Early Spring Cleaning

I have to admit, I wasn't happy with the direction my blog was taking. It was starting to look cluttered, filled with ads and getting away from the purpose of what I think this blog is about: helping people do more with less, live frugally, avoid or get out of debt and invest wisely. I couldn't, in good conscience, continue to run ads selling Coach handbags or Nintendo Wii games. That is in direct conflict with the purpose of this blog.

To be perfectly honest with you, the ads weren't making all that much money in the first place. My purpose in including them was to help finance moving this blog to its own domain, which will cost about $20 per month. I don't think this blog has made $20 during the 5 or 6 months of its existence, so it's really a moot point.

That's not to say the blog doesn't get plenty of traffic. No, I'm not attracting 20,000 visitors a day, like John Chow or some of the more successful bloggers out there, but Savvy Frugality does have readers in the U.S., Australia, Canada, the U.K., Russia, India and even in Japan. We don't have readers in China or South America yet...but I'm hopeful that someday we will!

So, I have deleted the majority of the ads that appeared on this blog. I have cleaned up the look, and I hope that you, the reader, have a more enjoyable experience when you visit Savvy Frugality. I have kept a few inline and Google Adsense ads. I'm hoping the revenue generated through those ads and through Paypal tips you might be generous enough to donate will, at the very least, pay the annual fee for the SavvyFrugality.com domain name. If I happen to make any money in addition to that which I can add to my children's college funds, great.

I haven't really lost anything by making these changes, but hopefully, I will have gained something: increased readership, a better experience for our RSS subscribers and faithful readers and most of all, your respect.