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I’m excited to announce that I have joined the Yakezie Challenge. The Yakezie Challenge is a 6 month challenge for financial bloggers to reach an Alexa ranking (Ranking of the popularity of websites) of 200,000 or higher.
I’m looking forward to this challenge for a number of reasons:
⭐ Find dividend growth stocks that have survived multiple recessions and increased dividends for 5, 10, 25+ years in a row.
- It’ll help me setup a great network of like-minded individuals doing the same thing as me.
- It’ll help me stay focused.
- It’ll improve my blog.
It’ll help me setup a great network of like-minded individuals doing the same thing as me.
The Yakezie Network is a group of primarily financial bloggers. They are mostly established blogs/websites and have gone through the experience of starting a blog, but more than that, they’ve been able to maintain a blog successfully. I haven’t setup a blog like this before, and I’m not a computer genius. I’m excited to get involved with Yakezie and hopefully meet some people that can help me out as I figure this whole blogging thing out.
It’ll help me stay focused.
I did a little inadvertent self reflection the other day and I realized that I have a tendency to get really excited about a project and go all-in without thinking it all the way through… Maybe that’s not the best way of describing it. I do think it all the way through, but I down play some of the areas that I shouldn’t have. Later on when the excitement has worn off a bit, I start to lose interest and the project starts to slow and sometimes comes to an end. I’m hoping that the Yakezie network will help keep me focused and on track.
Side story: A good example of a past project where I lost interest is when I started investing in Dividend Reinvestment Plans (DRIPs). I was super excited to start investing, so I setup a whole bunch of DRIPs. Once I had figured out how to setup a DRIP I realized I could make some extra money by setting other people up in DRIPs. To enrol in a traditional DRIP (not a synthetic DRIP that a broker offers) you typically need to be an existing shareholder, which means you have to buy a share and have it held in your name. If you buy a share through a broker it’s held in the broker’s name on behalf of you. To get it switched into your name it’ll cost you the market price plus commission plus anywhere from $50 to $300 depending on the broker. One of the other cheaper options is to get an existing shareholder to transfer you one of their shares for the market price +$10. I became one of these shareholders transferring these starter DRIP shares to others. It can be quite time consuming to transfer shares, so I had grand plans of setting up a website to automate part of the process. Long story short I overlooked how long it would take to design and get the website up and running. I had someone else making the website because it involved complexity way beyond my skills. I started to lose interest, the person making the website went under, and I was left with a half finished website and $1,250 missing from my wallet. I’d lost interest in the project, so I decided not to finish the website. I had made more from selling DRIPs than the website cost me, so it wasn’t a complete loss. Also, I probably learned more in a year about DRIPs than I would have in 5, just by answering all the questions from my starter share buyers. It also helped me realize that I really enjoy helping out investing beginners, which is one of the reasons I started this blog.
It’ll improve my blog.
The Yakezie challenge involves posting on average 2 to 4 times a week, and boosting your Alexa ranking to 200,000. I looked at my Alexa ranking, and this blog is so new that it doesn’t even rank! It will definitely be an upward battle. I know how to use a computer fairly well, but when it comes to maintaining and creating a blog, this is my only real experience. I expect that Yakezie’s network will push me to improve my web design and blogging skills.
My expectations
I read that it takes most people 8 months to beat the Yakezie challenge. That’s assuming they are spending a significant amount of time on the blog. Realistically, I think it’ll probably take me a year, but what’s the worst that can happen? I could fail, but failing doesn’t really scare me as much as it used to for some reason. My girlfriend pointed out to me that it might be difficult for me to keep posting 2 to 4 times a week as we are just about to start the serious travelling part of our working holiday in Australia. Over the next two months, I’ll be living out of a van as we travel up the east coast of Australia. After that we’ll be bumming around Southeast Asia for a few months. It might be difficult to find an internet connection in some of these places. Also I don’t thinks it is fair to the girlfriend to be constantly blogging when we are meant to be exploring the world. I’m hoping to find a good balance between the two. Bring it on Yakezie Challenge!
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