Posted by Bloggeries in Personal Finance
If you are looking for some tips and tricks on how to live a little more frugally, then you may want to check out Bird on a Wire, the definitive guide to frugal living. It is largely a blog about finances. The bloggers is a life advisor that teaches others how to identify values, banish debt, start saving, and begin investing. The blogger aims to teach you how to budget and how living frugally doesn’t necessarily mean you are living on the streets. To learn more about this blogger and this blog, check out their most recent bloggeries: Updates from Remarkable Bloggers, Breadcrumbs, Confession is Good for the Soul, Niche Me Once, Finally Friday, Dancing Backwards in High Heels, and Common Sense Makes Cents.
The blog is very well organized and comes in a clean well-laid out template which makes it easy to navigate. Bloggeries are in black text on white background, all placed on a backdrop of beige background with links highlighted in red. The blog offers several navigation systems, both a top and a bottom navigation system containing the same links to Home, About Us, Contact Us, Network, Privacy, Disclosure, and SERO. Bloggeries are left marginalized and there is a double wide right navigation bar on the right. At the top of this system is a convenient search bar where you can search the Archives and Categories Menu as well as the blog itself, followed by some advertising, Recent Posts Menu, and Blog Directory buttons. The navigation system then switches into two bars where the right bar contains blog stats and advertising, and the left bar contains Great Sites menu, Remarkable bloggers, Top Blog Sites, and We Read These menu. Each bloggery is accompanied by at least one relevant picture making the blog colorful and interesting to read, and each bloggery is also associated with a Related Posts Links menu where readers can access similar information on the blog.
This blog gets a 4.8/5 for me as it scores well on all accounts. The blog is easy to read with well-written content that has both a personal voice and user friendly tone for its tips. The content is also coming in at a nice steady pace with daily regular content. Further, the overall appearance of the blog is appealing, with a lot of information and graphics that are managed well so that they are not distracting. The blog is well organized into a variety of navigations systems that make reading this blog not only easy, but enjoyable. This is a great blog on a unique topic that will sure to see some steady growth and success.
-Chrissie
Posted by Bloggeries in Reviews, Shopping, Personal Finance
If you are looking for a site that is geared towards simplifying your life and making it less expensive you may want to have a look at Apples 2 Apples Blog. Here the author welcomes you to gain more out of your life by simplifying it. The author says if you wish to live simple AND large, share your world with Apples 2 Apples to find cheaper ways to be both stylish and simple. The site covers a broad range of ‘simplifying’ methods, all geared towards finding you the lowest prices on products you already purchase. Included in the blog are also tips on how to make things easier in your daily living, for example renovating at cost or spending less time getting ready in the morning. You can get a true feel for the blogger’s objectives through any of the recent posts: Give your Furniture a Quick Make Over, More Coupons, How much Time do You Spend in the Morning, Six Tips to Help You Save Money on Makeup, Stock up on Swimwear, Atlantic Reviews, and LV 07 Fall.
The site is very colorful and extremely easy to navigate. Posts are left marginalized with black text on white background and an array of relevant pictures with each post. There is a right navigation bar that includes a welcome note, blog poll, categories menu, ads, search bar, and a link me button. Missing from the right navigation bar are a recent posts menu and an archives menu, so I am not too sure how old this blog is. The categories section is very comprehensive so if you are a coupon grabber or professional discount shopper, there should be something here for you. You can search through the Apples Café, Apples2Apple news, Cool find – Hunting for Stylish Products, Getting to Know Brands, Simple and Fabulous – Beauty and Fashion, Simple Home Style – Home Sweet Home, and there are so many other categories for simplifying your life here as the list is extremely comprehensive.
The site scores well on activity, as posting is every couple of days at most, and navigation scores well also. The site is easy to navigate but I would like to see some additional navigation features to make blog browsing more simple, such as the recent posts menu and the archives menu. The uniqueness marks are average, I do not find this niche to be one that is extremely different from others in its category, so it garners average points here. The content is well written for the most part, though I do wonder if English is a second language here just through some syntax issues and contextual comments. However, this does not take away from the readability of the blog and the posts are extremely easy to read and follow. Appearance is where the blog suffers the most, I find there to be more advertising than posts, and in facet a few posts are advertising in themselves. While at first glance the purpose of the blog is geared as such towards this kind of writing, I would still like to see more of the authors personal voice and less advertising in the specific posts that are marketing a product. Having AdSense in every post also distracts from the readability of the blog, at least for me it does, so that has affected appearance marks as well. Overall however, this blog rates a 3 from me and I wish it continued success.
Did you enjoy this review? Click here to join our forum and get a review!
- Chrissie
If you would like feedback from your blog please make one of our Free Blog Poll’s!
