Sometime not too long ago, Rockstar Finance, one of my favorite personal finance websites, went dormant. This was a pretty big bummer because of how important the site was not only to myself but to the entire personal finance community as well.
The premise behind Rockstar Finance was pretty simple. Each day, they featured three new blog posts written by different personal finance bloggers. For a long time, Rockstar Finance served as a really good content curation source, providing a single spot where you could find interesting new articles from a variety of different people. For years, I would start out each morning by logging into Rockstar Finance and checking out the articles that were featured for the day.
What made Rockstar Finance work so well was its simplicity. It didn’t have a lot of pictures or text – mainly just a plain white page with links to featured posts. This made it so that you could easily go to the website, see what was featured for the day, and get to the different posts without having to click through a lot of pages. There wasn’t any self-promotion. There was no original content for a long time. And there were very few ads – if I recall, it was just a banner ad and maybe a few other ads scattered throughout.
This simplicity belied Rockstar Finance’s true purpose. It wasn’t made to promote itself. Rather, it was created to promote everyone else in the personal finance community. And indeed, this is probably what made the blogging community love Rockstar Finance so much – it had a real emphasis on helping others get seen, with no strings attached. Even better, Rockstar Finance seemed to do a good job of helping newer bloggers get found, as it didn’t always feature the same big bloggers.
I remember the first time I got featured on Rockstar Finance. My blog was just a few months old, and at the time, I was only getting a few visitors per day. When you’re a new blogger, it can often feel like you’re writing into the ether. But if you got featured on Rockstar Finance, you’d get thousands of visitors to your site over the course of a few days. When I got featured on Rockstar Finance, for the first time, it felt like people were actually reading what I was writing.
Unfortunately, Rockstar Finance went through a few ownership changes that ultimately led to a decline in quality and to its now-dormant state. The site got to be a little bit too cluttered, with too much stuff going on. Eventually, I stopped checking it simply because it felt like the site had strayed too far from its origins.
It’s really a shame to see Rockstar Finance fall like this. And at this point, I don’t think it’s possible for it to come back.
But what if we could recreate what Rockstar Finance was all about? That’s what I wanted to try to do.
Creating A New Rockstar Finance
Sometime last year, my friend Erik from The Mastermind Within started up his own content curation site that he called Daily Finance Blogs. It was basically an aggregator site that allowed visitors to see all of the latest posts written by people in the personal finance community. His goal was to create a central place where people could find the latest blog posts from a lot of different bloggers.
Several months ago, the two of us got to talking about the steady decline we’d seen in Rockstar Finance. It occurred to us that maybe we could create a new version of Rockstar Finance, one that would try to go back to the roots of what made Rockstar Finance work so well – a simple website featuring interesting posts from different people in the personal finance community.
And so, we got to work. Initially, the plan was to try to expand on what Erik had created with Daily Finance Blogs. However, an opportunity came up to buy a new domain name that we thought was simple and made it clear what the website was about.
After many weeks of work throughout the summer, we finally got it set up. We set up our site at www.PersonalFinanceBlogs.com. We called it PFB for short.
Room For Plenty Of Curation Sites
Our site wasn’t the first content curation site to pop up after Rockstar Finance’s downfall. In fact, as we got the ball rolling on our project, a couple of new sites popped up that were doing what we had hoped to do.
First, we found out that our friend Zach over at Four Pillar Freedom had converted his site, Collecting Wisdom, into a site similar to what we wanted to do – a simple website featuring three daily posts from the personal finance community.
Then we found out that JD Roth and Jim Wang had started up their own site, Apex Money, which also provided daily curated content from around the web.
I think both sites are amazing and after discovering them, we worried about what this would mean for our project that we’d been working so hard on. Were we just too slow to the party?
But as we thought about it more, we remembered what made the personal finance community so great. One of the great things about the personal finance community is that even with so many bloggers and content creators out there, we’ve never viewed each other as competitors. They say a rising tide lifts all boats and I think that’s how a lot of us in the personal finance community think. If we all do well, we all rise. Indeed, I think Rockstar Finance was built on that very principle of working together.
And with literally hundreds, if not thousands, of blogs out there, there’s room for multiple curation websites to help people get discovered and find new content to read. We all have different points of view, so with multiple sites looking for new posts to feature, hopefully even more people will find their content reaching more and more people!
What To Expect From PersonalFinanceBlogs.com
So, here’s what you can expect from Personal Finance Blogs (or PFB, for short). There will be two main features:
- Daily Features. Monday through Friday, we’ll feature three articles at the top of the front page. These articles are ones that we find ourselves from scouring the web or that are submitted to us and that we think are worth sharing. We’re going to aim for more recent content. And any featured posts will remain on the site so that people can find them in the future.
- Personal Finance Blog Feed. Erik made a really good feed that aggregates all of the daily posts from hundreds of different personal finance blogs. He spent a lot of time trying to make this feed as visually appealing and simple as possible. I think this is a great place for readers to find the latest content out there. You can check out the feeds here. And if we missed your blog and you want it featured in the feed, just hit us up.
Our goal is to keep the site as simple and visually appealing as possible. You won’t have to click through a lot of pages to find good content. Ideally, if we feature a blogger, we’ll do our best not to feature that blogger again for at least a little bit. This is a bit of a fluid concept, but the general idea is to get as many different blog posts from as many different bloggers and points of view as we can.
I don’t expect to replace what Rockstar Finance did for this community – they started something that can never be fully replicated. But I think a combination of curation from sites like ours, Collecting Wisdom, and Apex Money is a good start. Our friend Michelle over at Frugality and Freedom also put together a great post: Get Your Regular Dose of Finance Posts: A Curated List of Curated Lists. Her post lists all of the bloggers and websites out there curating lists of interesting personal finance posts. It’s definitely worth checking out.
If you’re looking for content to read, we’d definitely appreciate if you’d check out Personal Finance Blogs. From there, you can submit any posts you think are worth sharing. Be sure to also check out the Personal Finance Blogs Feed, where you can see all of the latest posts from the personal finance community. Please also follow us on Twitter.
This is a big project and we really hope that it benefits the community. If you have any thoughts or suggestions, please feel free to reach out to me or drop a comment down below. We’re really excited to share Personal Finance Blogs with the world and really hope it benefits people.
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Kevin is an attorney and the blogger behind Financial Panther, a blog about personal finance, travel hacking, and side hustling using the gig 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 gig 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 I use to track my financial accounts.
- SoFi Money. A really good checking account with absolutely no fees. You'll get a $25 referral bonus if you open a SoFi Money account with a referral link.
- Brex. Brex is a free business cash management account that is currently offering new users a $250 Amazon gift card if you sign up using a referral link and meet certain requirements.
- 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 $50 for opening an account.
- Albert. A great free app I use to track my finances and save more money. You can also earn a $150 signup bonus if you open a free Albert cash account.
Feel free to send Kevin a message here.
Hooray! I’m excited to check out Personal Finance Blogs. Nice work Kevin and Erik.
I also just have to say this: WTF happened to Rockstar?!! Why did the new owner buy it only to ditch it? I’m sure it wasn’t cheap to buy. So perplexing.
Thanks Chrissy!
And yeah, I have no idea what the heck happened to Rockstar. Like that person must’ve had a ton of money to throw away.
Thanks for the mention! I love your point that, “Even with so many bloggers and content creators out there, we’ve never viewed each other as competitors. They say a rising tide lifts all boats and I think that’s how a lot of us in the personal finance community think.”
Well put! Not competitors, but complementary. I have felt like this community is very welcoming and supportive, especially amongst the financial independence / retire early content creators. Perhaps the abundance mindset associated with their money is what is flowing through?
Anyway, congratulations on the launch of this new project and I look forward to the daily emails!
Thanks Michelle!
I am thrilled and can’t wait to see your new site, Kevin! Love the idea of aggregated articles and thank you for sharing other similar sites.
Thanks! Hope PersonalFinanceBlogs.com helps you to discover great new voices in the personal finance space!
Congratulations on this new venture! I look forward to checking out this new site and learning from the great content you will be curating.
Thanks Laura!
Came here trying to figure out what happened to rockstar finance and discovered a few other citation sites. Thanks for sharing and good luck to you guys!
Thanks! Let us know what we can do to improve. The new site is only 3 months old, so we’re still working on it!