Before I get into my thoughts I’d like to share the comments that prompted this post:
Arby: These deals used to work until every blogger in the world started promoting them. The death of these deals is too many people trying to game the system. By blogging about them you’re only hurting yourself.
Broken: Also, if you don’t think that you and all the other blogs that promoted this deal aren’t partly responsible for pushing up the shareholder count then you’re deluding yourself.
Skip: And Ryan, I know you enjoy posting these but I’d consider the fable of the Goose and the Golden Egg if you were smart. With all due respect, You want to make $ or have fun blogging?
Chad: Broken and (earlier post) Arby are right. Too much publicity for companies that have such a small float. If you were getting a membership fee, that would be one thing, but it sounds a lot like the early 90s when Wade Cook was promoting stock splits and everyone was rushing to the same money making idea. Stick to LBOs and MBOs and leave the small stuff alone.
Well, I thought this day might eventually come. ryanhegs.com has suddenly had a substantial increase in the number of visitors, much thanks to JLN. While most bloggers would love to see the number of readers grow, it poses some unique problems for this blog due to the nature of many of my posts.
When I started this blog I didn’t really know what direction it would head, I just thought it would be a good way for me to keep track of my investing habits and gain some accountability and advice. Over the past year arbitrage has become one of the main themes as I have done nearly a dozen reverse split plays. When I only had a few hits a day it wasn’t a big deal for me to post about these opportunities in advance as my posts would have very little influence on the transactions. Now that I’m beginning to get more traffic the concerns of Arby, Broken, Skip and Chad are worth considering. To date I know that I haven’t ruined any transactions for anyone. It wasn’t until JLN that this became a concern. As you can see from the chart below, around the time I began blogging about JLN the site visits began to take off (pretty slow until then).
As I mentioned in a previous comment, most of these visitors did not learn about the JLN situation from my blog, they wound up on this blog because they were searching for more information on JLN. The question now is do I continue? If so how?
To answer the question Skip posed, I certainly don’t want to undermine my own investments with my blog. On the other hand, I have found the input, feedback, and criticism from my readers helpful (which is beneficial to my investing). I don’t think that making money and blogging are mutually exclusive in this situation…I just need to determine what exactly I am going to post, when, and how…
Here’s the deal:
It is nice to be able to discuss these situations before they happen. It is helpful for me, and I’m guessing it is helpful (or at least interesting) for many of you.
It isn’t cool if we suddenly have hundreds of people making the investments mentioned on this and other sites. I’m not getting that kind of traffic yet, but it could happen and there could be consequences.
Here are my options as I see them:
Status quo – I keep on doing what I’m doing, potentially causing problems for myself, others, and even some companies in the future (if I have enough visitors following my lead). The justification here would be “the other bloggers are going to ruin it anyway, why should I be the responsible one?”
Hold back information – I continue to blog about my investing, but I don’t post anything until it is too late for anyone to act on it. While this keeps me from potentially spoiling any investments, it doesn’t make the site very useful for me or the readers.
Charge a membership fee – Chad, I like the idea…I’d love to make a buck or two doing this, but I don’t know if people would be willing to pay for the information or if they would just find it elsewhere. I’d don’t know how many paying customers I’d realistically get.
Create a members only section – No fees, just a section for a manageable number of members to discuss investment strategies. For example, anyone that has made a decent contribution to the conversation on this site thus far would receive a username and password. Future members would have to apply by somehow proving their worth (intellectually) to the community. I’d keep the group under a certain number and add new members only as we oust the inactive members. This members section could utilize a blog format, discussion forum, wiki’s, whatever would be the most user friendly. I’d continue to keep the current blog active for visitors, but I would only post after the fact.
I’d like to get the thoughts from the readers on this. I don’t necessarily have to take your advice (it is MY blog) but I am considering making changes. For now it is status quo…maybe with a bit of caution.
I know that this blog doesn’t have the clout to make much of an impact on any arb plays (I don’t want to give myself too much credit). I think the problem isn’t with any one blog, but with the collective information floating in cyberspace from a number of different sites - plus the word-of-mouth tips as well. So, I may do my part to limit the flow of information, but at the end of the day there is still an increasing number of people getting into these arb plays. It will be interesting to see what happens with these situations in the future. It’s possible that I may start to steer away from some of these and pursue some other strategies. But for now I’m keeping my eyes out.
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