If you're new here, this blog will give you the tools to become financially independent in 5 years on a median salary. The wiki page gives a good summary of the principles of the strategy. The key to success is to run your personal finances much like a business, thinking about assets and inventory and focusing on efficiency and value for money. Not just any business but a business that's flexible, agile, and adaptable. Conversely most consumers run their personal finances like an inflexible money-losing anti-business always in danger of losing their jobs.
Here's almost a thousand online journals from people, who are following the ERE strategy tailored to their particular situation (age, children, location, education, goals, ...). Increasing their savings from the usual 5-15% of their income to tens of thousands of dollars each year or typically 40-80% of their income, many accumulate six-figure net-worths within a few years.
Since everybody's situation is different (age, education, location, children, goals, ...) I suggest only spending a brief moment on this blog, which can be thought of as my personal journal, before looking for the crowd's wisdom for your particular situation in the forum journals.
If you enjoy the blog, also consider the book which is much better organized and more complete. You can read the first chapter for free, listen to the preamble, or see the reviews (1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9, A,B,C,D,E,F,G,H,I,J,K,L,M,N,O,P,Q,R,S,T,U,V,W,Z). Subscribe to the blog via email or RSS. Get updates on the facebook page, join the forums, and look for tactics on the ERE wiki. Here's a list of all the ERE blog posts.
One problem with the backlink approach [of SEO] is that it confuses popularity with authority. Read this post about backlinks to see what they are. If the goal of search engines was to find the most popular sites, page ranking works excellently. If the goal is to find the most authoritive, page ranking does not work well.
Obviously, the truth, that is, what backlinks and search engines actually do, is somewhere in between. I suspect it’s closer to measuring popularity than it is at measuring content.
There are several problems. First, the high page rank sites can often turn into an old boys network only linking to each other. Second, and related, many sites do link exchanges without regard for their respective content. Third, there is things like SEO optimization which is trying to game the system. This is similar to how some people are trying to game their credit scores—they find a backdoor to get something they don’t really deserve.
The existence of an entire industry of junk sites that spend effort on driving traffic to their sites using any kind of method other than content indicates that search engines are far from perfection.
I’m looking forward to the day that search engines will use some rudimentary intelligence to gauge authority rather than relying on popularity or cheap tricks.
Originally posted 2010-07-19 13:29:39.
