What’s new on the menu

I’ve talked about the status of my blog and where I’d like to go before. It was always kind of vague. But now, after months of thinking and talking with others, I’ve made some concrete decisions and I wanted to share them with you. 

Like two of my closest friends, I’ve been going through a blogging identity crisis. That crisis hast taken me to some weird places including starting and stopping a variety of blogs. I started them because I needed an avenue to write about subjects not related to finance. And that was fun and refreshing. But then they abruptly stopped. Mainly due to the fact that a) DMS is really where my passion is and b) I just didn’t have the time. Which left me with content strewn haphazardly about the internet. It’s not necessarily bad content. It’s just content I don’t have time to tend to and grow. Like the tomatoes on my deck.

But I digress.

In order to keep my sanity in tact and prevent all that content from being lost, I’ve decided that consolidation is the way to go. Over the next few weeks, you’ll see a variety of features added to, or taken away from, Daily Money Shot. Some of them will be completely new while others will be culled from my various sites. Here’s what you can look for:

• The Aldi Experiment–This feature is already up and running (it’s a new category in the menu bar). Two years ago, on my first blog, I conducted an experiment to see how much money my family would save if we shopped almost exclusively at Aldi. During the 6 weeks of the experiment, I chronicled our budget, our menu plans and did a summary of each week. Feel free to browse some or all of that.
• Sidebar Shots–This feature is currently under construction. Sometimes I like to rant about things that are only tangentially related to personal finance. Sometimes they’re not related to personal finance at all but I like to talk about them anyway. That’s where this feature comes in. It gives me a forum to talk about other topics while still trying to stay true to the mission of Daily Money Shot. Some of the content from The Jealousy Files will end up in here.
• This Independent Life–A site I started to give tips on beginning to live independently (I know. I’m great with names) kind of flopped. So I’ve decided to relaunch it as a series on Daily Money Shot (how I’m going to do the series is to be determined. It will either be every day for a month or once a week for numerous weeks). I also hope to turn most of the content, with some new and unreleased information added, into an eBook. Look for that in weeks to come.
• Money Tune Tuesday and Sharing Thursday–These will probably become bi-weekly features rather than weekly ones. I love these features but I can’t keep up with them in the manner that I’d like. Rather than sending them to their untimely demise, I’m just going to cut back.
• My yet to be unnamed fiction book–I’m still not comfortable discussing the details of this but I do need a way to stay accountable to actually writing it. To do that, you’ll notice a progress tracker in the sidebar. Every day (or week or when I remember), I’m going to update it with the latest word count. I’m aiming for 50,000 words by December 1 (if I go over in order to completely tell the story, that’s okay, too. But 50,000 is the minimum). I figure if I make myself accountable on DMS, some of you will harass me if I fall behind.

Also, I’m trying to get to 100 individual (not blog or fan page) likes on Facebook by the end of the month. If I do, I’ll host a giveaway for $25. If I get to 200 likes, I’ll give away 2 $25 prizes. You can help make that dream come true by liking Daily Money Shot.

There are some other behind the scenes things I’ll be doing but they’re boring and I don’t think that you’d find them interesting so I’ll just keep them to myself. But what I won’t give up is telling my stories with the hope that you find something useful in them.

I hope that you’ll all stick with me over the next few weeks as I roll out the new changes and features. I promise that the DMS experience will be greatly improved as a result.

.