Bill,

I applaud your continuuing efforts at educating us about the markets. I have one comment regarding video blogs. Perhaps there are those who will find this useful, but for me they usually take so long to listen to. It's always. again for me, so much faster to go through the written version. Perhaps, you could supply both the video and a transcript.

Thanks,

Toby

Gee, I always thought "retirees" had too much time on their hands ;)

On another note, I see that the 10 year yield took a spike today. Perhaps it was due to today's calculaton of M3b rising from 9% to about 9.3% annualized.

Bill -

I think the dividing line between free blog and premium services may not be so difficult to define: most people don't want to be intensively involved with investing. For them, 1 or more blog entries per day, and a solid week-in-review might be involvement enough. Advice would be more general, and longer-term in nature.

For those who DO wish to be more intensively involved in their investments, there should be a motivation to pay for more intensive service.

Perhaps you could poll readers: asking them what they would be prepared to pay for what specific services.

I've never heard of a start-up business doing this, but then I've never come across a start-up business which already had over a hundred thousand involved and grateful users on day one.

You could introduce services one after another, starting with those which (per admittedly imperfect polling) suggested the largest uptake for the least amount of initial business development investment.

Contributed for what it's worth ... Jock

hey bill,

have you explored your options of generating revenue through advertising or affiliate marketing on the site? there might be some sweet irony in having the corrupt system of brokerages and sell-siders subsidize your dissemination of the information that undermines their stranglehold on markets....

i notice trader mike just switched to wordpress on his site. publishing a podcast or vlog is pretty painless using wordpress. if you have any interest in switching this blog over, i would certainly consider my assistance paid for in advance by the education i have received here.

Bill,

I very much agree with Toby's comment above. Making your blog into video transcripts will make them MUCH less useful than a text version.

This is especially true for your kind of blog that typically talks about price levels, specific stocks etc. I for one, often go back and re-read only a small portion of your blog from a few days/hours ago

e.g. Take your SNDK getting to accumulation zone blog entry from a few days back - it would made about a 15-minute video blog item. After a day or two, if one was trying to decide if I wanted to buy SNDK, I'd go back and check exactly what price you said it was a good risk/reward - to find that item again in a video blog would make it so bad I guess I'd typically not try it. Compare that with the few clicks and less than 2 minutes to find exactly that in a text (or with graphics) version of the blog like it is today.

Also, I often download the blog entries and read them when not connected, or save them to my PC for reading/re-reading later - I guess I'd do that much less often with a video blog!!!

I guess Video blogs seem 'cool', and probably good for computer geeks or programmers such as me who'd gain by extra bucks from clients who want them, but for your blogs to be most useful (paid or otherwise), they should very much remain as they are...

Now ofcourse, you may just want to try and imitate some CNBC TV personalities with overly wild visuals, sounds and gimmicks, I guess Video blogs would offer a better format, but I doubt that is where you want your very useful blog to go to - is it?

Thanks,
MSquare

For what it's worth, Barry Ritholtz recently expanded his blog, "The Big Picture," leaning toward macro economics, into a premium service for active traders. He invited feedback re desires, etc. prior to the launch and gave blog readers previews of his new premium site as it was evolving. I would imagine he would be willing to share his experience with a fellow (even if competitive)top-profile blogger.

Bill,

I second (and third) Toby's and MSquare's view on video blogs. Too tedious.....unless you have figured out an ingenious way to search the video archives.

One weekly Webcast I really value is Don Coxe's (BMO Harris Private Banking). However, it's almost an hour long. Eventually, I get to listen to it, most weeks.....however, it's not as convenient as your blog which I read daily religiously.

Just my 2cs.