is somewhere between $2.8 million and $55.5 million. I’ll get to the math in a minute.
I originally allowed SeekingAlpha to repost my content because I didn’t see any harm in it. Countless headaches later (SA changing the title of my posts, introducing errors into the posts, getting branded as a SA author rather than World Beta) made me grow weary of the relationship. The fact the relationship is totally one-sided (the author receives no compensation for his IP) is a major problem.
However the worst feature of the site was that it has become a noise machine. 185,000 articles have been published on SeekingAlpha from over 3,000 writers (this includes an astonishing 5,500 articles in the past 30 days). Long time readers know this is the direct opposite model I believe in for investing success. Exactly how many of these 200 articles a day are useful for investors? Obviously it makes sense for SA as they get to crank out as much content as possible that then gets reblasted everywhere like Yahoo Finance. After all, if you remember my old post The #1 Key to Investment Blogging is quantity not quality if your goal is traffic.
Anyways, SeekingAlpha gets all their content for free. I think this is a severely broken business model ala Digg (stay tuned here for developments). I asked SeekingAlpha to quit reposting my articles this past December to which they complied. I then asked them to take down my old articles to which they refused. I have a friendly relationship with the founders, and while we had a heated and charged discussion it was always respectful. Their only offer was to make my stream anonymous which of course makes no sense.
I wanted to do the math to ballpark exactly the value of the articles they have reposted. Here is a nice article on Demand Media and the basement fees they pay their authors – $15 per article. On the other end of the spectrum established authors receive around $300 per piece and up (we have a standing offer that would pay North of this).
185,000 x $15 = $2.8mm
185,000 x $300 = $55.5mm
That means they receive somewhere between $80,000 and $1.7 million in free content per month.
The value of the 238 odd posts they republished of mine is likewise valued at somewhere around $72,000 at current market rates. I brought this up and said fellas the least you could do, after getting all of this content for free, is respect the wishes of the author.
Hopefully the world moves away from the bubble-vision, noise-machine, churning, high fees, Google Ads world to something much more useful.
Maybe sooner than you think.
SeekingAlpha has been complete garbage at least since the front-page redesign if not longer.
Amen, have long thought about leaving myself. Keep us posted on if they comply to your wishes. I don't recall ever signing any contracts with them, so they should respect your decisions.
If I were an enterprising attorney, I might solicit those whom had requested their content be removed, and file a class action suit. I think it would get things resolved quickly for the authors and profitably for myself.
Interesting article (and the link to your older post).
I havent been reading SeekingAlpha for a while and was still under the impression you could find good articles. It seems it's much harder now and that wont push me to try and write for them (was planning to do this to “grow” my blog readership)
I did hear of another blogger/writer there having similar arguments to yours with SeekingAlpha so it might be the start of a trend…
Jez
You hinted at a bigger vision regarding trends in the industry, Digg, etc.. As a financial publisher I would really like to hear more about your thoughts on where you think this is going and what the cure would look like. I too have been frustrated by the quantity vs. quality issue and share your sentiments.
Personally, I like Seeking Alpha's site very much so perhaps I am biased. But while I understand your frustration, it seems to me you are being unfair in saying that you received no benefits from being on Seeking Alpha. The exposure alone is quite valuable, wouldn't you say? How many of your loyal readers would never have heard of you if not for Seeking Alpha? In fact, one could argue that the reason your content is now able to secure such a high price with Demand Media is because of the name recognition Seeking Alpha has brought you. I'm not trying to say you don't have any rights to grumble, but there are two sides to every story and we're only hearing yours. By the way, why do you care so much about having your old content on the site removed?
Something like < 2% of my traffic ever came from SA. Maybe less.
The <2% of traffic from SA is right in line with what it was about three years ago, when I surveyed a few contributors I knew. It’s also in line with clickthru rates on advertisements, wouldn’t you know. So when Jez Liberty speaks of “growing” his traffic through SA “exposure,” I laugh, because I know that it won’t grow his traffic.
That’s when she told me a story/
‘Bout free milk and cow/
Jez, it’s a trend – an OLD one. Over the last three years plus, many prominent and not-so-prominent bloggers “removed themselves” from the SA fold. To my knowledge, only ONE of them – actually, the first that I’m aware of to PUBLICLY split from SA – got his old posts taken down. The ones that followed were pretty much stuck with the deal Meb got, i.e., don’t let the door hit you, we’re keeping your content for the Google-juice it gives us.
There IS a very small segment where this “deal” makes sense, and that’s if the contributor is pushing an item for sale on their blog that has reasonably high hit ratios and very high profit margins. Then and only then does it make sense economically to contribute to SA. For any other type of blogger, it’s an economic loser, the equivalent of “slave labor.”
Meb, I once did a calculation of the value of blogger content at SA by using their charged advertisement rates and their traffic, and subdividing the total income, minus overhead estimates, of course, by the number of posts per month. Then you would have a “per post” value that you could potentially use in a class-action lawsuit with the other posters that have ceased contributing but have their old content held hostage. Might be worth doing again – but I ain’t doing it.
Mebane, you came to the same conclusion as I did, albeit somewhat later in the game. I used to let them republish Information Arbitrage and, yes, was irked at the changed headlines, etc. But what really annoyed me was their refusal to implement an open comment system such as Disqus. The reason I blog is to get ideas out there and to promote conversation. What was happening was that there were two distinct conversations going on, one over at SA and one on the native IA site, and they never merged. Further, I found the SA comments to frequently be hostile, ill-founded and intellectually bankrupt. The issue isn't whether a commenter agrees with me; it's whether or not they have a well-thought out argument for why I'm full of sh&t. Most SA comments were short, idiotic and reactionary, basically not the audience I was seeking to reach.
I also agree with your position on economics. It is truly insane. I personally didn't care about that aspect of the relationship, but their insistence of maintaining a proprietary hold over both the content and the comments made it a deal-breaker for me.
Cheers, Roger
Audience. That's the problem. I was pitching our quant graphics way of looking at the market to SAI/Business Insider yesterday. It became crystal clear that their audience and SA's and other popular financial websites just isn't really interested in 'niche' content. Ditto for their advertisers. After all, the “the internet is about fun” as Mark Cuban said back in his pre-BCST days. And it still is. And where's the fun in betas and Sortinos and Greeks? In sum, if you want an 'audience' prepare to deliver the lowest common denominator and not get paid for it.
I posted my contents on examiner.com. The space is less crowded and the writer drop-off rate is higher. Pay is poor, of course, but it does generate good traffic.
Agree with yourself and many of the posters below that SeekingAlpha has gone from a daily read a couple of years ago, to a a site i no longer visit because the average quality of the article is so poor.
However it is worth mentioning that SeekingAlpha was the way I (and many others) first became acquainted with the writings of Mebane Faber (including the quant approach to TAA paper). I'd wager a lot of those who've downloaded your excellent TAA paper and bought your book also found you via Seeking Alpha.
I'd imagine you've probably got reasonably good exposure and reputational value for the $72K worth of content you posted. It's just a lot harder to compute than the Google Ads value of what you left behind.
Agree with yourself and many of the posters below that SeekingAlpha has gone from a daily read a couple of years ago, to a a site i no longer visit because the average quality of the article is so poor.
However it is worth mentioning that SeekingAlpha was the way I (and many others) first became acquainted with the writings of Mebane Faber (including the quant approach to TAA paper). I'd wager a lot of those who've downloaded your excellent TAA paper and bought your book also found you via Seeking Alpha.
I'd imagine you've probably got reasonably good exposure and reputational value for the $72K worth of content you posted. It's just a lot harder to compute than the Google Ads value of what you left behind.