Comments on: What Fire Finance’s Top 100 PF Blog List Can Teach Us About Investing, Bestsellers and Cheerleaders

By: DR

DR — Thu, 20 Jan 2011 04:03:08 +0000

pf fanatic, the SEO angle is an interesting one. SEO certainly is critical to those pf blogs that generate significant income. For Get Rich Slowly, however, popularity preceded rankings.

By: pf fanatic

pf fanatic — Thu, 20 Jan 2011 03:40:02 +0000

I could hazard a guess that to keep readers, you’ve got to have great content that they can relate to, be inspired or learn from – the blogs that meet those criterias – I subscribe to their RSS feeds. Most of the top blogs that you’ve listed are still top blogs even though you wrote this 3 years ago, the apple cart is still holding firm… so they probably have good content. Although, people do like to flock to ‘popular’ sites and traffic attracts traffic.

Having said that, there is also some programming skills involved with SEO so most of the top bloggers, even if they were to create a new blog with a new alias, they would probably still find themselves in the top 200 again simply because they understand SEO and what their audiences are interested in.

Can’t blame it all on pure random luck.

By: Greg Go / Wise Bread

Greg Go / Wise Bread — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 23:40:43 +0000

re: luck factor

I hate the idea that luck plays a major role in the success of a pf blog (or really, any venture). I hate the idea not because I don’t think luck plays any role in success, but because it’s out of our control. And if our successes (and failures) are largely out of our control, why bother playing the game?

Am I destined to be rich or poor? Famous or forgotten? If destiny holds the final decision, then I might as well just sit here watching TV until destiny figures it out — my guess, however, is that if I’m waiting for destiny to decide, then the outcome is that I will be poor and forgotten.

I prefer to assume that everyone gets a more-or-less equivalent share of luck (ie., totally random opportunities appearing), and that the difference between success and failure is how to choose to “spend” that lucky opportunity.

By: DR

DR — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 21:36:52 +0000

Radford, you make a good point. From an investing perspective, though, it would be very difficult to predict the winners. If you look at the top 10 pf blogs, however measured, their writing styles vary greatly.

By: Radford Emerson Personal Finance

Radford Emerson Personal Finance — Thu, 13 Mar 2008 08:58:35 +0000

A factor that may play into the success of the top blogs, is that the style in which they are written causes readers to connect with the publisher, either allowing them to identify with their lifestyle or personal finance style as being similar to theirs, or motivating them to duplicate their methods and improve their habits. All of this will tend to cause “word of mouth advertising” or I suppose that would be “link advertising” to happen. People will read what they are comfortable with, and they will talk or write about it. Of course this is only dealing with content, all of the other technical site boosters also have to come together to drive traffic to your site. I do think that content is the most important to keep readers, but I suppose that also depends on what your motivation is for publishing a PF blog.

By: DR

DR — Wed, 10 Oct 2007 12:01:56 +0000

If that’s the required combination, I guess you can count me out

By: Shadox

Shadox — Wed, 10 Oct 2007 05:34:03 +0000

Napoleon said: “Give me a lucky general”.

My uncle, may he rest in peace, used to say: “Better to be rich and healthy than sick and poor.”

Personally, I think that being lucky, talented, healthy and rich is a great combination. Get all four and you are virtually assured a place in the top 10 PF blogging list…

By: DR

DR — Mon, 08 Oct 2007 14:42:57 +0000

Jon, you make a good point, and it is a limitation of all index funds. Even in a market weighted S&P 500 fund, when number 501 becomes 500, it gets bought and the former 500 gets sold. I still prefer a market weighted index fund, though, because it better reflects the allocation of capital.

FYI, Jon hails from http://patientinvesting.blogspot.com/ and if you’ve never visited his blog, you should. I particularly enjoy the “dontclickit” link in the right sidebar.

By: Jon

Jon — Mon, 08 Oct 2007 14:13:15 +0000

Sometimes equal-weight funds may be a better investment choice. Consider this point: In a fund weighted by market cap, as stock price goes up the fund buys more, then as it goes down it sells — buy high and sell low! In an equal-weight fund, you buy more when the price goes down and sell when it goes up.

Sometimes that would be a bad idea, like when there are many, many risky companies (VTSMX). But in something like the S&P500 or DJIA, where pretty much all the companies are fairly solid, it’s an attractive proposition.

By: DR

DR — Sun, 07 Oct 2007 23:31:51 +0000

I wonder if they could replicate their success with a new blog. My point here is not that successful blogging is all about luck. The top 10 have worked extremely hard to achieve what they have. And they have found ways to connect with many readers. But so much more must come together to achieve such success, and timing is critical. Trying to repeat that same success today given the number of PF blogs would present a formidable challenge.