Frugal Blogs: Maximize the Benefits

It pretty much goes without saying that the blogging world has exploded across the internet. It is becoming an acceptable and even respectable form of media and entertainment. The genres of blogs are limitless and anytime it seems they have hit a ceiling, someone new and fresh comes out with another creative way to express opinions, thoughts, facts and information. Blogging is all the rave in the cyber world.

But it can be easy to become overloaded with information, tips and opinions when there are so many bloggers out there. When I first started reading blogs, I knew that I wanted to use them to help me cut costs, alter our eating habits and ultimately revamp our finances and our lifestyle. I am very happy to report that the blogging world has saved my family hundreds of dollars through tips and tricks that I have implemented throughout the past year.

Since the world of blogging can be incredibly overwhelming, I wanted to share with you some tips on how to utilize blogs to their fullest in order to save your family tons of money and save yourself a bunch of time.

Find great blogs to inspire your money-saving

With the abundance of blogs in the topic of cutting costs, just Googling "frugal blogs" may lead you through quite a swarm of information. Instead of using a search engine, try networking out from the blogs you all ready read.

Take a look at the blogs you currently read. Are they helping you save money? Do you find their tactics useful to you or even possible for your lifestyle? If so, check out their blogroll.

A blogroll is a list of that blogger's favorite blogs. Usually people read similar blogs to what they write. While they may not all appeal to you, I recommend you go through your favorite bloggers' blogrolls and check out where they are getting a lot of their tips. When you find a new one you enjoy, check out their blogroll. The cycle goes on and on. This is how I have found most of the blogs I frequent.

Another great way to find more like-minded frugal blogs are through link-ups. Link-ups are hosted by various bloggers and usually occur weekly, though sometimes they may be irregular or less frequent. A link-up is when several bloggers link to their favorite personal blog posts about a specific topic. It gives you a variety of opinions and tips all on one page.

Some of my favorite link-ups for frugal living and homemaking are hosted by Don't Waste Your Homemaking, Far Above Rubies, Time-Warp Wife, and Raising Homemakers. Occasionally you will see me link up to a variety of others as well. Always keep your eyes open for link-up blog buttons on various posts as well as my own TheNorthForty Link-Ups!

Get the most from more blogs

Once you have discovered a bunch of blogs in which you are interested, it may be tricky to keep up with them all. Some blogs post daily, weekly or monthly so if you just bookmark the site, you may find yourself wasting time checking them all out regularly or you may miss a lot of pertinent information if you do not check them frequently enough.

To combat this, I highly recommend a RSS feed reader. A feed reader is a place that compiles all of your favorite blog's recent posts on one site. Almost every blog offers an option to subscribe to their feed reader so it is an easy and well-known tool throughout the blogging community.

Personally, I recommend the Google Reader. It is user-friendly and allows you to categorize the different types of blogs that you read helping you effortlessly manage them and saving you a bunch of time while staying up to date on all the blogs you favor.

Once you have created your account, look for the RSS feed logo on all of your favorite blogs, click it and subscribe to their posts. Their latest posts will automatically enter your reader so you just need to open it, read through what you wish, scroll through subjects that do not interest you, and they will purge themselves after you have finished reading them. Star your favorite posts for your own archives, organize your subscriptions in folders ("frugal blogs," "organizational blogs," "coupon blogs," etc.), browse through new blogs and more.

Currently, I am subscribed to 54 blogs that I can browse through and keep up with in just minutes a week thanks to the Google Reader. I encourage you to start using a feed reader in order to save yourself time, enjoy more blogs and not miss out on tons of new money-saving tips.

What's next?

Now that you have found a bunch of new blogs and can effectively manage reading them to get the most information you can on saving money, how do you use all of this new knowledge?

Tomorrow, I will address how to focus on, sort through and implement the overload of information from the many different frugal living blogs you have in your feed reader, as well as how to take blogging one step further to keep you accountable for your own frugal living.

Blogs I am linked up with this week: