NetworthIQ Blog

• Doing some server maintenance. Installing .NET 3.0 and 3.5, as well as ruby which I may use from some scripts. #

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Many members of the NetworthIQ community have expressed an interest in more and more flexible charting options. This week saw the release of two new charting apis from Google and Yahoo. I’ve been playing with the Google one this afternoon and came up with pie chart examples for asset type break down:

What do you think? The percentage charts are pretty easy, but the way they encode the data makes the Net worth trend chart more interesting. I invite anybody to take these apis for a test drive with your own net worth data, the Comparison chart data, or maybe the aggregate net worth statistics. We’ll see what we can work into the site.

• Cleaning up some spam posts and doing a remote backup of the db, just in case the server blows up. #

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• @integrateit Took the Huskies long enough. Go Ducks! #

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• 7 out of 10 questions on front question page are tagless. Hmmm, I guess that wasn’t implemented quite right. #
• Uh-oh, PageRank dropped to 3. It was 6 earlier this year, then 5 for a long time. Google crackdown on link ads? #
• Still top 5 results for "net worth" though, so unsure what the drop in PR really means. #
• Reading more about the Google paid links crackdown… what to do, what to do. Keep ‘em and suffer the Google fate, or dump ‘em. #
• We already stopped selling them directly, but still use TLA and LinkWorth. #

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• Hello Australia, cool news.com.au article today: http://tinyurl.com/2bz34b #
• I hate how difficult Google Analytics makes it to discover traffic events like this. How do I save a report for today’s top referrers? #
• Wow, over 200 sign-ups today, double the conversion rate of the WSJ article back in June. #
• And we’re only halfway through the day in Australia, may be biggest day ever. #
• Looks like it’ll be 2nd biggest day, couldn’t topple the 391 from The New York Times Article. #
• Surpassed 1500 monthly entries for first time. #

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If you’ve followed the site/blog/twitter feed lately you’ll probably have noticed that things have been pretty quiet around here lately. Well, yesterday we had a large traffic explosion yesterday that had the servers smokin’ (ok, actually, it’s just one server, and well, it held up just fine, but allow me to exaggerate a bit for literary effect).

news.com.au, the major Australian news portal, ran a story on people posting their net worth online. The article gives a quick overview of what people are doing on NetworthIQ and why they’re doing it. A few of our NetworthIQ community members were highlighted including:

• Striving2BDebtFree
• enoughwealth (blog)
• carillion2 (blog)

I thought it was great to see a major point that I like to reinforce about NetworthIQ, that NetworthIQ is not about showing off or a competition, at heart it is meant to be a learning and motivational tool for all ranges of net worth:

Baring all adds social pressure to do more looking before leaping into financial decisions.

“Having your information so publlicly available has changed my financial habits. I find I don’t impulse spend and have adopted a different mindset that fits with the tone of other members,” the student says.

It can also be a benchmarking tool to see what other people in similar circumstances are achieving.

“It’s not so much showing off, it’s a useful cross-comparison,” says another member. “Where should I be, what are other people doing? “Why am I different from anyone else, what do I need to do?”

It’s awesome to connect with users who feel this way and are using NetworthIQ to improve their finances and financial knowledge.

• On autopilot for the last month or so. Despite that, October is the best traffic month ever at this point. Not one day under 5000 pv. #
• Though those stumblers from stumble upon didn’t think much of it. Got hit last week and the average pages viewed was 1.77. #
• But some nice comments on CNN Money and indirect traffic from lifehacker have brought a steady stream of new community members. #

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• Added a Facebook group for NetworthIQ, come talk about the site and your money: http://tinyurl.com/22dlox #

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I was late to see that NetworthIQ was mentioned on TheStreet.com this past weekend in an article about online personal finance tools by Terry Savage.

On page 2, the topic of social networking around personal finance is introduced:

Personal finance sites that revolve around “social networking” in general are becoming very popular. For example, www.networthiq.com allows you to post your financial information — including cash, investments, debt, etc. — for all to see and comment upon. It requires users to manually update monthly balances.

Interesting that she introduces Mint as having the ability to share stories about their finances:

Another social networking site, www.Mint.com, allows bloggers to share stories about their personal finances.

Not sure if she was confused there. That’s part of what we’re trying to do with NetworthIQ. As far as I know, Mint’s focus is on helping you track expenses and spend your money better. I haven’t seen much around community interaction and storytelling, but I guess their blog does a good job with that, so perhaps that’s what she was referring to.

Anyway, always fun to see coverage in the media and around the web.