My side hustle idea; whatcha think?

Raise your hand if you're sitting in a half-full office today? The week of Thanksgiving, every office I've ever worked in was at least half empty. It was one of my favorite times to be at the office, actually. It was slow. And, I didn't have to take PTO!

And, you're probably making the rounds throughout the blogosphere with those folks who've actually posted something today - like this article, which is quickly turning into something relatively meaningless...

I've published this post to say something important.

Thanks. Thanks for your readership this year. It's been an amazing ride as we've traveled the country and watched this blog turn into, well, something. You people are awesome. Keep saving. Keep investing. Keep smiling.

Now, on to other things...

How many of you are on Pinterest?

I am, but I've largely neglected our Pinterest profile until just a few days ago. I need to get back into it and truly figure it out. My wife was the main resource behind Pinterest for the longest time. For months, though, it sat untouched. Now, I'm trying to spark some activity.

Check out our analytics graph, especially the huge spike on the right:

Amazing what happens when you finally start paying attention to it again. The thing is, Pinterest is a unique medium. It's not like Twitter or Facebook. Those two social media outfits are pretty easy to master. You post. You tag. Boom, boom - done. But, Pinterest is different. Things matter more over there.

Your graphics need to be well-done. Nice, bright imagery. Short and sweet text. The algorithm that Pinterest uses doesn't care too much about the date and displaying things in a chronological order. It cares about quality, and that's the tough part about becoming successful on Pinterest. You actually gotta do stuff...the right stuff, over time, consistently and dependably.

It's a challenge, and I'm going to try my very best to accept it.

A side hustle idea

Also, I have this side hustle idea and I'd love your feedback.

I'm thinking of developing a blog notification service. Kinda like a Feedly, but much more configurable. This service wouldn't be a reader, though.

The concept behind this idea is simple: The service handles all of your blog notifications/subscriptions for you. Meaning, you aren't forking over your email address to each and every blog that you'd like to follow. Instead, you're linking a blog to your account here, and this service sends you notifications each time a new post is published instead of the blog itself.

You'd manage all of your blog subscriptions from one place. You can create groups of blogs and manage them together. Mass unsubscribe. That stuff.

But, you can also customize your notifications. For example, if you only want notifications from your list of sports blogs when they talk about, say, the Baltimore Orioles, then you'd specify that the keyword "Baltimore Orioles" must appear in the title of the post. The service only sends you updates that meet that criteria. Or, if you only want to be updated if a blog publishes a post within a certain category, then you can set that up too.

Basically, the idea is custom notifications managed through a single, consolidated service. The service connects with each blog through their RSS feed and only sends updates that meet the criteria you set up. Your email is never provided to the blogs themselves. It stays here.

A premium component might be the ability to roll up your notifications into a single email sent at the end of each day. That single email would contain all of your post notifications rather than individual emails sent throughout the day as the updates happen. Of course, you'd also be able to view your notifications through your dashboard on the website.

Does this make sense? Would you use a service like this? Also - would you pay to use a service like this?

Lastly, I'm taking the rest of the week off from blogging. No posts. Nada. I'll be enjoying some time with family as I hope you people will, too. A long weekend to forget about personal finance. Investments. The hell with all that stuff for a few days. Relax. Eat some turkey and pie. Enjoy yourself.