Comments on: Seeking Alpha, Again

By: Mark D.

Mark D. — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 15:19:37 +0000

We just pulled our content from SA. Very few click thrus and our google rank was slipping.

Pull the plug.

By: O. Lima

O. Lima — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 15:04:06 +0000

I’ve been writing professionally since 1994. If an established magazine/newspaper asked me to write for free I’d tell the editor her was out of his mind. I contribute to Huffington Post on occasion… when it moves me. When i do contribute the comments usually run above 200. Then they email me and ask me to contribute more often. I know they’re getting paid. I don’t see a dime. I have tracked the click throughs from my HP bio page to my site and they amount to a hill of beans. Also my site is about DJ culture not politics so most of the HP readers are not interested when they do click through. The one thing no one is talking about is time. If you take your writing seriously it takes time to construct these blog posts. It’s not some 1-off, 5 minute scenario. The time you could have been spending doing any other endevor that generates revenue you’ve spent working for free. Even working at McDonald’s pays better than that. The problem is the celebrities who can’t write and the rookies who can’t write. They will continue to work for free either because they don’t need the cash or they want the exposure. That puts the pros in a tough position. But I’m with you. I’m not writing for free. I’ve already paid my dues. Hopefully other writers will follow suit and force these sites to change their policies.

By: David Neubert

David Neubert — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 13:58:54 +0000

We at ThePanelist came to a very similar conclusion. For a small site like ours the duplication of content hurt our SEO so much that the traffic we got from SeekingAlpha was not worth it. We also found that they were changing our links to point to SeekingAlpha instead of our site.

By: Bill

Bill — Sat, 29 Mar 2008 06:32:22 +0000

Rumors last week that SA was going to be bought out soon; possibly fueled by (or fueling) the many posts about blog valuation and business models that have been made in March.

I don’t know if the editors own any stake in the company; while it’s possible that a few of the more famous contributors might own a small stake - since there were different standards applied to different bloggers - I consider that unlikely. So when - not if, but when - SA is sold - and it will be, but I don’t speculate as to the timeframe - basically none of the content providers will receive remuneration from the sale.

Of course, they got their exposure!

Speaking of which, when SA does get sold, why the hell would whoever bought them start paying the bloggers? Why would they bother to hire a writer who is stupid enough to hand over valuable content for free?

By: M. Bella

M. Bella — Sat, 29 Mar 2008 06:15:06 +0000

You should take a look at FinancialContent.com which lets you syndicate your links across our network of financial channels. The premise is simple: Your links show up on the stock quote pages, and you get traffic when users click on your links. No money changes hands.