The other morning, as I woke up after my usual 6 naked Taylor Swift dreams, I found the following email*:

Hi Uproar:

How would you like a few hundred bucks, just for putting a link on your blog?

Signed,

Some Advertiser

*Note, some details of this email have been changed, mostly because I’m too lazy to go find the real one**.

**Literally as I typed that last sentence, I got ANOTHER email about advertising on my blog.

I don’t take blogging that seriously. Basically, I try to take 7 penis jokes and turn them into a serious point about finance. Sometimes I succeed, most of the time I fail. I continue to be impressed that my readership continues to creep up. My Mom must be hitting refresh A LOT. I totally don’t pay her either. Anymore.

When it comes to my lax blogging attitude, I’m definitely in the minority. Most bloggers take the medium really seriously. They’re serious about making a sideline income online, dammit. With advertising offers literally falling out of the sky, I can’t say I blame them. For me, in about the last 8 months, blogging has gone from a fun hobby to a serious sideline business. I’m not going to tell you how much I’ve made or anything, but it’s enough money that it’s actually a lucrative activity. I’ve always dreamed of getting paid to make sex jokes, and you people have made it happen. Give yourselves a pat on the groin or something.

But yet, as I watch the medium evolve, I’m wondering if the boom we’re witnessing is sustainable. I do absolutely nothing to attract advertisers, yet they still contact me, increasingly more lately. Bloggers with more readers are experiencing an even bigger boom. Bloggers are increasingly using their expertise to leverage into more traditional media, doing things like writing books and appearing on radio and tv. Others choose to keep their work strictly online, writing for other bloggers or other internet based publications. The point? The market for blogging and blogging related services has exploded, and at least one blogger is concerned it isn’t sustainable.

As most of you know, Mike from The Financial Blogger is all over buying other financial blogs. Him and his silent partner own probably around half a dozen different sites at this point, with no intention of slowing down. He’s all about expanding his empire, even if he has to take on a lot of debt to do so. The guy has borrowed at almost credit card like rates (10%) in order to continue to expand his business.

Mike isn’t alone in this blog buying business though. This forum over at Yakezie has half a dozen bloggers who are interested in buying sites and milking that sweet, sweet PR teet. They range from the incredibly unrealistic (only willing to pay 2 times monthly revenue) to people who are willing to pay a much more generous figure of 18 to 24 times monthly revenue. This is increasingly becoming the industry norm, replacing 12 times monthly revenue as the norm. Not to be outdone, Mike has raised the stakes, indicating he’s now willing to pay up to 48 times monthly revenue, at least sometimes.

We have a market with rapidly rising valuations. Is that the sign of a bubble? Could be.

Meanwhile, we have all sorts of new competition. I can’t find the info on the Yakezie site, but there are approximately 3.2 million new blogs who are just jonesing to get into the club. Their favorite traffic metric is the Alexa rank, which ranks your site’s visitors who have downloaded Alexa’s toolbar.

I have absolutely no interest in joining Yakezie. After I type the next paragraphs, I’m sure I’ll be banned from ever applying to join, which is just fine by me.

Yakezie is nothing but a ponzi scheme, mixed with a dash of communism for good measure. It’s designed to benefit its benevolent ruler at the expense of the peons making up the bottom of the pyramid. There are so many problems with the business model that this humble blogger barely knows where to begin.

Exclusively using Alexa ranking to determine a site’s popularity is like using a dividend yield to exclusively determine an investment’s potential. Everybody in Yakezie visits each other’s sites, sometimes exclusively. Naturally, they all have the Alexa toolbar installed, meaning they’re artificially increasing each other’s rankings. I know of a certain few sites in the network that get considerably less traffic than I do, yet they kill me in Alexa ranking. You guys aren’t fooling everyone.

Do you know how many non-bloggers have the Alexa toolbar installed? I’ll tell you. ZERO.

Meanwhile, they all hang together. They link to each other exclusively, visit each other exclusively, and probably meet for circle jerks in real life. It’s really quite easy for a relatively new blog to get to a respectable level of traffic, all they need to do is have a pulse, join the Yakezie challenge, get linked to by all the other Yakezie blogs, and they get noticed.

How does this relate to a ponzi scheme? Well, like Bernie Madoff can attest, you need new suckers entrants in order to keep the whole thing going. If the network doesn’t grow, Google eventually figures out that only a few blogs are consistently linking to each other, hence reducing the effectiveness of the network. Plus, the benevolent ruler can continue to profit from the network, since it keeps getting bigger. He’s sure trying hard convince the challengers the network is for their benefit. Why do you think the slogan sounds like it came straight from Karl Marx?

And then, the ruler will write posts that do their best to discourage people from trying to make a living online.

I think we can add herd behavior to our bubble list.

Meanwhile, let’s take a look at the underlying industry. All the buzz these days is around the high tech names. Facebook is planning it’s IPO. Google is continuing to chug along. Everyone and their dog has an iPhone. Even companies like Amazon and Netflix are flying high. The whole sector is booming like it’s 1999 again.

To review, let’s take one last look at our bubble list. We have:

1) Easy money

2) Increasing valuations

3) Herd mentality

4) The entire sector is sizzling

So, yeah. 1929 just called. It wants its shtick back.

Is Blogging In A Bubble? is a post from: Financial Uproar For 140 character musings, follow me on the Twitter

Guess where I was yesterday? No ladies, I wasn’t lingering outside your window, hoping for a sexy silhouette. I’m sure I’ll end up doing that one of these days, so you should probably watch out for that. You never know when I’ll be creepily lingering outside your window. In fact, I’d start filling out the restraining order right now.

You’ll never guess where I was yesterday, unless you follow me on the Twitter. I went up to the bustling metropolis of Red Deer to watch some women’s curling. The Scotties Tournament of Hearts is the national championship for ladies curling, so at least I was watching quality, right?

Now, I have to admit, curling is kind of a guilty pleasure for me. I used to be the guy who made fun of people who like to watch curling. Is there anything more stereotypical than a Canadian liking curling? I feel like a bad punchline in a Jay Leno monologue. We picked up some Tim Horton’s on the way, because that’s just expected.

Anyway, as we go further down this week’s dump, you’ll see the real reason why I went to watch curling. My lust for women curlers has already been well documented.

Song I Like And Therefore You Should Too

2 songs this week! Aren’t you all lucky? They’re kind of both a package. Let me present the hastily made Cleveland tourism video.

And part 2:

Edit: Turns out you can’t embed the second one. Go check it out though.

Poor Cleveland.

Simpsons Quote

Homer: Hey Flanders! You smell like manure!

Ned Flanders: Uh oh… better cancel that dinner party tonight! Thanks for the nose news, neighbour!

Gambling Is Fun

Hey, I wonder if I can gamble on women’s curling? (Checks Bodog) Bummer. Looks like I’ll have to bet on real sports.

I went 2-1 again last week, which seems to be a pretty common score for me. I slowly work my way back to spitting distance of a .500 record, and then I go 0-3. IT NEVER FAILS. Have I mentioned how you should never actually bet on sports?

This week I’m going with my Colorado Avalanche to beat the Winnipeg Jets straight up, since everything to do with Winnipeg sucks. I’m also going to take the suddenly half decent Magic to cover against the Heat, plus the 9 points. The line for total points for Jeremy Lin is 19.5, and you know I have to take the over on that.

Overall record: 22-27-2

A Post You Might Have Missed

I have almost 400 posts in my archives. Why haven’t you read them all yet? What do you mean, you have a life? Okay fine, just read this one then.

A year ago, I predicted how food inflation was coming. And, like every single one of my predictions, it came true. Don’t bother checking the archives to verify that. I’m right all the time. Anyway, go check out the sneaky way food companies will make sure you’ll never notice food inflation.

The More You Know

I spent a bunch of time on Wikipedia on Friday night, instead of going out like the cool kids do. I started out reading about JFK, and an hour later I’d bounced around to reading about Sigmund Freud. Wikipedia is awesome like that. Random time!

Theresa Lee “Terry” Farrell (born November 19, 1963) is an American actress and former fashion model. She is perhaps best known for her performances in the television series Star Trek: Deep Space Nine and Becker.

Farrell is the daughter of Kay Carol Christine Bendickson and Edwin Francis Farrell, Jr. Later, her mother married David W. Grussendorf, who adopted Terry and her sister, Christine. Before becoming a model, she played a Christmas elf at a mall in Cedar Rapids. In 1978, she left her hometown for a summer inMexico City as a foreign exchange student. She has since been fond of big cities, so in her junior year of high school, the nearly six feet tall Farrell submitted her image to the Elite modeling agency in New York City. Shortly after, at the age of 16, she was summoned to New York City and, within two days of arriving, had an exclusive contract with Mademoiselle.

Oh, Terry Farrell. Teenage Nelson may have had a crush on her.

Dirty Word In Words With Friends

Turd. I may have forfeited a word with more points just so I could play turd.

If you want to play me, my username is Nelsmi. Like 5 people have randomly started up games with me. You don’t want to be left out, do you?

Babe Loosely Related To Finance

The real reason I went to watch curling yesterday is because some of the curling chicks are hot. The days of curling being dominated by middle age ladies is drawing to a close, and this guy couldn’t be happier. Without further adieu, I present, from Team Manitoba, Kaitlyn Lawes.

The curling rock looks totally photoshopped in. You didn’t even notice the rock, did you?

I’m not sure about the picture location though. I half expect to see a drunk hobo stumbling around in the background.

Time For Links

First up is a post from a couple weeks ago from Weakonomics, about pricing at the humane society. It’s an interesting read, so go check it out. But come back, because I have abandonment issues.

Don’t Quit Your Day Job continues to deliver good stuff, yet they all refuse to quit their day jobs. Don’t they know that would amuse me? Anyway, go check out whether they think it’s a good idea to lie to your spouse about money, at least sometimes.

Five Cent Nickel thinks you should own your investments and rent your fun. This is the greatest advice given since a wise man once told me “bitches be crazy.”

Kevin from Thousandaire would sell his blog for $75k. Now, admittedly, Kevin isn’t really interested in selling, so he’s set the number high. Still, go check out the post to see all the ways real venture capital guys would eat him for breakfast.

It’s been what, 20 minutes since I last linked to Control Your Cash? Let’s change that by highlighting their post on some of the problems with investors looking strictly at dividends.

Dividend Ninja showed up over at my internet girlfriend Young and Thrifty’s blog, writing a terrific post looking at the similarities and differences between dividend and blog income.

Stuff I Wrote

If I had a million dollars over at Canadian Finance Blog. I’d probably waste it all on strippers.

The importance of having a will over at Sustainable PF. People are really bad at this.

Carnivals This Week

HOW DARE YOU MOCK ME FOR NOT SUBMITTING TO ANY CARNIVALS. HOW DARE YOU!!!

Have a good week everyone.

Sunday Morning Dump: Curling, Eh? is a post from: Financial Uproar For 140 character musings, follow me on the Twitter

Just one short week ago, you were all treated to the greatest post in the history of all time. Go back and relive the greatness that can only be delivered by stomping on someone else’s hard work. Yes, I’m talking about the one and only Trent Hamm from The Simple Dollar, which just might be the greatest personal finance blog of all… yeah, I just can’t type that with a straight face.

Trent is on the Twitter, where he “update(s) with interesting links and thoughts a couple times a day – and no boring conversation you don’t care about!” Well, thank God. Nobody likes boring conversation, least of all Trent. I mean, have you looked at his blog? Wait, don’t answer that.

Anyway, how’s that updating Twitter a couple times a day thing going Trent? A quick glance at his Twitter profile shows he hasn’t tweeted since October 28th. He must be pacing himself for an onslaught of interesting tweets in about 2014. So, you know, stay tuned for that.

Meanwhile, back to the 365 days of living cheap series. As an aside, you should really read the whole series. Not for the posts themselves, but for the comments. They’re pretty funny. Honestly.

Anyway, let’s do this thing. First up, refrigerator temperatures.

Let’s cut straight to the chase.

In Trent’s 5 plus year writing career, he has never done that.

The sweet spot for any refrigerator is between 39 and 40 F. This is the temperature at which bacterial growth is inhibited but the difference between your refrigerator and the ambient temperature outside of your refrigerator is minimized.

In other words, keeping your refrigerator’s internal temperature at about 39 F will keep your food safe while minimizing your energy costs.

Simple, right? Well, not quite so simple.

Trent goes on to explain that you could save $10 per year by just adjusting the temperature. He doesn’t actually bother to do the math or anything (this isn’t such a bad thing) he just pulls the number out of his ass.

A fridge cools down air from room temperature (70 degrees F or so) to approximately 37 degrees, which is freezing. My water doesn’t freeze in my fridge, so I’m assuming it’s set at around 37 or 38 degrees, since there’s only one person on this earth who cares about refrigerator temperatures.

Trent actually thinks that adjusting the temperature knob by a couple of degrees is going to lower the energy usage by 20%. I’m not going to argue that it doesn’t make a difference, of course it will. But the appliance is lowering the temperature of 70 degree air. The difference between 38 degrees and 40 isn’t going to be much.

Apparently a full fridge will cool more efficiently than an empty one. Most people’s fridges are full. Problem solved! Next!

Another useful tactic is to thaw frozen foods in the fridge instead of on the counter. As frozen foods thaw, they cool the air around them. This is a good thing in a refrigerator that you want to keep cool internally. It’s a bad thing most of the time outside of the refrigerator, as it’s not going to provide a significant enough effect to keep your air conditioner from running any significant amount and it’s going to work in a small way against your furnace.

So that’s why my heat bill is so much. I thought it was because I lived in cold, cold Canada. Silly me.

Stained items of clothing are pre-treated to make the stain easy to remove. Soiled clothes are often washed outside with the hose over the garden (so that the extra water just waters the garden) before they ever come inside.

Yep, taking the clothes outside and washing them off with the hose is definitely a better use of your time than just putting them in the machine with some Spray n Wash. What’s a bottle of that stuff run these days, like 6 bucks?

Trent lives in Iowa. Does he do this in the winter too? I think that may be my favorite piece of “advice” Trent has ever given. Water is expensive, people!

An outdoor clothesline lets you capture the power of the wind to dry your clothes. The wind billows through, gently drying your clothes and making them smell fresh in a way that a dryer just can’t quite recapture.

How much does this actually save? Mr. Electricity reports that if you run 7.5 dryer loads per week and have a $0.15 per kWh rate from your electric company, you’ll save just shy of $200 per year by air-drying your clothes. Given how quickly I can hang up and take down clothes (remember, there’s no loading or unloading of the dryer if you do it this way), it’s worth it for me to do this most of the time.

Ah, once again Trent is using the worst case scenario to prove his point. I do one load of laundry a week. Yes, I’m a single guy, so logic would dictate a family of 4 would do… 4 loads of laundry a week. (Math is hard) Yes, kids do dirty clothes faster than grown ups. But those clothes are also smaller, hence more would fit into a load.

Also, I call BS on the argument that Trent can take the clothes from the washer, hang them/drape them over things, and then go back and then unhang them/fold them/put them away faster than a normal person’s wash/dry/fold/put away routine. He’s got an extra step in there.

Besides, we live in North America, the land of affluence. We have cell phones and cable TV and Netflix subscriptions. Spend like $8 a month to use the dryer. It’ll be okay.

Let’s say that I would spend $25 on a six quart pot from the local store versus $200 (!) for an enameled cast iron 5.5 quart pot from Le Creuset. The six quart pot comes with a three year warranty, while the enameled cast iron pot comes with a 101 year warranty.

Apparently there are no pots between $25 and $200.

Also, I’d be impressed if Trent could still find the receipt like 74 years after he bought his pot. Assuming the Le Creuset pot company is still in existence. Am I the only one who hopes Trent bought it at Stoner’s Pot Palace?

…..

Hey, how many Feedburner subscribers does Trent have? (Check’s site, sees over 90k subscribers) (Goes to find one of those $200 pans to smash into my forehead)

Only 318 Days Of Crap Left is a post from: Financial Uproar For 140 character musings, follow me on the Twitter

Hot damn, is it some sort of personal finance blog rule that you have to do at least one no spend day per week?

Admittedly, I probably don’t read that many of them. That’s because I generally avoid the types of blogs that talk about stuff like that. Frankly, you’ve got to be an entertaining writer to pull off spending reports. Some can do it, but most can’t. You know, I just don’t want to know about the boring stuff that goes on in your life. YOU SPENT $2.18 ON HOT CHOCOLATE AT TIM HORTON’S? HOW INTERESTING.

On the surface, no spend days don’t really look at bad. The whole point is to avoid spending money. There’s nothing wrong with attempting to not spend money. Most of us (yes, me included) spend too much of it, usually on crap. Anything that cuts down the amount we spend isn’t bad.

But, no spend days aren’t really as good as they seem. What’s that? You want me to use accounting as an example? If you insist.

The Accounting Of No Spend Days

When a company figures out how much inventory they have on hand, they use a pretty simple way to count it, at least most of the time.

Let’s say a company buys a million dollars of inventory, so they can sell widgets. Oh widgets, always being made, never being used. Anyway, as any business does, they buy that inventory so they can sell these widgets at some sort of profit. Inventory drops to $200,000 worth of inventory, so they buy a million bucks more. Inventory now stands at $1.2 million.

Now, which inventory would they sell first? Well, in just about every business, they sell the old stuff first. This makes sense, you want to get the old stuff out so you’re not sitting on it. Maybe it’s perishable, or maybe it’s technology that goes obsolete quickly. Even natural resource companies sell the old stuff first, since nobody wants to store barrels of oil.

What does this have to do with your finances? Say you buy a tank of gas and it lasts you two weeks. In accounting talk, that’s a prepaid expense. If 14 days worth of gas costs you $42, that’s the exact same as buying $3 worth of gas everyday. Nobody does this, because it’s a pain in the ass. It’s the same thing with groceries, your utilities, and so on.

It’s cool that you’re trying to spend less money. Just remember, if you spend money in advance, it kind of isn’t a no spend day at all.

The Problem With No Spend Days is a post from: Financial Uproar For 140 character musings, follow me on the Twitter

Well kids, my vacation is pretty much over. I’m writing this in the Las Vegas airport, where I’m somehow resisting the urge to play the many slot machines sprinkled among the concourse. Seriously people, did you not do enough gambling on the Strip?

I had a pretty good time, I just probably shouldn’t have stayed in Vegas for a whole week. I was starting to get pretty bored after about day 4. If I do this alone travel thing again, I think I won’t spend so much time in just one place. When I go to Toronto for the Canadian Personal Finance Conference in September, I’ll spend a few days in Toronto, a few in Montreal, and so on. That way I won’t get bored.

I went to the Hoover Dam yesterday, along with about 12 over-zealous people from North Carolina. Oh hell, they were SO annoying. One girl told the story about how she was convinced to eat a wax crayon, because the guy told her it would taste like oranges. She barely needed a minute of convincing before she was gobbling down that crayon like it was candy. I think my suitcase has a higher IQ than she does. She wasn’t even that hot.

Song I Like And Therefore You Should Too

How awesome is it that The Darkness is back together? Such cheesy 80′s type rock. I LOVE EVERY MINUTE OF IT.

It turns out the bank broke up because the lead singer was doing all sorts of drugs. One look at any of their videos and anyone could have figured out that someone was doing drugs.

Simpsons Quote

Marge: I knew you had your hands full with the babies, so I baked you some banana bread.

Apu: Oh hallelujah, our problems are solved! We have banana bread!

Gambling Is Fun

Well, I’m pretty sure I went 0-3 last week. I still can’t find official results for my two strange prop bets (taking OVER 1:40 on the national anthem and betting Payton would be shown before Archie Manning) so I’m just going to assume I lost on those ones. I know for sure I lost on the game, stupid Patriot receivers. Gisele totally has reason to be mad. They couldn’t catch a cold during winter in Alaska.

This week, without any football to bet on, this could be a disaster. But, here goes. I’m going to take the Knicks to cover against the Timberwolves, who are 6.5 point favorites at home. Go Linsanity and whatnot. I’m also going with the Lakers to beat the helpless Raptors minus the 6.5 points. And to round out this crapshoot, I’m taking Pittsburgh to beat Tampa Bay, straight up.

Overall Record: 20-26-2

A Post You Might Have Missed

Quick! Name a food my archives are more delicious than.

I’m gonna go with chocolate sundaes.

One of my favorite posts to write was where I questioned the growth prospects of Wal-Mart long term. Yes, I realize they’re the biggest retailer in the world. But how long can they keep with the growth? I think Wal-Mart’s best days are behind it, not ahead.

The More You Know

Wikipedia, if you don’t deliver, I’ll totally go back and step on that cute little salamander I saw yesterday. Your move, Wiki.

Miss USA 2008, the 57th Miss USA beauty pageant, was held in Las Vegas, Nevada on April 11, 2008. At the conclusion of the final night of competition,Crystle Stewart, Miss Texas USA, was crowned the winner by outgoing titleholder, Rachel Smith of Tennessee. Crystle represented the United States at the Miss Universe 2008 pageant, which was held in Vietnam, where she placed in the Top 10. This is the first time in Miss USA history that two consecutive women of African-American descent have been crowned.

The pageant was held at the Theatre for the Performing Arts, a 7,000 seat theater located in the Planet Hollywood Resort and Casino. The theater was also the location of Miss Universe 1991 and 1996 pageants. This is the first time that the Miss USA pageant was held in Nevada.

There’s a picture. She’s kinda creepy looking. Well, for a beauty pageant contestant, anyway.

Dirty Word In Words With Friends

Soximaru delivered again, playing shitted. No word on whether she was taking a dump while she played it.

If anyone wants to play me, my user is Nelsmi. I promise, I won’t gloat too hard when I beat you.

Babe Loosely Related To Finance

Have I done Katherine Heigl yet? No time to look. My flight leaves pretty soon. Here you all go.

I hear she’s miserable in real life. I’d still tolerate her for as long as it takes to get her naked.

Time For Links

Let’s start things off with Five Cent Nickel, who reminds us that stocks shouldn’t be treated the same as a savings account. Just like you wouldn’t treat your mom the same as your lady friend, fellas. Yep, that got a little creepy.

Up next is Don’t Quit Your Day Job, who explores whether sports gambling is beatable. It’s an interesting post. I totally want at least one of those guys to quit their day job, just so I can mock them about their blog title.

One of these days, JT from Money Mamba is going to actually need to shave. In the meantime, go check out his post on why you should ditch the regular retirement plan. It’s so delightful when JT writes about retirement.

My internet girlfriend ate some mac and cheese and decided it was worthy of a blog post. And yet I read said post and decided it was worthy of a link. Who’s the sad one here?

The older half of Boomer and Echo tells everyone how to make your kids your slaves put them to work. Because, hey, it’s about time those damn freeloaders started pulling their weight, amirite?

Canadian Capitalist barely writes anymore, which is too bad, since he churns out good stuff. Go check out his post on why you shouldn’t depend on magazines for your stock picks. (Published from a magazine’s site)

The Dividend Ninja has a bit of a hard-on for REITs. Okay, it’s not him, it’s a guest poster. But still.

Stuff I Wrote

For Canadian Finance Blog – How Many of Your Needs Are Actual Needs (Including a mention on Get Rich Slowly)

For My University Money – Should You Pick Individual Stocks

Carnivals

Yeah right. I don’t even submit when I’m not on vacation.

Have a good week everybody.

Saturday Afternoon Dump: This Airport Chair Is Uncomfortable is a post from: Financial Uproar For 140 character musings, follow me on the Twitter