Thank you all so much for your comments and your subscriptions.  My next post will be about the FHA changes, so please subscribe for that information coming soon to a PC near you. 

Hope you all have survived another end of month!  All of my loans are safely closed or at closing so I've got a minute to blog before the weekend and share some results of my post Testing, One-Two-Three. An ActiveRain and SEO Experiment. Read this post and you could win a Starbucks card!!

First, the question has been asked "Why Subscribe?"  Here's the long answer:

My hope is to create in my blog and our "Got Money?" group, a community that understands if we work with one another on subscriptions, commenting on blogs and visiting websites, that we can make our blogs better, our businesses better, our websites better, and drive more traffic to our busniesses due to search engine optimization in google, yahoo, etc.  If a large and loyal subscriber base helps one another toward this goal, it will work very well.  Our goal is to focus a group that "gets it" so we can efficiently use this tool instead of swimming around in a hundred thousand blogs and randomly using our time here.  I will, of course, be randomly reading some blogs out there, but with only limited time in a day, I'm going to focus on those who understand how to best use this tool to help the group.  I've always had an "All for one and one for all" mindset, and that has served me well....starting on the playground as a child, through school, and for many years in the business world, and I KNOW it will work here.

We also insist on enjoying ourselves, so that is a definite pre-requisite to subscribing and joining the group.  We figure that all of us have to make a living, so we might as well make it as fun as possible.  After almost 20 years in the financial world, I've come to that place where I can say that life is too short to be miserable at work...we might as well enjoy it, so there will be off-topic posts on occasion.  We also welcome your off topic posts to Got Money? as long as they make life better by giving us a laugh, and don't put down any protected class per the U.S. Government's definition of a protected class.  We have to draw the line at vulgarity also.

As for the results of my first experiment in active rain:  We were as high as the 7th most subscribed to blog last week after a total of 13 posts (have dropped down to 13 or 14 this week since I've been focusing on closing loans at and of month and haven't posted much).  It has been a very effective campaign given that most of those on the "most subscribed to" list, have several hundred posts and have been members for quite some time.  My results were achieved after basically one week and a handful of blogs, proving that the contest strategy I wrote about in my previous blog, Contests and giveaways as a marketing and branding strategy., works in this environment as well as out there in the real world.  Will be sharing more about what works in future blogs, so be sure to subscribe.  Please contribute your comments and blogs to "Got Money?" as well.  I think what works here will help drive business to all of our websites and, in the end, result in additional business, which is really why we are all here.  As much as I truly LOVE writing and blogging, I still need business to pay college tuition for my two college students!  And making my own mortgage payment is a nice motivator to generate business as well!

As to the question of knowing whether subscribers have plugged into the Donna's Got Money blog and the Got Money?  activerain group due to the quality of the blogging or to simply win the contests and prizes, my answer is: 

          It doesn't matter. 

There will be helpful information here for all who subscribe and read...and for those who just want to win stuff, I hope you win!  Just keep reading and leaving your comments.  You'll always be welcome as long as you continue to participate and help me and the other subscribers with helpful comments, blogs, and with search engine optimization.  While you are online, visit my website at www.donnasgotmoney.com and visit the websites of a few of the people who have left comments on my blog and help our SEO too!

In the same way that we don't mind those people who only participate in our business email contests to win stuff, we welcome those who subscribe only to win stuff.  Those entering the email contests will some day need the services of an excellent Home Loan Consultant, so if they keep enjoying the contests only for a chance to win at the beginning, they will eventually remember us for a client's home loan simply because we were the ones that they won a gift certificate from once.  (If you would like to be added to our weekly rate-sheet email list, on which we announce our outside contests, please send me an email and let me know...real estate agents only, please).  Likewise in our activrain world, we will provide good information which will help our subscribers and help SEO, even if the initial reason for your subscription is a chance to win something.  Sounds like a win-win to me.

     Until next time...

                               Got Money?

Donna

Donna L. Mitchell, Home Loan Consultant, www.donnasgotmoney.com