RWT Webmaster Tools Blog

Site Profile Interview with J.D. Roth of Get Rich Slowly

Back in September I decided to interview various webmasters about their websites. In particular, I am interested in people who I call Web-It-Yourselfers: people who do it all on their website. They write content, they market it, they design it, etc.

While I wish I have been able to provide more of these interviews, I am glad to be able to provide the second one in this series. This time around I was able to ask J.D. Roth about his Get Rich Slowly website. Get Rich Slowly is a financial blog. J.D. aims to inspire people to save and budget in order to build wealth. There are no get rich quick schemes on his site. I have enjoyed reading his blog over the last several months. I would encourage everyone to add his RSS feed to their feed reader.

As I did in the last interview, J.D’s comments will appear in blockquotes.

Get Rich Slowly is not J.D.’s first endeavor on the web.

I created my first web site in 1994. It was a primitive, simple thing, but it grew with time. By 1997 I was keeping a web-based journal. I had seen others do it (most notably karawynn long), and wanted to try it myself. During that summer, I kept a fitness journal. In 1998, I began to read other web journals. In the fall of that year, I tried to keep a general-purpose journal (what would today be considered a weblog), but the hand-updating was tedious and slow. I gave up. For the next couple years, I just kept a general purpose site with semi-regularly updated photos. In March 2001, I started my personal weblog, and it’s been active ever since. Get Rich Slowly came about in April of 2006.

Like I mentioned above, J.D. is a Web-It-Yourselfer. He has either handed coded web pages or uses some content management system to manage his websites.

For the main weblog, I used a WordPress template (a template called ‘Connections’). I modified it a little. As the site has grown, I’ve come to realize that Connections is rather limiting, and so I am searching for other solutions. I’ll probably just hand-code my own, though. Get Rich Slowly will soon have other sections, all of which will be hand-coded, though they may use scripts developed by others. (I’ve purchased a package of perl-based personal finance calculators, for example.)

My personal site is MoveableType-based, and is far, far more customized than Get Rich Slowly. I based the design (with permission) on a former Hivelogic layout. But I’ve modified it significantly.

Some people are motivated to develop websites for a variety of reasons. For most it is money. While money is on J.D.’s mind (obviously), there are other core motivations that make him continue to work on his website.

For one thing, I am a writer. Writing is in my blood. I’ve always written. From the beginning, the web has seemed like the perfect place to share my writing. My early site had a lot of bad poetry and fiction that I had written when I was younger. With time, my various weblogs have become the focus of my energy. I find that writing to them regularly keeps my skills honed, and gives me a creative outlet.

…nothing could stop me from writing, so in that regards, nothing needs to keep me going. But what keeps me writing about personal finance? The support and feedback that I get from others. I feel like I’m making a genuine difference in people’s lives, and that is very edifying. So long as I believe I can provide useful information, I’ll keep at this.

I’ve been writing all my life. I also read widely, including writing manuals. I edit myself ruthlessly. (I believe that editing is at least half of good writing, if not more.) I strive to communicate clearly.

Good writing inspires a reader’s confidence. If I go to a site with fantastic information, I’m not going to take it seriously if it’s presented poorly. Too many sites have sloppy writing: poor grammar, poor spelling, and poor articulation.

As I mentioned, I read writing manuals. I read the same writing manuals over and over. (On Writing Well by William Zissner, for example, is a perennial favorite. Reading the first few chapters of that book kicks me in the ass every time.) I don’t get emotionally attached to my prose. My goal is to communicate. I try to edit myself. In fact, it’s only when I fail to edit myself that I feel my writing gets sloppy.

Another practice that helps — and I don’t do this often enough — is to read my writing aloud. Hearing my words spoken is a completely different experience, and helps me find errors I might otherwise miss. Often I will read important articles aloud to my wife. The two of us together are able to hone a piece.

It always intrigues me to discover the reasons behind a website’s “birth”.

I developed Get Rich Slowly as an outgrowth of an entry (of the same name) to my personal weblog. IT received a *lot* of attention, and people seemed to have a genuine need to have more information on personal finance. For a year, I debated whether or not I could maintain another site. Ultimately, I decided to give it a try. At the time, I wasn’t aware that there was an existing community of personal finance webloggers.

Frustrations and challenges are a given in this work. It can pretty much be a daily experience. Without the right motivation it would be very easy to give up. J.D. shared his own frustrations and challenges:

The most frustrating problem was, and continues to be, getting the layout to match my vision. My HTML and CSS skills are very, very 1999. “Box model”? What’s that. Okay, so I have done *some* reading to gain some familiarity with modern ideas, but I don’t have the time and the inclination to focus on them, so I’m not able to do what I want to do. Get Rich Slowly has a very ugly design, and I know it. One of my goals is to change this. It may be that I need to pay somebody to help me.

The greatest creative challenge is staying fresh. I’m trying to write two personal finance articles every day. I’m trying to cover a wide range of topics. I’m trying to make sure to touch on personal finance essentials. I’m trying to cover stuff that’s interesting to me and to others. Balancing all of these objectives can be difficult. Sometimes I lose focus. To that end, I’m preparing to draft a “statement of purpose” to which I’ll be able to refer when I lose my way.

Personal finance can get repetitive: “save early, save often, control spending, invest in index funds, etc.” How do you write about this stuff and keep it interesting? I hope I’ve done well at it, but it’s difficult.

Once established, the thought of turning a website into a moneymaking endeavor crosses every web developers mind. For J.D. this has been his greatest business challenge.

[My greatest business challenge has been] understanding that Get Rich Slowly can actually be considered a business. For months, I just thought of it as a hobby. The past two months, however, have opened my eyes to the income potential, and made me realize that I should treat the site as a business. Trying to determine what this means is a challenge, too.

In order to monetize any site, traffic is essential.

I’ve been pleased with Get Rich Slowly’s traffic, but I believe there’s room for much growth. I’ve been able to reach certain segments of the web-savvy community via word-of-mouth. And I have some exposure in the personal finance blogging community (though I believe many don’t view the site as truly a personal finance blog, which is fine). But I don’t know how to achieve wider exposure. How do I get my Mom and her friends to read it? How do I get my brothers and people like them to read it? Finding wider exposure is a challenge. I think about it sometimes, and I don’t know what the solution is.

My articles seem to have a wide appeal, and some have received high traffic. But I don’t get all of the traffic I’d like. (Does anyone?) I can’t complain, though. I get far more traffic than most personal finance sites.

Most personal finance bloggers seem to be writing for other personal finance bloggers, which limits their audience. I’ve tried to broaden my scope, to write on subjects that appeal to everyone, but I don’t know how to publicize my site in such a way that my aunt or my father-in-law might find it worthwhile to stop by.

To do what J.D. does takes a certain level of self-discipline. So how often does he work on the website?

All the time. No, really. All the time. When I wake up, I work on it. When I get to my Real Job, I work on it. At breaks, I work on it. At lunch, I work on it. When I get home, I work on it. Before bed, I work on it. I work on Get Rich Slowly all the time. It is truly my full-time job right now.

And what about a schedule?

No. My wife, who doesn’t like the fact that I work on the site all the time, has suggested that I do this. Earlier in the year, I would try to write a week’s worth of entries on Sunday. Sundays got busy, though, and so I haven’t been able to do this.

Actually, I’m currently at the start of a self-imposed ten-day marathon session of working on my web sites. I’m taking a week off from work, and with the weekends that’ll give me ten days of time to get things whipped into shape. I’m finding it difficult to prioritize, though, and nearly two days have passed of my ten. I’ve done some work on other sites, but not nearly as much as I had hoped. I’m shifting things into high gear this morning. (ed.note: I am publishing this a few weeks after J.D. embarked on this week long organization frenzy.)

While you or I would consider J.D. a disciplined person for even having a web presence, he has his own answer to the question about whether he was a disciplined person.

This is a great question. I wish I had a great answer. I’m disciplined about some things, but not about others.

The nitty gritty: goals.

My goal is to help others learn about sound personal finance. But I don’t think that’s what you really mean.

My goal is to attract a self-sustaining readership, to create a community that is willing to share personal finance information with others so that every reader can improve her relationship with money. I want my readers to be willing to submit ideas to share with others.

It would please me if I could derive my living from the site, too. I’m still quite a ways from that, but not so far that I consider it impossible. I’m beginning to think about what it would take for me to quit my Real Job. I would also like to find a way to use Get Rich Slowly as a stepping-stone to writing an actual book on personal finance. That would be a dream come true.

I am meeting most of [my goals]. My readers are awesome. They contribute fantastic story ideas all the time. My income is far above what I ever expected it could be. Only my traffic is a little lower than I had hoped, and that’s probably because I had no clear conception of what sorts of numbers are realistic. I’d love to be able to retain more of the drop-ins.

Finally, his advice for all would be Web-It-Yourselfers out there:

I have only one piece of advice:

Just do it. The web is a big place. There’s room for everyone. I believe that everyone has something to say. Your voice is important. It doesn’t matter if you have one reader or ten readers or ten thousand. Write about a subject that makes you feel good. Write as often as you need. Just do it.

A big thanks goes out to J.D. for taking the time to answer my questions and emailing a reply.

I will be posting my own reflections on the interview in a few days.