It’s been just over a month since the Samurai Alexa Ranking Challenge was announced, and I’m pleased to report we’ve made tremendous progress! With 35+ members strong, we are actively helping each other achieve our respective goals. I’d like to use this opportunity to recognize several Yakezie members for their achievements and initiatives in helping the team.
* Daniel-San from Sweating The Big Stuff took the initiative to compile the list and keep track. His efforts have in turn created a home for us members to visit once a week and get pumped.
* @Elle_CM from Couple Money has been amazingly selfless in retweeting my posts and many other posts. She is exactly the type of member the Yakezie Group seeks. @FinEngr created a Yakezie Twitter Group to keep track of us and follow. Pls follow so the group can follow you back.
* Monevator, The Amateur Financier, Evolution Of Wealth created weekly wraps to specifically highlight posts from the Yakezie Group. Meanwhile, Money Funk wrote a derivative post on how to increase your Alexa ranking.
* Eliminate The Muda and Planting Dollars have busted through their 200,000 goal and should obviously now shoot for top 100,000!
THE RULES HAVE CHANGED AND WE WILL ADAPT
At some point over the past several weeks, all of us got dinged by 2 spots on Wise Bread’s Top 100 PF list because of the addition of two new blogs in the #1 and #2 spots. Congrats to those two blogs for being able to piggy back off their respective major platforms. The Atlanta Journal and The Star Tribune of Minneapolis and rocket straight to the top.
I liken the scenario to a situation at work where you struggle for a long period of time to get promoted, only to find out your manager hires someone laterally or from outside the firm to fill the spot!
Others have mentioned it’s like some who get into prestigious schools simply due to their connections, while the rest of us just make due with what we have. Guess what team? Life isn’t fair, and Wise Bread can do whatever they want. We are not going to complain. Instead, we will simply try harder!
It’s important to realize that in 5 months, to get on Wise Bread’s first page, reaching 200,000 will no longer be enough. The 100th ranked blog will probably be ranked around 165,000 by then.
Furthermore, Wise Bread might start adding other piggy back blogs from major publications which will impede our progress further. Once again, we must do as much as we can to help each other out. Never surrender!
New Initiatives
* Guest Posting UP: I ask that all those in the Top 100,000 allow others who are outside the Top 200,000 to guest post if they want to. There is a mutual benefit to guest posting where the guest writer gets to reach out to the host’s readers, while getting a link back to their own site.
Meanwhile, the host blog receives content. The guest writer really benefits most, because many of the bigger sites already have a ton of content in the pipeline already. The host blog will actively promote the guest post on Twitter and elsewhere.
* A Playful Dance: One of the great ways to get to know each other better is to write a post in response to a post from one of your members. You see Ryan and Planting Dollars and Wojo at Fiscal Fizzle plays this out with the topic on “Is There Really Such Thing As Passive Income”. That exchange has created a fantastic amount of insight for the readers, and I’m sure Ryan and Wojo’s relationship is better because of it.
* Carnival: Another major initiative is to create an ongoing Samurai Alexa Challenge Carnival each week or two. We are small enough where we can highlight a post from each challenger, thereby helping promote their content, while promoting yourself since everybody will visit your site and read your content as well.
You don’t have to highlight a post from every site, however, please do your best to highlight as many as possible. Just check out the comments at Evolution of Wealth’s Rodeo. We’ve already got three lined up!
Other Updates From The Alexa Ranking Challenge
* Ranking Host Rotation: Daniel-san has benefited by keeping track of the group’s progress, as he should. What we are proposing is to allow a new member to host and update the rankings for every month of the challenge.
I think we should discuss this proposal below, and get an idea of whether people like this idea, and would want to host the ranking as well. With two things in motion (weekly wrap and ranking), we can share the wealth further. Or, we can keep the ranking at Daniel-San’s site since it’s already there.
The host’s duty is to obviously update the rankings, check back on the original challenge post to see if new members would like to join, and add, while highlighting any big changes.
* A New Go To Ranking: Finally, at the end of the 5 month period, I plan to either bring the ranking back home to Financial Samurai or let the ranking float forever once a month. The plan is to morph Samurai’s Alexa Ranking Challenge into the go to personal finance ranking page. This will purely consist of individually run personal finance blogs that do not piggy back off other major publications.
We will create a entirely apples-to-apples comparison of the best PF sites in the world. If anybody has any programming skills to create a page where entries will be automatically updated, please let me know. When the rules change on us, we have the power to make our own rules!
The Alexa Ranking Challenge Is For Everyone
You may think this challenge is just dedicated to a community of bloggers. In reality, the Samurai Alexa Ranking Challenge is a case study on how to improve all our lives, readers and writers alike!
Our personal real-life goals can range from finding love to early retirement. What we want to show is that through the selfless promotion of others, continuous teamwork, and an unwavering commitment, we will succeed despite setbacks. This is The Yakezie Way.
** Update Feb 25th: The Atlanta Journal and Star Tribune blogs which took up the top 2 spaces in WB’s rankings are no longer there. Maybe this post made a different, maybe not. Regardless, this is a positive for all of us, and should serve as a reminder that the rules can and will change. We need to continue being diligent in our efforts.
Further Reading
Here’s some further reading for the week.
- Forgoing A $50 Million Fortune For The Love of Football!?!
- Does Bernie Madoff Win In The End?
- Simple Pleasures Are What Make Life Worth Living
- Why I Can’t Bank At Wells Fargo
- Family Gets Award For Paying Off Debt & Jumps Right Back In!
- The Katana: Must Read Articles of The Week Ending 9/26
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I never thought I’d be able to quit my job in 2012 just three years after starting Financial Samurai. But by starting one financial crisis day in 2009, Financial Samurai actually makes more than my entire passive income total that took 15 years to build.
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I’ve been hearing and seeing alot about the Yakezie Challenge. How do I sign up?
Hi Sam,
Thanks for your response. I definitely will make time to get to know everyone. I checked out Wisebread and I don’t think that I qualify at the moment as a personal finance blog. How I look at personal finance is very comprehensive and my site reflects that. I don’t have enough of the personal finance articles up yet (50 sitting in draft mode).
I’m also swamped with tax reviews at work and trying to keep a worthy government program from being cut.
.-= moneyandrisk´s last blog ..Averting the Next West Virginia Mine Disaster =-.
The Yakezie Alexa Challenge certainly caught my attention…good job Samurai. I also noticed your comment about guest posting and I would like to extend an invitation to all Yakezie members to pitch guest post for Moolanomy. I’ll be happy to take a look and host the good ones.
.-= Pinyo´s last blog ..Can a Prepaid Credit Card Help Your Credit Score? =-.
Hi Pinyo, good to see you stop by! I think this is your first comment, which is exciting. Thnx for your offer on the guest posts. But what about the “bad ones”? :) Best, Sam
I think this is a wonderful project and kudos to everyone who is participating and working with each other.
I stumbled upon one of the challenge sites a couple of weeks ago and tracked the idea back to here. There seems to be a lot of wonderful colleagues for me to discover (assuming I can cut back more on sleep.) I’ve read a couple of sites and enjoyed it very much. I just wished I had more time to indulge.
I’m still in beta and only a little over 2 weeks old but thought I would check out my Alexa ranking for fun. It was exciting to see it go from 14million to 5.9million in 2 weeks. However, Brazil likes me enough to put me at 66,000 LOL.
I wanted to participate in the challenge but it requires adding the Alexa counter and my marketing manager did not approve due to code conflicts and concerns about viral rewrites. I did not go into more details with him since I’m so swamped with tasks already for the site outside of my regular business. Each article takes 2-8 hrs so I’m not sure how everyone else is doing all this.
.-= Kim Luu´s last blog ..Six Critical Things To Do at Layoff =-.
Hi Kim, good to hear from you. You don’t have to add the Alexa counter if you don’t want. I think it’ll help, but not necessary. There is a badge Greg-san put up, and if you’d like to announce your desire to join on your site, that’s great. The idea is to just familiarize yourself with the community as much as possible. Best, Sam
I just joined the challenge today, so pardon me if this is a dumb question — but where is the list the the Challenge members are maintaining? Thanks, and looking forward to meeting more of you!
.-= Peak Personal Finance´s last blog ..Joining the Yakezie Challenge =-.
To help facilitate guest posts, I can create an excel sheet that can be place in Google Docs
What I’m thinking is something like this
Those in the top 100,000 already that want to participate list their site.
Potential guest posters can select sites they want to submit to. Of course there would be a few more ground rules for this to work, but if its something the group is interested in I can try to work it
.-= Lakita (PFJourney)´s last blog ..Manners & Money: Tipping =-.
I never installed the badge but I’m adding it today, and will be sharing my success on my blog. I have moved up 100K in the rankings in a month!
I’m super excited to crack the front page.
I also would be happy to host a carnival, and every Wednesday I am hosting a guest post, so if anyone wants to write for the Centsible Life, shoot me an email (contact info is on my blog).
WOOT!
Ummm… Maybe this is too obvious, but I didn’t realize you actually had to sign up for the Wisebread listing – I thought they just scooped up the movers & shakers out there.
So – in case anyone else in the challenge wasn’t aware, you’ve got to submit an application to wisebread for inclusion in their list.
Under the groups section, I noted the Yakezie.
.-= FinEngr´s last blog ..Financial Lessons From Engineering =-.
Ah, as always, it seems like I’m the last one to the party. I like all the suggestions, FS; the carnival seems to be off to a nice start, and I like the idea of keeping up on the rankings even once the initial challenge period is over. It’s good to have so many people all trying to improve their sites, and working together to boost each other up.
As for why there are so many offers to host guest posts and so few offers of guest posts, I’m guessing that much like myself, most bloggers find themselves so occupied by their own blogs, as well as day jobs, personal lives, and things like sleep. Hopefully, this will encourage more people to do so. Plus, that playful dance thing sounds like fun!
.-= Roger´s last blog ..Weekly Round-Up: Alexa Challenge Heats Up! =-.
Hi, Sam,
I just visited your blog for first time and I want to enter to the challenge…
I already downloaded the Alexa toolbar, I obtained the badge but I am still trying to figure out how to install it permanently in my blog.
For now, I am publishing a post informing my readers about my entrance to this challenge , linking it to your original post and including the challenge badge
I will post twice a week while promoting others..
Thansk for the initiative!
All the best,
Boris
.-= Boris´s last blog ..Two halves don’t make a whole… =-.
Great progress here. I’ve seen my alexa ranking improve to 126k recently which has been encouraging. I’m not in the top 100k but I’m more than willing to let other folks in the group guest post on my blog —
In the meantime, I’m going to go through the list and find some good posts to link to and promote!
.-= 20smoney´s last blog ..The Importance of Effective Time Management =-.
Is there a full list of the participating blogs that we can use to add them to RSS readers and such? It also would be cool to have a RSS widget that showed the last (X or XX) articles from the Yakezie challenge…
.-= Beating Broke´s last blog ..Whoops. Forgetting to Pay Bills = Bad! =-.
Come check out the latest rankings on my site. The link is in my last blog. You’ll be added by Sunday.
So will Single Guy Money, Girl With a Red Balloon, One Money Finance…am I missing anyone? We’re filling up quick. Once we reach the limit (where Google Docs literally doesn’t allow that many calculations…), we’ll have to implement a rule that removes uncontributing members out.
.-= Daniel´s last blog ..Samurai Alexa Challenge Update =-.