By CLAIRE CAIN MILLER


SAN FRANCISCO - When the financial sector took a dive this fall, the entrepreneurs behind a new batch of personal finance sites worried that they were in the wrong place at the wrong time. After all, if people no longer trusted their banks, why would they trust some start-up with their most private financial information?

As it turns out, interest in these sites is up, not down. Burned by their banks and the stock market, people seeking help with budgeting, saving and investing are turning to sites with names like Mint, Smarty Pig, Cake Financial, Wesabe and Credit Karma.

“There is a significant loss of confidence with banks right now,”said David Furlonger, a vice president at the research firm Gartner, who studies the financial services industry.“People are turning to whatever communities they think are best able to serve them.”

Visits to online personal finance sites are up threefold over last year, said Jim Bruene, founder of the trade publisher Online Financial Innovations, and many of the sites say they have grown quickly since the crisis worsened in September.

Mint, which tracks users’ financial accounts and creates budgets, has 630,000 registered users, a quarter of whom have joined since the fall.

“The worse the news was, the more people started using Mint,”said Aaron Patzer, founder and chief executive of the company, which is based in Mountain View, California.“People realize they need to get a better handle on their money.”

Money-tracking sites like Mint, Wesabe and Quicken Online pull financial information from users’ accounts and analyze it with graphs showing, for example, how much they spend in restaurants compared with how much they are saving for retirement. On social investing sites, including Cake Financial, Inner8 and Covestor, people rely on other members for investment tips.

PearBudget guides users through the process of creating a budget with an online spreadsheet application. Credit Karma lets people check their credit scores free as often as they want, and track and discuss their progress in improving them. On SmartyPig, users share savings goals with friends, and the site withdraws money from their checking accounts each month.

Venture capitalists are betting millions on the notion that financial help on the Web can be profitable. But the financial crisis, while boosting traffic for these sites, has strained revenue. Cake Financial was forced to lay off workers in the fall and is just starting to generate revenue. SmartyPig, Mint and Wesabe have revenue but are not yet profitable.

For many of these start-ups, revenue comes mostly from referral fees earned when customers successfully sign up for new credit cards or checking accounts. Though more people are clicking on such offers, fewer are getting approved.

Many sites also earn money through advertisements from financial firms. An October report from the research firm Forrester predicted that despite the recession, spending on Web marketing by financial institutions would double by 2012.

The biggest challenge for these sites has been earning the trust of wary Internet users. They use security measures like encryption and are certified by Web security firms. But Mint users who want the site to consolidate information from their online banking and investment accounts must entrust it with their passwords. On other sites, users discuss their net worth and debt frankly, though anonymity is allowed.

The risks did not discourage Holli Buck, 38, an administrative assistant in Canton, Michigan, who turned to SmartyPig in November after she was laid off from her third job in 11 months.

She is using the site to save money for an online copywriting class so she can freelance.

“Because of the crisis, I actually felt more comfortable than if this were some big bank,”she said.“With everything that’s going on with banks, I’m not ready to give them my money. This Web site makes me feel safer.”