Monday Q&A | Would I sell my blog? Plus, organizing photos, and having pets.

Every Monday, I answer a few of the questions that my readers send me. If you have a question you’d like me to answer in a future Q&A post, just leave me a comment here or email me (thefrugalgirl [at] gmail [dot] com) and put Q&A in the subject line. I look forward to hearing from you!

I’m a long time fan and a rare poster who loves your blog. In fact a while ago I decided to try to “declutter” my email inbox and I unsubscribed from a bunch of blogs, except for two which I just couldn’t part with, yours and J.D. Roth’s Get Rich Slowly. I was so saddened to see that he and Kris are separating and both sad and a bit angry when I found out that he had sold his blog (for quite a sum). So that’s my question for you, would you ever consider selling your blog and if so would you feel obliged to share the news with your readers (or just let them find out by themselves, like JD did)?

-Fereshteh

Aww, I’m honored to be one of the two you kept in your inbox…that means a lot to me!

I do understand why J.D. didn’t share the news that he’d sold his blog. From what I understand, it’s common practice when blogs are sold, and he signed an agreement that basically prevented him from telling his readers. And if the speculation is true and he received more than a million dollars for selling, I can hardly fault him, especially because at that point in time, he was considering quitting blogging anyway.

Would I ever sell my blog?

Well, I don’t think will really be an issue I’ll have to face. As the Dough Roller points out, personal finance blogs are more prone to being bought than blogs like mine. That’s because personal finance blogs “cover debt, credit, banking, investing, credit cards, retirement, and a litany of other topics related to money. Each of these topics relates to industries that are willing to pay large sums of money for marketing and online exposure.”

The odds of anyone ever wanting to pay a pile of money for a frugality blog are really slim to none.

That said, I’d be very hesitant to sell my blog. I like having total control over what goes on here, and sometimes, I’ve seen blogs go down in quality after being bought. Some seem to be posting almost nothing but infographics in an effort to improve SEO, and some bring on staff writers that don’t have the same feel as the original blogger. Plus, I don’t really like it when a blog’s Twitter account is run by someone other than the person that writes the blog. It starts to feel really robotic.

I really, really prefer to read blogs that are run by a person, not by an investment group or business…I just like the personal feel, I guess. And since I know a lot of you feel that way too, I want to keep my blog the way it is.

I’m wondering how you organize your photo files. By months? By dates? or something else?

I noticed you have two cameras as do we and I’m trying to find the best way to organize the files so I don’t mix them up.

Kiki

Yep, I organize them by month. If I made a new folder every time I imported pictures, my files would be a total disaster! Months are perfect…they keep my files neat and it’s very easy to find something if I need to go back and look for it later.

I keep all of my pictures in my own folders, and Joshua imports his into his own monthly folders. That way we never end up accidentally deleting each other’s pictures!

It seems your family doesn’t have pets. Have you decided never to have pets? If so, why? Do your children pressure you to get pets, and if so, how do you deal with it?

-Dar Winn

We do actually have some pets! Joshua has a gecko and we’ve got two fish tanks as well. Joshua plans to buy a tarantula in the spring as well.

So, we’ve got pets…we just don’t have any cats or dogs. I personally would very much like NOT to have a cat or a dog (I prefer pets that live in enclosed areas, not my house!), and fortunately, my kids haven’t expressed an interest, so it’s not even been an issue.

That’s not to say I think pets are a bad choice for everyone, or that frugal people shouldn’t own cats or dogs. As long as a family can afford to feed and take care of a pet properly, I think it’s perfectly fine to make room in a budget for those sorts of expenses.

Frugality, to me, is about spending your money in ways that reflect your priorities. For me, that means I’d rather spend money on cameras than dogs, but that may be different for someone else.

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