Sunday, 3 April 2016

The Value of (The) Boring Investor Blog

Today's post is No. 156, which makes it the 3rd birthday for this weekly blog. Usually, the post at this time of the year is on reflection and also some shameless self-promotion. Regular readers can skip this post without missing much. The topic for this year's post is the value of (The) Boring Investor blog.

The most direct measure of the value of this blog is the amount of advertising revenue received. For 3 years of efforts, the grand total of advertising revenue is... $78.20! This works out to be $26 per year or $0.50 per post! Applying a Price/ Earnings multiple of 12 times, the value of this blog works out to be $312!

There is another way to measure the value of this blog, which is the value that it brings to readers. Besides writing it, I also refer to my own blog from time to time, to remind myself of the actions that I have to take or the rationale for taking certain actions. Generally, the driving force behind this blog is about applicability. It attempts to answer, for example, whether a particular investment is a good one for investors. To this end, this blog has several themes running through it.

Research-based 

To determine whether an investment or a strategy is a good one, sometimes you need a lot of data and research to back it up. For example, do you wonder how the Dogs of Dow strategy would perform in Singapore's context? The answers to this and some other questions are addressed in posts such as the following:

Experience

There are a lot of finance books that talk about how to pick and trade stocks. However, they do not discuss what investment strategy should you choose, or what do you do when the stock market goes into a bear market, etc. This is another area where this blog attempts to fill some of the gaps with posts such as:

Personalised Calculator

Blogs are always static information. Thus, we can only talk about things that apply in general which may not be applicable to every reader. For example, is the UOB One account or the OCBC360 account better? The answer depends on the individual readers' circumstances. One of the things that I found out through experimenting is that it is possible to incorporate Javascript in blogs! With this feature, it is possible to take in individual input and produce output that are personalised to individual readers' circumstances. So far, there are only 2 web calculators on this blog:

If you know of any ideas that can be solved using similar features, please feel free to leave a comment below.

Navigating Unchartered Territories

The world and our own circumstances are constantly evolving and we sometimes enter into uncharted territories. There are no experience to call upon to navigate these unchartered terrorities. For example, we now have negative interest rates that we thought were impossible only a few years ago. In such cases, we can only rely on understanding the facts, analying the second- and third-order implications and come up with an appropriate answer or solution. Some of the posts that address these issues include:

Conclusion

That's all for my once-a-year rumblings. I hope this blog has brought value to all readers. To those who read through this post even though you know that there is no new information, I thank you for being willing to read whatever I write. Thank you. 


See related blog posts:
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10 comments:

  1. Createwealth88884 April 2016 at 07:40


    The value of this hobbyist's blog is NO hidden agenda of selling something or under hidden sponsorship of selling "thing". I have been reading more and more of such hidden agenda when near end of each blog post. Hee Hee!

    Your is good work!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Lee Chin Wai4 April 2016 at 23:03

      Thks for your compliments. I know what you meant; I've seen such posts also :)

      Delete
  2. wk4 April 2016 at 10:00

    Dear Chin Wai,
    Your articles are informative and well written.
    Please continue to share your good work :)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Lee Chin Wai4 April 2016 at 23:04

      Thks for your compliments. Will continue to write :)

      Delete
  3. Sillyinvestor4 April 2016 at 13:53

    Hmm .. BI,

    I never see any ad lei, did u accidentally hide it?

    U missed one very important value of your blog.

    Your assessment of bonds using graham theory. Granted we can do out our calculation, but value in it did a first cut ..

    50 cents per post? Lol... Not bad lei dun even dare to calculate mine.

    I particularly like the experince segment ...
    Happy 3 years old

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Lee Chin Wai4 April 2016 at 23:12

      Hi Sillyinvestor,

      The ads appear on the desktop version of the blog but not on the mobile version. Perhaps this is why you don't see them.

      Thks. Will continue to write.

      Delete
  4. la papillion4 April 2016 at 23:11

    Hi Chin wai,

    Here's wishing you many more blogging years to come! You made a serious mistake though. The 50 cts per post is the price of your article, not the value of it. Even if you multiply by the pe, you get the price of your blog, which again is not reflective of the value. The fact that pple put an ad to your blog means that are expecting the value add of their ad on your blog to be higher than the cost of the ad, which means the value of your blog, though unknown, is going to be higher than the price! Otherwise they won't part with their money haha

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Lee Chin Wai4 April 2016 at 23:18

      Hi La Papillion,

      Thks. That's a good explanation :)

      Delete
  5. Rolf Suey6 April 2016 at 22:20

    Hi Chin Wai,

    I consider myself a sensitive and choosy person in searching for the finest thing for myself. This is no different from blogs, as I am pretty selective and normally only visits blogs/bloggers I like. But the good thing is once I ascertain my liking, it's very hard to discard.

    You and your blog is definitely in my list.

    Congrats on ur 3 year old blog.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Lee Chin Wai6 April 2016 at 23:08

      Hi Rolf,

      Thks. Your blog is also one of the few which I read regularly.

      Delete

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