 |
| Credit: www.goodfirms.co |
Besides a refresh, one change will be that we wish to make it a paid members only blog.
We intend to charge as following:
Monthly: USD 5 per month (one time or recurring option to pay every month shall be made available)
Quarterly payment: USD 12 per quarter (20% discount from monthly payment option).
Semi annual payment: USD 22.5 per 6 month period (25% discount from monthly payment option)
Annual payment: USD 40 per 12 month period (33.33% discount from monthly payment option)
We could also incorporate USD 1.00 to read 1 blog post if you tell us that this option should also be provided.
These changes have become necessary to be introduced due to the high demand on time being made by the unexpected popularity of the blog.
We want to make this blog accessible to everyone possible but at the same time cannot continue it without having a payment option.
We wish to keep the amount affordable as well as accessible to the vast majority.
We wish to keep the amount affordable as well as accessible to the vast majority.
All posts may be read unlimited times during the duration of the plan chosen from one IP address only (which means one location only, password sharing between multiple readers from different locations will not be allowed).
You have seen our work over the last 10 months since June 2018 (when we reactivated this blog) on what kind of world class research and unique perspectives you shall be able to receive here.
We aim to increase the frequency of the posts as well.
Since the blog has become popular in almost every country (except not as much in Latin America and China, as of now), we were given this idea to make it a paid website by several of our well wishers.
We aim to increase the frequency of the posts as well.
Since the blog has become popular in almost every country (except not as much in Latin America and China, as of now), we were given this idea to make it a paid website by several of our well wishers.
We hope that you would subscribe to this paid feature and allow us to provide you an ad free and a honest perspective on the world of business, finance, investments intersected with shape shifting geo-political trends that are and shall impact the lives of each one of us in this world.
We help you break the things down in a very layman like language instead of jargon used by investment professionals (which is like a code language between themselves) and barely makes any sense to a normal person who has the money and needs to figure out what is going on in the world of investments, finance and the wider economy.
And how it could impact you personally or how to take advantage from the new themes or stay away from others.
And how it could impact you personally or how to take advantage from the new themes or stay away from others.
We "connect the dots" and make a valid and cogent argument with facts and news that are not easily available.
We also reply on a personalized basis to every question or comment on our blog which is what makes it interesting from the reader's perspective and they can ask whatever question that applies to them personally.
Hopefully, we will also be able to add an email notification option whenever a reply is published by us.
In particular, we would like to hear what online payment option is more popular in your country or which service you may have an active online payment account with to make it easy for you?
We will make Paypal available but aside from that, we wish to have at least 2 more options available in order to cater to our wide and global audience.
We are aware that some countries may not have Paypal too.
We will make Paypal available but aside from that, we wish to have at least 2 more options available in order to cater to our wide and global audience.
We are aware that some countries may not have Paypal too.
If you want us to add any news links on the side bars related to business, finance, banking, stocks or investment news, please let us now.
Every idea will be considered in the redesigning of the new site which should be launched within the next several weeks.
A big thank you, as always, for your kind support and your valuable readership including everyone who have taken the time to write to us or donated to us in the past.
We are extremely grateful to each and everyone of you who are our loyal readers.
Please feel free to leave your comments below, we hope to hear from you and welcome your thoughts and ideas and we thank you in advance.
I would prefer the site was ad supported rather than charging for it. I expect you'd make more money that way too.
ReplyDeleteTo draw people to the website send only a short extract in the email so people need to click through to the main site, with the ads
Dear Mike,
DeleteMany thanks for being a loyal reader and for taking the time to provide feedback.
We have tried ads in the last year but have been unsuccessful.
In case you didn't know, people hate online ads and use pop up blockers, less used browsers to avoid ads and are all ready to click that pop up even before it opens. There are several apps and tools available to completely block all ads.
This a good summary why even websites are stopping display of ads. And this is from 2017. Things have become much worse since then. There are plenty more articles online proving what we are suggesting below.
https://www.groundup.org.za/article/why-were-dropping-google-ads/
If you observe, lately, all major media sites have become paid sites like Washington Post, Bloomberg, FT, WSJ, Economist etc. They were all free until a few years ago. Others like CNN and BBC are free just because they have massive TV presence else they too would be paid sites. Reuters gets paid millions by subscribers in the financial industry so they can afford to have some news available online for free.
Firstly, most people don't like poor quality ads, second there is lack of time with each of us, thirdly, there is so much junk ads of casinos, forex, scam artists and people have been scammed so many times that they have had enough and majority refuse to click and many whom we know refuse to even go online. Some of our friends only check our site and not much else online.
You will not know this because we delete all ads on our site, but we get at least 1-2 ads in our comments section every single day (sometimes people post 10 ads in a day) and we promptly delete them all. This tells us that various web metrics are telling others from Australia to USA to ME to India to EU and everywhere that our blog is very high in rankings despite we not having done any marketing online or paying anyone to promote our site.
Online ads only pay when someone actually buys something which is not happening anywhere. People buy only what they need and with the sheer volume of ads, what we need, we never see it online and the chances are shrinking due to the volume of ads.
Sites like us get paid when someone will eventually buy. Not just by clicks any more.
The buy rate has been close to zero. We had 2 people buy and we made a grand sum of 98 cents last year! :)
However, we have seen an unexpected popularity of our blog and therefore, we believe it is in the interest of our readers, followers, clients and prospective clients and friends to have some revenue in order to continue this endeavor.
The time required by this blog has grown tremendously that started as a passion project for a few of our clients.
I personally was a member of zerohedge from inception in 2009 and used to be active and contribute there but ever since they started ads about 5 years ago, me and many others who know each other from that site stopped even visiting there, never mind reading and commenting. Now zerohedge is a trashy site with ads all over rehashing main stream news (to generate clicks) filled with anti semitic and hateful trolls. Having a discussion or learning anything is simply impossible now, all thanks to the focus on ads.
2/2...
DeleteAnother thing, I forgot to mention that with many ads, the site becomes clunky and slow to load.
We really want our readers to have a wonderful, effortless, smooth and peaceful experience when they come here so they can spend as much time as they want reading what they want because we have quite a few link feeds on both the side bars as well, that makes it a time saver for whoever visits here. We don't get paid for any of those links, as a disclosure.
We want to make this site a must visit destination for anything related to finance, investments, banking or geo political news.
Just to let you know that we have thousands of readers who visit 10 to 200 or more times a week, so the demand is high from our perspective and it has been consistently rising.
We have also been advised to charge USD 120 per annum for all as a fixed price but we don't believe that this may be the best approach as of now in order to meet our aim to share information as widely as possible.
We want to disseminate our knowledge and lengthy posts that provide a very unique perspective to whoever takes hours to read a single post that it can influence them and could possibly reshape their previously held opinions or simply make them aware of the reality.
We wish to debate, discuss and engage and keep it at the lowest price point possible and mostly ad free.
We hope that some large financial company may advertise here in the future because of the kind of people who read this blog and the number of readers of this blog, but that's a dream as of now. Then we could possibly make the blog free for our readers.
But the time constraints are taking it's toll and hence, the aim to make it a members only blog.
We already have several people who have endorsed us for annual and semi annual subscriptions and we are pleasantly surprised and very grateful to all of them.
Please do note that ads don't make money at all for us and for almost all bloggers as well.
We have some very eclectic readers with whom we have discussed and they dislike ads as much as us.
We also believe that ads are annoying and cheapen the look and feel of a site and we do not wish to be seen as promoting random products.
We believe based on our own research that online ads are actually choking the internet which is why many top sites don't use ads and high quality sites are typically members only.
We hope this helps clarify our position.
Thank you and best wishes,
In today world everybody wants things for free on the Internet. But what is quality when you have thousands of articles and blogs circulating on the internet?
ReplyDeleteI respect the authors time and effort going in to writing these blogs, doing research on topics, answering questions in details and managing the website.
I'm ready to pay for it.
S.A.
Dear S.A.
DeleteMany thanks for being a loyal reader and a supporter of this blog.
Sincerely appreciate your feedback and very kind of you to have recommended and agreed to pay for our knowledge sharing services.
We aim to keep it ad free and only member contributions can sustain this blog in the long term.
Will welcome any ideas that you may have to change the look and feel or add any new sources that could make it more useful for you personally. i.e. any specific news site that you follow etc?
Very pleased to hear from you and much appreciate your support.
Thank you and best wishes,
I do not understand half the things you talk about finance. Having lived in the UAE for many many years I like what you write in your blog. In fact came across it by around 3 months back and love it totally. Although I do not live in the UAE anymore I am still attached to the country. Will definitely pay to read the content you post.
ReplyDeleteHello,
DeleteMany thanks for visiting and for reading the blog regularly.
Yes, I understand, the blog is very heavy with lot of links. Unfortunately, to convince everyone we need to provide a lot of facts and evidence.
In order to provide a full perspective and full force of our argument, it's important that we do so.
If you glance through a few of our comments but just click on all the links and read the links alone, we believe you will find out news that is not published anywhere in any media widely or discussed by bankers or advisers or available easily at all.
We specialize in "connecting the dots" which almost no media provides because all media provides is past data and some opinions which are always "politically correct" due to their dependency on advertising revenues or because of the political views or compulsions of their owners.
We are neither supported by any political persons nor have advertising revenues so that is what keeps us honest, to the point and allows us to break news that is unavailable elsewhere.
That is what makes us unique and worth a read.
We believe that everyone including you have a connection to money which is why it is important to learn to decipher things and read the links and then make your own judgement.
We try our level best to keep it interesting, factual, a bit amusing plus provide lot of links and write in a layman language that is easy to understand.
Financial jargon is what makes people stop reading news because 99% of people don't know how to understand financial words but they do have hard earned money and look for opportunities or ways to protect themselves form the ongoing global changes.
We thank you for reading and for visiting and really appreciate your positive feedback that you will subscribe to the new blog once it's up and running, hopefully soon. It encourages us to keep writing and glad that you read and like our views.
Thank you and best wishes,
I think to support a paid site you need to provide actionable, quantifiable value to readers and investors which many times this does.
ReplyDeleteUnfortunately I think many of the things you talk about might be based on real-world conditions and facts, but with nothing concrete backing them up as they may be obfuscated by certain powers that be. I would guess people who subscribe would generally agree with your views and thoughts which removes an important part of forming those views such as intelligent debate and different viewpoints. Not saying that your views are wrong, but that quality of content is improved by people commenting and challenging those views, if its paid then I doubt you'll see that as much anymore. I really enjoy the comments as much as the content, with a paid site the comment section would likely become more one-sided...
Hello,
DeleteThank you for visiting and for your feedback which is most appreciated.
You have a point but all major media like FT, WSJ, Bloomberg, Economist, Washington Post, NYT and many others like Strafor are all paid.
We believe we offer our very unique perspectives over and above than what any of the ones named above offer because several of them have been in touch with us.
Our experience and expertise comes from being in private banking for over 20 years where we cater to the top end clients who appreciate our advice and opinions. Most people do not have a clue what research top most banks offer their advisers, bankers or clients. We have access to all that.
We add value on top of that research to separate the wheat from the chaff which is a skill honed over such a long period.
We are proud to be supported by all our clients and expect them to pay for our perspectives that help them immensely and save them a lot of time and provides value.
Believe me, people lose lot of money or make lot of money based on our opinions. That is where the rubber meets the road. Comments of people are irrelevant to us because we are very unique in our thinking and approach (Our motto says it all- Independent Thinking - Extraordinary Growth). Our clients performance of their portfolios is our indicator on how we are doing.
We listen to everyone including news, research, market events etc but we make our own independent decisions based on our unique skill set to judge the difference between opinions of everyone and what can make money for our clients.
We are confident that all those who appreciate it will certainly pay.
We truly hope that we will not have one sided comments because our information is quite challenging, thought provoking, ahead of it's time, unique and makes people think and we believe we are usually years ahead of anybody out there.
Thank you sincerely and best wishes,
Can you follow aaj model. Certain articles free for every month. After that you have to pay to keep reading.
ReplyDeleteWSJ i mean. Damn autocorrect.
ReplyDeleteDear Gourav,
DeleteMany thanks for visiting and for your comment.
FT and WSJ ask for all paid while Bloomberg offers a few free articles that basically finish on the first day of the month.
All of them offer data points and some opinions, however, we offer research, commentary and news along with our perspective that is very hard to find and saves a lot of time for the people who appreciate it.
We may consider your suggestion. Let us see.
Thank you and best wishes,
I recently came to know about this website and liking the content & replies, but not sure will go for the paid service. You can be like Wikipedia, Ask for Donation or something when you need most, all those who want to pay will do so needfully.
ReplyDeleteHello,
DeleteThank you for visiting and your feedback.
It is well noted and appreciated and shall be taken into consideration.
We don't expect everyone to agree with us and everyone to pay because the target audience of this blog is very different and rare.
Thank you and best wishes.
Please do it paid and increase the number of articles posted. This way comment section won't have rubish comments by haters and article frequency will increase.. I visit your site daily to check for articles or new comments posted by you, as they are an article by itself. When are you expecting to shift to a paid model and please integrate paypal payment method.
ReplyDeleteHello dear,
DeleteMany thanks for your valuable comment and appreciate you following the posts so closely.
Happy to hear that you find the information and perhaps the news links as well useful.
Appreciate your support for the paid site.
The frequency of the articles will certainly increase subsequently.
The new site is under work. Didn't realize it is so tech oriented with tiny hiccups and so slow to progress. We should have it ready within a week or two, could target 1 May onwards hopefully.
Paypal will be mandatory, we are trying to get as many types of payment options as can be available because we have a very wide global audience from about 15 major countries with high number of readers and at least 30 more countries but those are not in such high numbers.
Thank you again and best wishes.