Dreck

Have you noticed that some bloggers publish articles with little useful content that seem mostly designed to carry links to commercial web sites? Here is a great example of the kind of “helpful” emails I receive:
“I know producing high quality content on a daily basis can be time consuming and I believe I have a solution that can help you on slow news days. [Our organization] has a team of in-house writers that can provide you with unique custom written content covering any relevant topics. I’m certain we could provide some valuable unique articles that would engage your users and expand your site. This is provided completely and entirely free of charge to our partners. We also have [a web tool] that [steers users to our clients]. For placing these we would be able compensate you for each user [directed to our clients], creating a new incremental revenue stream for your website.”
What I’m being offered is a chance to publish advertising that masquerades as content. I have no philosophical objection to advertising, but readers should be able to distinguish the real content from the advertising.

With product placements in movies and television shows and other examples of advertising “hidden” in content, I realize that my philosophy probably isn’t a majority view, but if I were only writing this blog for the money, I’d have quit a long time ago.

Comments

  1. EchoFebruary 23, 2012 at 12:16 AM

    I hate those "guest posts". If I'm going to publish crappy content, at least it will be my own work.

    ReplyDelete
  2. AnonymousFebruary 23, 2012 at 12:52 AM

    The best way to kill a blog is to have a few of those clearly "sponsored" posts, since from that point onwards we can't know if the blog is still objective.

    I can accept posts that aren't up my alley (or just that were rushed), as long as they're original content.

    Keep up the good work. Love the blog as it is, now !

    ReplyDelete
  3. LewinFebruary 23, 2012 at 8:40 AM

    I live in a tech town and one company was in the news recently because of financial troubles and layoffs. I had never heard of them, but found out they basically create websites (with a thin veneer of content) that link to one another to game google and serve ads. Too bad for the lost jobs, but I figured smart people could find different jobs at companies that don't wreck the internet. Good riddance!

    ReplyDelete
  4. Michael JamesFebruary 23, 2012 at 9:00 AM

    @Echo: I take pride in my crappy work, too :-)

    @Anonymous: Thanks for the kind words.

    @Lewin: I wonder if I've been solicited by this company. I occasionally get "offers" to join a network of content providers. This amounts to a request for me to provide content to them for free. I'd rather toil away in obscurity than help some company game Google.

    ReplyDelete
  5. The Blunt Bean CounterFebruary 23, 2012 at 11:15 AM

    Michael, I guess that was not you driving in the Mercedes with the Ufile logo on the side, I could have sworn it was you :)

    You have integreity, something to be proud of.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Michael JamesFebruary 23, 2012 at 11:44 AM

    @Mark: Thanks for the laugh. I wish my blog was popular enough that advertising on it was worth a car.

    ReplyDelete
  7. The Unknown Financial BloggerFebruary 23, 2012 at 6:04 PM

    I agree with Echo, I can create my own unreadable crap, that is only written to make money... whoops, the secret is out!

    ReplyDelete
  8. Ross TaylorFebruary 23, 2012 at 6:12 PM

    Agree with everyone here. I get so much garbage in my comments that has to be filtered, you guys must get tons more

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Short Takes: InvestorLine’s HISAs, 24-Hour Trading, and more

I recently moved some cash into BMO InvestorLine’s high-interest savings accounts (HISAs) that are structured as mutual funds.  Their designations are BMT104, BMT109, and BMT114, and they purportedly pay 4.35% annual interest (which they can change whenever they like).  However, the way they report the monthly interest payments is so baffling that I wasn’t able to sort it out in my first 15 minutes of trying.  A further complication is the following text in the HISA description: “The Bank may pay, monthly or quarterly, compensation to your Dealer at an annual rate of up to 0.25% of the daily closing balance in the BMO HISA.”  I couldn’t find any evidence of such a charge, but I haven’t been invested for a full quarter, and I can’t yet say that such a charge isn’t buried somehow in the confusing reporting.  I have more digging to do before I can recommend these HISAs. Here are some short takes and some weekend reading: Preet Banerjee explains the dangers of Robi...
Read more

My Asset Allocation

I’ve resisted discussing my asset allocation for some time, but now is finally the time to describe it and the reasons behind it. I’m not holding it out as a model portfolio; I believe it’s suitable for me and not necessarily anyone else. With that warning, enjoy the discussion and feel free to ask questions or take some pot-shots. The main reason why I haven’t discussed my asset allocation in detail before now is that I don’t want readers to treat it like a model portfolio and follow it blindly. Everyone’s situation is different. The need for variation in asset allocation from one investor to the next usually isn’t huge, but there is no one-size-fits-all portfolio. A secondary reason for keeping my asset allocation to myself is that I can’t be sure I’ll never change it. For example, I recently made the minor change of switching from an ETF of small-cap stocks to an ETF of small-cap value stocks . I don’t have any plans to change my current allocation, but I may think differe...
Read more

What to Do About Crazy Stock Valuations

Image
The last time I had to put a lot of effort into thinking about my finances was back when I retired in mid-2017.  I had ideas of how to manage my money after retirement, but it wasn’t until a couple of years had gone by that I felt confident that my long-term plans would work for me.  I had my portfolio on autopilot, and my investing spreadsheet would email me if I needed to take some action. I was fortunate that I happened to retire into a huge bull market.  I got the upside of sequence-of-returns risk.  The downside risk is that stocks will plummet during your early retirement years, and your regular spending will dig deep into your portfolio.  Happily for me, I got the opposite result.  My family’s spending barely made a dent in the relentless rise of the stock market. However, stock prices have become crazy, particularly in the U.S.  One measure of stock priciness is Robert Shiller’s Cyclically Adjusted Price-Earnings (CAPE) ratio .  In the U.S...
Read more

Archive

Show more