Recently Nancy, a loyal reader on this site posted a comment on Stressful Monday Hottie Pic - Alyssa Milano.
Her comment was:
Steve - you know I’ve been a fan for years, but this was a real turn-off.
You’re doing something wonderful in the world - helping people with money, something deeply personal and helpful.
Why on earth are your resorting to stuff like this that alienates a good portion of the population? Me among them?
I thought she raised some good points and I wanted to share with you the other side of the story to help you understand why the blog has become a little edgier, more R rated at times and we’ve seen a loose nipple or two.
Frankly, the old methods of cramming financial education down people’s throats just doesn’t work well for the masses and people couldn’t be bothered. So I decided to take a different approach, I thought why can’t we mix financial education in with interesting, sexy, and eclectic content. The hope is that if I can put a little of this and that in that people will come for one thing and leave with a financial tidbit or news they otherwise would not have known.
So far the experiment has worked well. I’m as surprised as anyone to see that the hottie pics are at the very top of the most popular pages and that when people land on those pages they are more likely to take time to look at other information, including financial posts. The bounce rate is lower for those pages than for those that land straight on say a credit report story.
A 2006 survey in the U.S. again showed that financial literacy and education programs, at least in the U.S. are falling short of the mark in introducing and keeping younger people interested in learning about money.
In the last 21 days since the overhaul my blog it has had over 17,112 unique visitors, 87% are new visitors. People that come in not on financial pages stay on the site twice as long as people that come in solely on a story about Egg bank or credit scores.
And while I apologize if the revamp has upset some people, please understand that financial professionals are not the target reader. The blog is designed to draw in people that would not normally seek out personal finance information and present important personal finance topics to them in discreet and new ways so I can educate them when they least expect it.
I invite you to visit Nancy’s Canadian Money Coach site for excellent news and information strictly about personal finance information.
But if you’d like to get the latest news about what you you need to know to make the most out of your credit, debt and life, and don’t mind a picture or two of a hot babe, stick around, there is a lot more to come, of both.
One of my favorite magazines “Stuff” which contains awesome information about the latest tech stuff and gadgets, also has an edgier approach to presenting information. It doesn’t make it wrong, just different.
And for me personally if I have a choice of conforming and boring the hell out of myself with the same old stories and being prim and proper, or not conforming, having a good time and helping to educate people that would not otherwise seek out information on credit, debt and money, I’ll go with that.
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