I have several blog ideas in my head that I’d like to do. But these are all from my experience, pain, and problems. I’d rather right about what YOU, my loyal ready would like to hear.

I need your help with a couple of things:

1. Come visit this post in the blog and tell me about any particular finance issue you are having. I will research it and write a blog post about. And I will give you credit.

2. Please tell 5 friends on your social media accounts about our site. But only if you love it. I am trying to build value and generate content that will help others learn the ways of sounds fiscal management.

So comment away, and don’t forget to share.

Original Post: What would help you? Blog Home : Broke MF // Helping People Dig Out of a Financial Hole

In a previous post “How do you track your money” I posed a question to our visitors asking how do you track your money. I didn’t receive very many responses so I decided to go do some hunting on my own. And I am very happy with what I have found.

I am now a proud owner and community member of the You Need A Budget software. This software has several great features that put it well above the other standard boring options out there.

Highlights:

• It works on Mac, Windows and Linux – all with a single license
• It focuses more on the planning on money than on the tracking of money.
• It as a very simple interface which has been lost in some of the more popular financial solutions.

But probably the best feature of all is the forums (which you can join for free without buying the software). This is the only software I found which has a very active and very passionate community centered around the budgeting process. These are people who have been in financial hell and lived to tell their stories. The software does not save your ass. It is the community members and the understanding of the budgeting process that makes the software, the community, and the company great. The owner cares deeply about helping other people.

Visit You Need A Budget site today and download their software for a 34 day free trial. Make sure you join the forum and learn the money rules. You will not regret it, and it will be a great first step towards on the road to recovery. I paid for a copy

Make sure you follow our Facebook Page today too.

Original Post: You Need A Budget – My initial review Blog Home : Broke MF // Helping People Dig Out of a Financial Hole

“How do I get out of debt?”

This is one of the most common questions I have asked myself. And I’ve sat around with plenty of friends over drinks asking the exact same question. Sometimes it seems to be one that has no realistic answer. How do you get out of a $50,000, $75,000, or $150,000 hole when you are barely struggling at a job making $50,000 a year.

Let’s get past the scolding and assume that we have come to the realization that we should have never gotten here in the first place. No more lecturing is needed. We have torn up access to all credit cards, and we are no longer racking up the debt. This does not mean the debt is decreasing because the people who have lent us the money like to charge for it with a magical little fee called interest. So now we just have to watch the interest build up.

Awareness.

Are you aware of exactly how much debt you have? It is an overwhelming emotional burden to look at the numbers but we have to. You have to know exactly how many accounts you have, what the balances are, and what the interest rate is. I know this seems obvious but most people (including me at times) didn’t know and didn’t want to know. You may think “Why does it matter whether I ower $150,000 or $152,000? There is no chance of paying off either right now”.

But before you make any plans to attack the debt you really do need to know precisely where you are starting from. If you have to settle for a small amount it would be good to know how much of a deal you are getting. If you want to keep track of how much interest you are racking up you need to have the precise numbers. There are a multitude of reasons of why you want the exact numbers.

Here is my favorite though: I want to see progress. I want to know that I am slaying this dragon. To even begin to attack it I need to know how big it is. And I also want to know how big the remainder is when I take chunks out of it.

You need to measure so you can show progress and victories – even if they are small victories. I’ve made the mistake of estimating how much I’ve owed somebody only to have to come back to my tracking later and increase the amount. That is a very depressing adjustment to make. I’ve done it many times.

Please do yourself a favor. Attack this beast. Gather up all of your latest statements or log on to your online accounts and get the precise numbers. Track them in a simple Google Spreadsheet (Free) if you don’t have anyplace else. And make a point to refresh your balances during the first week of the month.

We’ll post part 2 soon of “How do I get out of debt”. Make sure you subscribe via RSS or email. Also follow @brokemf on Twitter. 

Original Post: How do I get out of debt – Part 1 Blog Home : Broke MF // Helping People Dig Out of a Financial Hole

One of my goals with passive marketing has been to diversify my income as much as possible. This is going to involve putting up multiple websites that each generate a small amount ($1000 – $2000) per month in hands-off income. This main site is one of those, and I am hoping to get up about eight more.

Last week I was doing some keyword research when I hit upon a good idea. Everything always sounds like a good idea in beginning, but only time will truly tell. It wasn’t really focused – it was some random terms that I was just really curious about. My main tool for using this was the free Google keyword tool. I won’t tell you the exact phrases, but I can tell you they were local to where I live and they had to do with employment , posting resumes, finding jobs, etc. Using the free Google Keyword tool I was about to find some search terms that are being hit on 200,000 times per month. One of these search terms has pretty low competition. Ahhh. We are hitting the SEO sweet spot. So I hopped on into my domain account over at Enom (which is always pre-funded) and did some checking on domain names. Yes! A trifecta. A domain name with the exact keywords in it was available. because my account is pre-funded I can snatch up domains like that very fast.

I used my hosting reseller account to set up a new hosting account in about 30 seconds. I then put up a basic index.php with the title, description and H1 tags set to good SEO values. it is better to use index.php over index.html or index.htm because you instantly get the advantage of being about to do a little programming on your site. In my case I used a single line of PHP to make the site seem new and relevant. PHP has functions to return the current date and time, and users love to see that the content on the site is new. I always try to use current date/time information on all of my pages.

I created good footer with some other keyword phrases in the same family. And then I filled in the middle with some Javascript that pulls content from another site. The good part about this is that I can get relavant content up there very fast. The bad part about using Javascript is that the content is not really hosted on my site. It is hosted elsewhere. So I am not getting any SEO value from it.

Time invested: Two hours

Money invested: $9.90 (domain purchase only, already had the hosting)

My future goal with this site is to find XML datafeeds of job information that can be monetized. Several of the job sites have affiliate programs. I want to pull those into my database and display local results for my region.

Click here to discuss this in our forums

Original Post: Big step forward – A new affiliate site lives and breaths Blog Home : Broke MF // Helping People Dig Out of a Financial Hole

Are you a Rich Dad, Poor Dad fan? His company has a US tour going around to six major US Cities. They are probably all at hotels, and since they are free I am sure you will be pitched hard at them. But they are giving away some free items, and this is a chance for some great networking with other people interested in finance and real estate – like me.

Check out www.richdadfreeseminar.com to see if one is coming close to you. If you are coming to the Oklahoma City one then I’ll see you there.

Original Post: Rich Dad, Poor Dad Real Estate travelling seminars Blog Home : Broke MF // Helping People Dig Out of a Financial Hole

As I get older and smarter I spend more time thinking about what I am doing. I think about what I am spending my time on at this exact moment. I think about what I did an hour ago and whether or not it was productive. And I am starting obsessive more over what is coming up to try and minimize the amount of time I was on something.

Out of all of these the following realization has hit me:

I cannot do everything

I  have several personal and business projects in motion. This blog about making money, especially passive income, is one of them. I also have my main company site, and my personal branding site. I have my social media accounts that need work on a regular basis. And our business is really growing so the number of client online marketing projects is just skyrocketing. There are only 24 hours in a day and I am falling asleep at they keyboard. My IRL (In real life) relationships are suffering, and I am not doing any flying right now which is breaking my heart.

So in October I made a huge leap and brought on board my very first virtual assistant from odesk.com. I took my time and did my research to find some one who had the skills I needed: WordPress, content management, SEO, and the ability to think on their own and come up with great ideas and implement them.

I am happy to say that this has been an absolutely amazing experience. But it has not been easy. The biggest issue has been trust. I have a huge ego and for the most part I don’t believe that anybody can do it as good as me except for me. And my beliefs are wrong in this area. Given the right instruction anybody can do what I do. So my new challenge in life is documenting what I do every day and how I do it.

Stay tuned. Have you ever used a virtual assistant? What are your biggest challenges?

Click here to discuss this topic in our forums

Original Post: I can’t do everything on my own :( Blog Home : Broke MF // Helping People Dig Out of a Financial Hole

I just checked my September 2011 adsense income. It was $1.04. That is horrible – I have no idea why it is so bad on the brokemf.com site. My adsense income history so far this year is:

January $0.71

February $2.77

March $3.58

April $0.00

May $2.48

June $1.71

July $8.66

August $21.08

September $1.04

Not suprisingly the best Adsense income months are synced up with the best Page View months. So July and August were great page view months, while September was less than stellar. But September was a the 3rd best month in traffic but the 7th best month for income. There must be something more to do with this than pageviews.

I’ll check my other affiliate income reports and post results of those soon.

Update:

I’ve checked my Clickbank account where I promote a few products on other sites. No income for September or all of 2011. I need to work on that more.

I earned nothing from ShareASale for September 2011. This is really upsetting because I promote several good programs there. This is also one of the most ethical affiliate networks out there.

More work is needed to say the least. If I ever want to earn $100,000 per month in passive online income I am not going to do it this way.

Got suggestions for improvement? I know I do. Let’s discuss in the comments below.

Original Post: Adsense Income for September Blog Home : Broke MF // Helping People Dig Out of a Financial Hole

I just updated the forums with a nasty blurb I saw on a commercial last night. The commercial went along the lines of “Attention: If you are on food stamps then you might be eligible for a government supported cell phone”. Are companies going out of their way to make people MORE dependent on the government?

What do you think? Join the discussion on our forums

Original Post: Gubment Cheeze Blog Home : Broke MF // Helping People Dig Out of a Financial Hole

This is a quick post to remind you to keep working hard. Keep saving money. Keep eating cheap. Keep staying home when your friends are going out. If all you have in life is macaroni and cheese then that is all you have. There is no sense in whining or crying about it. Get your ass out of bed or off that couch and change your circumstances. And don’t forget to take care of your body. Every day get up and walk. Walk for 10 minutes. Then walk for 20. Then work your way up to a half-hour. Keep improving on something every time. Go a little further or a little fast. Drink more water.

I don’t believe in whining. You got yourself where you are. Now let’s all rise together.

Have a day that kicks the ass of all of your other days.

Original Post: Keep working at it Blog Home : Broke MF // Helping People Dig Out of a Financial Hole

One of the first rules I’ve always tried to teach people when it comes to money management is that you must track everything. Since we are talking about currency and numbers we don’t have to deal with anything subjective. Everything in the money management world can be tracked.

And don’t fret too much over fancy tracking. A simple pencil and paper work great. If you have a computer and can find a software package that works for you then start using it every day. When I was first starting to track my money I’d use spreadsheet software. It is very easy to layout a spreadsheet to look like a checkbook.

Please join our forum discussion and let us know what has worked best for you. If you don’t have anything let the community know and your friends here can give you some suggestions.

Original Post: How do you track your money? Blog Home : Broke MF // Helping People Dig Out of a Financial Hole