’ve written before about my portfolio on LendingClub, and how, with very minimal maintenance, I’m slowly building a passive income stream that earns me money.  As my portfolio grows, and I reinvest the interest, the interest income from the portfolio grows with it.  Eventually, if I keep with it, I could have a compound interest passive income machine, built with less than $20 and 20 minutes a month.

Those are just a few quick and easy passive income ideas to build passive income streams.  They don’t require a lot of work to get started and maintain, but they will provide for extra income that you can use to build them further, or to help beat broke.
photo credit: alancleaver_2000

Is Frugal Normal?

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Do you think that being a Frugaler is normal?  It obviously is a bit abnormal in the American society.  Although, with recent economic news, I think that it’s becoming more popular.  But normal?  I really don’t think so.

Sometimes, we look at the world through the personal finance bloggers perspective.  We see all the other personal finance bloggers we know and read and we get used to thinking that those people, along with ourselves, are the norm.  In essence, we are missing the forest for the trees.  Being a Frugaler is far from normal.

Every day, we Frugalers, task ourselves with finding new and exciting (well, maybe not exciting) ways to spend less money.  At the same time, we try and find ways to make more money.  We hope that the net effect is that we not only have money to pay the bills, but that we have some to save for a rainy day and, maybe, even retirement.  We daren’t say it, but some of us even think about “early” retirement.  And, if you peer no farther than our little realm of the blogosphere, you would think that the whole country does nothing but count pennies and do personal accounting.

I don’t think you would find too many PF bloggers who would argue against more people becoming Frugalers.  In fact, that is the purpose of a vast majority of the PF blogs that exist.  On any given day, you’ll find articles on “best way(s) to save on groceries”, “way(s) to cut utility bills”, and the list goes on.  We exist to talk, share, and teach this stuff.

Being a Frugaler may not be normal, but we’re working on it.