In the previous post, I mentioned the need to rebrand. Now, let’s talk about how to go about making it happen. Before we get too far down the road, let me state the obvious—I’m not a branding expert.

Had I been an expert, I wouldn’t have initially selected Building Income as a brand name, thereby necessitating a rebrand. However, I’m not afraid of change or some bumbles along the way. With that said, let’s get to work.

Selecting a New Name

There were two things I noticed about most blogs in the personal finance & improvement segments. Either they had a personified quality to their title, or they had a catchy phrase.

With those with personified brands, a few that stuck out were:

Mr. Money Mustache
Coach Carson
The Budget Mom

Those with catchy phrases were

Making Sense of Cents
Dumb Little Man
Pick the Brain

Spending a couple of years with a blog that had Building in its name left me with a desire to get away from inanimate objects. I wanted something fun and relatable. And what’s more human than failing? Most of us won’t succeed the first time we try something. Hell, we won’t achieve on the second or third time, either. But if we keep after it, we eventually reach our destination.

So, I decided I wanted a blog title that described a person who reached success only after repeated attempts. While on my afternoon walks, I brainstormed names—often writing them down in the notebook I carry.

After thinking about action words like stumbling and striving, I settled on bumbling. For me, that word evokes an image of a Dick Van Dyke-like character careening across a TV screen.

When I selected my descriptor, I needed a noun. Investor was the first one that jumped out.

The Bumbling Investor. Not bad, but I wanted to talk about more than just investing.

The Art of Bumbling. Cute, but would it register what I wanted?

Then it came to me—the Bumbling Millionaire. If you want things done perfectly, you should suspiciously eye anyone with “bumble” in their title.

The Bumbling Plumber. Maybe you should try the next guy.

The Bumbling Mechanic. Nope. Call the dedicated one.

The Bumbling Doctor. Never mind. I’ll take two aspirin and call someone else in the morning.

But The Bumbling Millionaire had a nice ring. With a little patience and some knowledge, most anyone should be able to bumble their way to a million dollars of net worth.

URL, You Know It’s True

Upon selecting a new brand name, the first thing anyone needs to do is confirm that the URL is available. Because let’s be honest—in this digital world, if you don’t have a website, you don’t exist.

So, I snagged The Bumbling Millionaire. Then I purchased Bumbling Millionaire, too. Just in case someone forgot that all-important the.

My rebrand was moving at 100 miles per hour. Nothing could slow me down!

Looking Good

The next step was to get a new logo. I’d recently discovered how great Fiverr could be. Yeah, yeah. I know. Fiverr’s been around for a while, but so have Brussel sprouts, and I’ve only recently taken a liking to them.

Anyway, I engaged two designers to create a logo. One whipped out a design with two variations (see below). I liked them and may still use one of them.

The other created the logo I’m currently sporting. With the arms spread wide, it seemed more inviting.

Which do you like? Let me know in the comments below.

Speaking of Comments

Disqus is the third-party add-in that I previously used for reader comments. It was an easy-to-use tool, both for the blogger and the reader. I’ve commented with it on other sites.

However, it sucked for porting from one website to another. And logically, I get it. They don’t want comments being ported all over the internet. For example, if I commented on the Cleveland Browns website that “I love this team!” I sure as heck wouldn’t want that ported over to the Steelers site.

Anyway, I messed around with the Disqus for a week until I finally gave up and realized that part of being the Bumbling Millionaire is falling and getting back up. So, no comments for me.

Then I loaded up the new Disqus and realized it now came with advertisements. While I had my head down focusing on my fiction, Disqus institute ads. I’m not normally against ads. I understand them and they have their place, but I hated the Disqus ads. They were those nasty looking ones that are complete clickbait. Well, screw that. I’m going with the basic Squarespace comment system.

All this to say, I’m starting at zero- no comments. Therefore, if you read a post and like it, please leave a comment.

Unless it’s my mom, then don’t. You’ll be violating rule #7 of the blog comment policy. I’m serious.

Blog Comment Policy

I didn’t have one of these before, and I guess it’s a sign of the times.

Now, I do, and I’m happy about it.

Moderate swearing is tolerated. Jerks aren’t.

URL Gonna Laugh

Happy and content with my new site design, I showed it to a friend.

“Dude!” he said. “It looks great.”

He complimented the layout, he loved the new logo, and he thought the new brand was money. I’d been working on the redesign for about a month, so this was music to my ears.

When I signed up for a dedicated email account is when I noticed it. Well, I saw it AFTER I paid for the new email account. Unfortunately, there’s no spell check when you purchase a URL.

I’m embarrassed to admit it, but I misspelled millionaire - in the URL.

The Bumbling MILLIONARE.

Look for yourself.

And I misspelled it in the second URL, too.

Bumbling MILLIONARE.

Since the site had been up and running for a month, Google had enough time to crawl it and register that as the new domain name.

Crap!

I’m not sure you can imagine my panic at that moment. It was greater than the time I discovered buildingincome.com was being squatted on. I’d already paid for two misspelled URLs and redesigned a website.

I jumped over to my provider and searched for the proper spelling. After breathing a sigh of relief, I ordered the correctly spelled URL. Oh, and I got the second one as well. And I ordered the properly spelled email address.

Then I freaked out and had to make sure my new logos were correctly spelled.

They were.

I’d love to hear your thoughts on the rebranding.
Please leave them in the comments below.