I’ve been really pumped since I got back from FinCon. Not only did I learn some great stuff and get to connect with some amazing people, but going to FinCon also motivated me to do some things on this blog that I’ve been wanting to do for awhile.
If you’re a regular reader, you’ve probably noticed that things are looking a little different around here. Obviously, there’s a slight visual change. With over 120 posts on this blog to date, I thought it would make sense to organize some of these posts in a way that might help people get to whatever information they’re looking for. It’s still a work in progress, but I like the way things are starting to look. (Shoutout to Money Wizard for the idea during our chats at FinCon).
Probably the biggest change that you might have noticed though is the fact that this blog now has a “professional” URL – www.financialpanther.com! I’ve made it to the big time!
As you may know, since the inception of this blog, I’ve been rocking the “dot-co” domain name. It’s served me well, but I always felt like I was just a step behind without the full “dot-com” name. Plus, I hated having to qualify that the site was FinancialPanther.co, instead of the expected FinancialPanther.com.
Buying the dot-com is something that I’ve wanted to do for a long time, and last week, I finally went around and made the leap. It’s, without a doubt, the biggest investment I’ve made on this blog to date.
So how did I get here? For that, we’ll have to take a little trip down memory lane.
Financial Panther Origin Story
The idea for Financial Panther came to me at the beginning of 2016. I was still working in biglaw at the time and digging my way out of $87,000 worth of student loans. Two years earlier, I’d vowed to pay off all of my student loans as fast as I could and by the beginning of 2016, I only had about $12,000 worth of them left. The finish line was in sight!
In addition to being close to paying off my student loans, I had also been trying my hand at side hustling using the sharing economy – first signing up for Rover in the summer of 2015, then getting in on some food delivery apps shortly after.
It was a nice little outlet for me. I was burning tons of hours at work, but being able to get outside and do deliveries on my bike or watch cute pups when I got home was a nice stress reliever. It also made me believe that there were ways to earn money beyond just the normal things I was supposed to do.
To my friends, the things I was doing seemed funny – it wasn’t every day that a lawyer at an AmLaw 100 firm went around and delivered food to people after work. I was living differently, and if anything, it seemed like it was at least worth sharing. So, I decided to start a blog.
Financial Panther Domain Name
After toying with some names, I ended up going with Financial Panther. It sounded funny to me, seemed to fit what I was trying to do, and most importantly, I’m a huge fan of the Simpsons (you’ve probably seen random Simpsons GIFs strewn about the site).
In case you don’t know where Financial Panther comes from, it comes from this clip:
With the name nailed down, my next plan was to snag a domain name. Unfortunately, www.FinancialPanther.com wasn’t available – it was a parked domain that was WAY too expensive for me to invest in at the time. Rats!
I also looked at www.thefinancialpanther.com, but that turned out to be an empty blog with no content on it. The domain info showed that it was set to expire towards the end of 2016, which was a bit too long for me to wait.
Since I was out of luck on those two domains, I settled for grabbing www.financialpanther.co. It did the trick, but I always felt like things were just a little bit off without the prestigious, dot-com name. In the back of my mind, I knew that I needed to get FinancialPanther.com as my domain name.
(As a side note, if you’re starting your first blog, I recommend doing it for pretty cheap. Blogging is HARD and takes up a lot of time, and the last thing you want to do is sink a ton of money into starting a blog only to find out it’s not for you. Check out my step-by-step guide on how to start a blog to see how to get started with your blog for just a few bucks a month).
The Blogging Journey Continues
Around the end of 2016, the domain name www.thefinancialpanther.com finally became available (I guess whoever owned that name never got around to starting their blog and didn’t feel like renewing the name). I went ahead and bought it for the extravagant price of $12.
With that domain in hand, I thought about making the switch over to www.thefinancialpanther.com, but it seemed like a ton of work and I wasn’t sure if it was worth all of the effort to make the move when I really wanted the domain name without “the” in front. Grant over at Millennial Money kept telling me that I needed to buy financialpanther.com. And I was finally convinced to do it when ApathyEnds tried to go to my site and typed in the dot-com domain name, only to find it was a parked domain.
So, with that last push, I went ahead and made the leap into the dot-com world. It was an expensive move, but I’m hoping it’ll pay off. The main downside is that my Alexa Ranking – which I’d gotten up to 250,000 in the world or so – is now back at the bottom. And I’m still not sure how this change will affect my domain authority, which was pretty decent too.
If anything, this domain change will keep me motivated to keep pushing out great content. I think that a lot of blogging is about staying motivated, which can be hard to do. For most people, it takes a while before you start gaining any traction.
I motivated myself in year 1 by putting the carrot of FinCon in front of me. Since I’d already bought my ticket, it’d be a waste if I didn’t keep blogging – at least that’s what I told myself. Now in year 2, I’m going to be even more motivated since I need to make sure that I get my money’s worth with this new domain name investment. I’ve already bought my ticket for FinCon 2018, so there’s that little bit of motivation there too.
As of today, I now own three variants of this blog name:
- www.financialpanther.com
- www.financialpanther.co
- www.thefinancialpanther.com
All of those links now redirect to the dot-com version of the name, so you can pretty much type anything and you’ll find yourself here.
Anyway, that’s just a quick blog update for all of you. All of the old links out there should forward to the dot-com version of the site, but if you see anything wrong, please let me know. It’ll really help me out!
Kevin is an attorney and the blogger behind Financial Panther, a blog about personal finance, travel hacking, and side hustling using the sharing economy. He paid off $87,000 worth of student loans in just 2.5 years by choosing not to live like a big shot lawyer.
Kevin is passionate about earning money using the sharing economy and you can see all the ways he makes extra income every month in his side hustle reports.
Kevin is also big on using the latest fintech apps to improve his finances. Some of Kevin's favorite fintech apps include:
- Personal Capital. One of best free apps you can use to monitor your portfolio and track your net worth. This is one of the apps Kevin uses to track his financial accounts.
- SoFi Money. A really good checking account with absolutely no fees. It also reimburses all ATM fees worldwide. Even better, you'll get a $25 welcome bonus if you open an account and fund it with at least $500.
- M1 Finance. This is a great robo-advisor that has no fees and allows you to create a customized portfolio based on your risk tolerance. You also get $10 for opening an account.
- Dobot. This is a great microsaving app that monitors the cash flow in your bank account and saves away small amounts for you each week. It's free and you'll get $5 when you use it.
- Credit Karma. A free credit monitoring app that everyone should use. It'll notify you of any changes to your credit report and is the best credit monitoring app out there.
Feel free to send Kevin a message here.
Congratulations on purchasing the Dot com domain name!
Thanks!
Congrats – I’m currently having the same issue. I chose a .io
Thanks! I saw that GoFi is on sale for $300k – just a little bit out of most of our price ranges!
Though, a short name like yours though actually lends itself well to a domain name like .io.
Awesome! Much more professional. How much did you end up having to pay for the .com?
Let’s just say it was more than I wanted to pay, haha!
Nice job on the move, and redirecting everything over – that’s always a stressful thing to setup.
At FinCon I also heard your domain wrong, but I heard “FinancialPanda” which doesn’t sound too bad actually.
Haha. Financial Panda wouldn’t be bad either. It’s on sale for $3,888…just a bit outside of my budget…
Congrats on the domain name pickup! Probably a bit of hassle to get everything moved over, but it’s got to be a great feeling now that it’s done! 🙂
— Jim
Definitely a hassle. The main bummer is just that I have to start over with my Alexa ranking and my Domain Authority, both of which I had gotten pretty high.
I messed up when I registered my name ( I do feel like an idiot about it ) and most people think it was meant to be “money is crap”! Really not what I was going for. I am very new to blogging , do you think I should fix my name now and buy the name I was actually going for? The name is available but not sure how much work is involved to link/switch my current site to a new one. Thanks
Hmm…that’s tough to say. The bigger your site is, the more of a pain it is to switch things over (bigger name brand, more posts and links to worry about, more Google juice and SEO stuff to think about). I’d say that, if you’re small and just starting out, and you’re not happy with what you’ve got going, better to just pull the band-aid now and make the switch.
Yeah I meant to say something about this a while back when I couldn’t find your blog. Good move, Kevin!
Thanks Cubert! So far, I’m liking the switch, especially if it helps people find their way here easier.
Be sure to set reminders to stay on top of it! My old domain expired and a Chinese company bought it and puts the most awful design advice on it. I have a friend who is a patent attorney specializing in intellectual property and we’ve been working on getting something on their home page that says they’re not affiliated with me. But it’s hard because I had built up a little traction and off it went. I haven’t felt as motivated since, which is a shame.
Ah bummer! Sorry to hear about that.
Nice 🙂
I love the new design. It looks really professional.
I’m experimenting with Pinterest this month. We will see the results..
Congratulations! How did you know it became available? Do you have some type of automatic alert system?
It’s been a parked domain ever since I started up the blog, but I didn’t have the income to justify throwing down so much money on it on a project that I might give up on. At FinCon, a few folks convinced me that I needed to take the leap and buy the domain name, and thankfully, I’ve earned enough from the blog, that I could afford to buy the name. If the blog were to fail right now, I at least know I made enough to pay for the domain name, which is mainly what I was waiting for.
So, no automatic system – just me looking at it every once in a while to see what the price was at.