Blogger Confessions #11: Tim from Life For The Better

Happy Saturday and welcome to the 11th episode of the 'Blogger Confessions' interview series on the blog. Today, I'm bringing in Tim from Life For The Better to talk about blogging and how they've managed to keep everything straight as a personal finance blogger.

Tim, take it away.

Blogger Confessions with Tim from Life For The Better

1: In at least 100 words, describe the target audience of your blog.

L and I write primarily to the Financial Independence audience. We are writing for the individuals that want to live a better life. We believe that financial independence is a great tool to be free from money but, once that happens, what are you working towards?

We concentrate on how to live a better life from minimalism, simplicity, frugalness, relationships, military connections, and more.

2: What makes your blog different from other blogs in the PF blogosphere?

Our blog is different from others in the personal finance community by concentrating on the "life" aspect. Many personal finance blogs are simply about how to save money, tax benefits, or another finance related topic.

Life For The Better is about becoming a better person than who you were yesterday. We concentrate on the quote “are you retiring to something or from something?”. We believe that individuals need to be retiring to something and have a goal in mind.

3: What’s the thing that you’ve struggled with the most since starting your blog?

One thing that we’ve struggled with since starting our blog is the “behind the scenes” areas of a blog. From our email list to returning viewership.

We feel as if we write quality material but we need more of it. L and I have moved across the country 4 times and other trips planned here in a few months while starting new jobs at each place. That makes for a consistent schedule for blogging hard. We have a list of ideas we want to talk about but we just need to write and post it.

4: Do you publish your net worth on your blog? Why or why not?

At first, we didn’t talk about our net worth on our blog. We felt that we wanted to concentrate on living a better life.

However, our story is unique and different than most others so we want to show what we are blogging about is reality. We are not sure if we want to do monthly updates or yearly but we feel that there is value in sharing one’s net worth to create trust within the community and with viewers.

5: Have you monetized your blog (ads, affiliate marketing, etc)? Why or why not?

We have tried to monetize our blog with Google Ads and Amazon affiliate links. This is to recoup the costs of a blog as well as our time dedicated to blogging.

However, we want to consistently give back to others. We have done this our entire life and feel we can do that now.

So, we are donating a portion of our profits from the blog to random acts of kindness. We have a post talking about that and what we did last year.

Instead of Christmas gifts, we bought one another a $100 Visa gift card that has to be used on someone else randomly.

6: Would you rather be loved, hated or controversial? Explain, please!

Great question! We would rather be loved for who we are. Whether that is loved for our writing or loved to be hated. Same goes for being controversial.

When we post something on our site, we want it to be us. L and I know that we can’t always please everyone but what we hope to aim for is helping others along the way. That could be simply having a discussion on different viewpoints or helping others fulfill their dreams.

We’ve learned a lot about ourselves over the years and don’t intend on changing who we are to please anyone else. People and love us or love to hate us. Everyone is entitled to their opinion.

7: Who would you be horrified to know read your blog?

Horrified is an interesting word. I think having our close friends and family read it and form an opinion about us would horrify me.

Not that we’re different from real life or anything but putting your raw self out there to the world is horrifying. Someone can just creep at your every move. But we also see the benefit in letting people into our world by having discussions about life.

If we can impact just one person along our journey of blogging we call it a success, even if that means being horrified along the way.

8: What’s your most favorite, least favorite and most embarrassing post on your blog?

Our favorite post on our blog so far is “What We’ve Learned About  “Going Tiny” So Far”. This post was featured over on Rockstar Finance. I remember waking up at 6am and looked at my email and couldn’t believe it.

No caffeine needed to wake me up that day! We truly were, and still honored, to be featured on Rockstar Finance after blogging for a short time. That post documented our journey of Tiny House living so far and many individuals were intrigued by it. We hope to keep that up!

We don’t have a least favorite post to date. We love them all. It’s kind of like children, can you have a least favorite?

Our most embarrassing post? Maybe 30 Steps to a Better Life – A New Year’s Resolution. This is due to it being our first post and not really knowing what we were doing. There are some great aspects about it but maybe not our greatest material. But we’ve learned since then and that’s all that matters.

9: Explain your writing process

Our writing process starts with using Google Keep.

We have a list of topics and ideas we think of throughout the day and put them in there. We can share them with one another in real time. We then find one we want to talk about and just write.

I tend to have a list of bullet point topics within the article I’d like to talk about and write those first and then go back and expand each bullet point.

L likes to go from start to finish. When we edit, I’ll go through quick and call it good. Or use Grammarly! Then I’ll have L go through and she’ll mark it up in red highlights on our Google Doc. We’ll talk about the grammar and make the updates.

If we were to clock everything from start to finish, roughly 2-3 hours. This also includes the graphic designs for the photos. Wordpress layouts, etc.

10: What is your favorite blog in the PF blogosphere (other than your own!)?

I’m really a fan of Rockstar Finance. Having different blogs pushed to me throughout the week is great. I find new people to connect with and see the best from around the web.

I’m also getting into “The Money Mix”. Very similar idea to Rockstar Finance but the information is updated more frequently and not necessarily the “best of the web”.

I also do the same with Feedly. I’ll put everyone’s blog that I follow into the list and go through each day and save it for later reading. I know that that is not a blog per se but it allows me to view everything across the web that I like.

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