Financial Dreck

If you’re interested in why many of the blogs you read have some strange and useless posts, the following query I received about my blog might enlighten you:
“How much would it be for an article placement with a do-follow link to a leading finance/forex site in the main content area of a new article, taking into account the 3 points below:
  • We will get the content written. The content will be of excellent quality and will fit the topic/nature of your site.
  • The article is not marked as sponsored and will stay on the site permanently even if it rolls over into the archives.
  • We will pay you via Paypal once the article is live.”
The sender wants to place an ad on my blog disguised as an actual article. I wouldn’t have to write anything and I get to name a price. The purpose of the placed article would be to improve the target site’s Google PageRank (that’s what the “do-follow” means) and to steer traffic to the site. Another condition is that I cannot alert my readers that the article is “sponsored,” which seems like lying to me.

I find the promise that the “content” will be of “excellent quality” amusing. People who think of articles as “content” are similar to the people in the book-publishing business who think of books as white bricks. I’m quite confident that the article would be grammatically correct and written well enough that my readers would have to waste some time figuring out that the article was drivel.

I won’t say I don’t have a price because that’s obviously not true. A million dollars would certainly do it. Fortunately for the quality of my blog, the amount I’d be willing to accept is orders of magnitude higher than the amount they’re willing to pay.

Another minor reason this stuff is easy for me to ignore is that I’ve had nothing but trouble with Paypal. Every time I try to pay for something they block the payment until I re-verify my account in some new way. I still have a few hundred dollars in a PayPal account that I can only spend in payments of less than $70 at a time.

So, if I won’t take sponsored articles, why do I write this blog? It’s not exactly altruism. I do like helping people, but I also like a chance to express my opinions. The main thing that I’ve got out of this blog is that I now know how to invest my money for very low cost in terms of both dollars and time. Through a combination of my efforts and useful feedback from readers I now know how to pay rock-bottom fees and don’t have to pay much attention to my investments.

Comments

  1. Big Cajun Man (aw)January 18, 2016 at 8:55 AM

    So what you are saying your price is somewhere between free and $1Million? I have often wondered if RonDonBobRonDon actually worked for one of these "noted financial web sites".

    Why would I hand the keys of my business over to someone I have never met? Is the normal answer I give (when I answer these folks).

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Michael JamesJanuary 18, 2016 at 9:12 AM

      @Big Cajun Man: I guess the answer to your question is "for (enough) money".

      Delete
  2. My Own AdvisorJanuary 21, 2016 at 6:35 AM

    Stick to what you believe in Michael, absolutely nothing wrong with that.

    ReplyDelete
  3. HabsFanJanuary 21, 2016 at 11:15 AM

    For a million dollars, I'd forgive you.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Michael JamesJanuary 21, 2016 at 11:21 AM

      @Unknown: Good one. Maybe we can split the money if it ever appears.

      Delete

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

Updated Currency Exchange Method at BMO InvestorLine

There is now a more recent update of the method I use for exchanging currency at BMO OnvestorLine . I recently changed the procedure I use to convert large sums between Canadian and U.S. dollars at BMO InvestorLine. The method I use saves a lot of money compared to using the InvestorLine foreign exchange system. The latest change I made eliminated an annoying interest charge that I had to ask to be reversed. Most people don’t realize how expensive it can be to exchange currency. The extra charge banks and brokerages add gets hidden in the exchange rate. To see this extra charge, start by taking a sum in Canadian dollars, say C$10,000, and finding out how many U.S. dollars you can get. Then see what this U.S. amount would get going back to Canadian dollars. Many people might guess they’d get their original C$10,000 back, but they’d be wrong. In a recent test I did at BMO InvestorLine, I’d get back C$9754, for a loss of C$246 in two currency exchanges. That’s $123 per excha...
Read more

Archive

Show more