The Writers Coin

Last week I decided to publish a story on Wisebread called Why ETFs Suck. I knew the title was a little edgy, but that’s what I was going for. The whole point of writing the article was to say one thing: most everyday people don’t need this financial instrument despite all the hype that’s out there about them.

Index funds are still the better way to go.

Well, the article got flamed in the comments. People said they were going to unsubscribe from Wisebread because of my post, and they questioned what the hell I knew about anything. Among the highlights in the comments:

• Undereducated
• Bad logic
• Sensationalist and misinformed
• Bizarre
• Inaccurate and misleading
• What the heck?

It was not a good day for me. This had never happened to me before and it felt awful. It’s one thing to have people flame you when you think they’re just complaining for stupid reasons—but some of the points they were making about ETFs were right. I had failed to research the topic thoroughly enough before saying that ETFs sucked.

Turns out Vanguard (which I use to buy my index funds) sells commission-free ETFs with expense ratios that are just as cheap (and sometimes cheaper) than the comparable index fund. This was one of my main points.

I Was Wrong

Once I realized I was wrong, I had two choices:

1. Move on and forget about it
2. Try to fix the damage I’d done

I felt a real urgency to go with #2 because I knew that my article could’ve given a new investor some bad/incomplete information. So I apologized in the comments and wrote a follow up article called Top 5 ETF Tips.

In it, I discussed the ways investors could make ETFs work for them despite the issues I have with them. The idea being that there definitely is a place for ETFs in the investor’s portfolio.

As soon as the article went up, I felt a lot better. I added a note to the old article (right at the top) explaining what had happened and crossed my fingers. I expected to get flamed again for flip flopping so quickly.

I Was Wrong Again

The reaction was phenomenal:

• You’ve redeemed yourself
• Your humility is to be admired
• Should be proud of your humility

Now I felt MUCH better. People weren’t upset that I “flip flopped.” They were impressed that someone would admit their mistake, try their best to correct it, and do it as “publicly” as I did.

The Lesson

Go with your gut. Seriously—no problem is unfix-able. There is always something you can do to address a mistake you’ve made in the past. When you write a lot of stuff that a lot of people read (which is an awesome feeling, by the way), you’re going to mess up and write something that isn’t 100% right.

That’s OK as long as you have a plan for admitting it and correcting it after it happens. I didn’t have a plan, but my gut told me I had done something wrong and needed to redeem myself. I tried my best and after that it was easy to move on.

The Lesson Part II

The fact that I’d never been flamed like this in 3+ years of blogging is kind of embarassing. I means I’ve been playing it safe for a long time. It means I haven’t been pushing the envelope enough.

This is a bad thing. I need to do a better job of pushing the limits and pushing people buttons in the future. Not because I think it’ll help with traffic, but because that’s how I am in the real world so I need to bring that into my writing a little more.

Have you ever had to publicly admit a mistake? What about trying your best to correct something you did wrong?

There are a few hard-coded rules in the world of blogging that you’ve probably heard over and over. Among them:

• Create content people want
• Comment on other blogs to get the word out
• Guest post on other blogs to get more exposure
• Don’t overwhelm your audience with ads: you could alienate them

I’m good with the first three, but I also believe the first one kicks the last one’s ass.

If you own a site with content people really want, it doesn’t matter how many ads you put up or how many hoops you ask your readers to go through to get to it.

If the content is good enough, they’ll do whatever it takes—I speak from experience.

Case in point: The Baseball Cube.

I’m a huge baseball fan, and a few years ago I stumbled onto The Baseball Cube, a site that devotes itself to compiling baseball stats for every player in baseball.

Nothing special, right? Wrong. The Cube compiles minor-league data, college-ball stats, and even international league numbers for any player you can think of.

Alfonso Soriano’s numbers in Japan before he played in the minors with the Yankees? Gott’em.

Hideo Nomo’s Japan stats before he came to the US? Check. (FYI: he won 18 games in ’92)

The site even collects salary data, coaching data, scouting data, etc. Anything you could possibly think of that’s related to the game of baseball is all in one convenient place. To stat nerds like myself, this is the kind of stuff we drool over.

Although some would say “convenient” is a stretch.

When I found the site I couldn’t believe it: it wasn’t ESPN or Yahoo Sports who put it together, it was some guy with a website and an idea. I started posting about it everywhere until I got a nasty response because I was linking to a site that was “way too ad heavy.”

Which is true, The Baseball Cube has TONS of ads. Sometimes you get one of those “He married her!?” ads that are so annoying and force you to wait five seconds before taking you to your page.

It’s not only ad heavy, it’s ad-centric.

And you know what? I don’t give a crap.

Good for Gary, the guy behind the site. After all the hard work he did to get all this data together, he should make some money off it.

I’ll still keep going every time I want to find out more about a player, regardless of the army of ads on his site.

He’s hosting the information I want and can’t get anywhere else. Baseball Reference has a much “cleaner” look but I don’t like it as much. And no amount of ads or crazy interstitials will keep me from hitting the site when I want the information I want.

When you think about it: that’s the secret to any business, blogging included: create stuff other people desperately want.

If it’s good enough, they’ll show up no matter what.

Click here to read my interview with Gary, the man behind The Baseball Cube. Also check out this post about advertising and trust first got me thinking about this subject, so I figured I’d share it.

Here’s the deal: Brazen Careerist, a career site that some of my posts have been featured on, is running a Best Blog Posts of 2009 contest.

Among a whole set of awesome writers, I’ve been nominated! Which is pretty cool—but now I need your help to win. I’ve never won anything before for my blogging, so this is all new to me!

Voting goes down on Twitter and you have to include some very specific hashtags to do it:

• The #Brazen hashtag
• The #BestOf
• http://bit.ly/E64Lq: This is the link to my post that was nominated

So let’s say you wanted to vote for me—this is what the tweet would look like:

If you want to just copy and paste it into Twitter, here you go:

I’m voting for @thewriterscoin in the #Brazen Careerist #BestOf 2009 contest: http://bit.ly/E64Lq

About My Post

The post that got me nominated, Why We Want Money, describes different unconscious reasons that cause us to yearn for money. A lot of time, it’s simply a case of relativity. Either way, if you’re interested, make sure to check out the full post.

And then you can vote with a clean conscience!

What’s In it for You

If I win, I get a $150 Amazon Gift Card and the title of Brazen’s Blogger of the Year. If you vote for me, you’ll be put into a raffle for one of three $20 Starbucks cards so you can get your coffee on.

Please vote and tell your friends! I’ve never even been close to winning something like this for my blogging so I’m very excited!

About three years ago, I was reading up on high-yield savings accounts and somehow wound up on a post on The Simple Dollar. I thought it was well written, informative, and had some charm to it.

Who’s in charge here?, I wondered.

I spent the next hour and a half digging through all the fantastic content on Trent’s site. From making his own bread to saving money by re-using ziplock bags, Trent’s charm and personality has become an everyday source of entertainment and inspiration.

A week or so later it dawned on me: I want to do this too. Without Trent and his site,  I never would’ve even known it was possible to write about money and have thousands of readers at the same time.

He rocked my world.

Along Came JD

As I read everything I could on Trent’s site, one name kept coming up over and over again: JD. Commenters dropped his name like I should know who he was, but I didn’t.

Eventually I figured out he was the guy behind the “other” massive personal-finance site: Get Rich Slowly. You’d think I’d be done with reading about personal finance, but I spent another huge chunk of time reading JD’s posts on buying a car and being addicted to comics.

JD’s site taught me that anything’s possible—no matter how bad things might seem, you can always turn your life around.

When JD and Trent both quit their regular jobs to blog about money full time, the possibilities were endless. If they could do that, why couldn’t the rest of us find a way to do the same in our own unique way?

His post on The Third Stage of personal finance let me know it was OK to move past the basics and go deeper into more advanced/interesting subjects.

Ramit Busts the Door Open

The third site that I group into this triumvirate of elite personal-finance sites is Ramit’s IWillTeachYouToBeRich.

Ramit doesn’t mess around—he tells it like it is. If you’re making stupid mistakes, he’ll let you know about it. If you’re focusing on the wrong things to achieve your goals, he’ll give you an earful.

Ramit is a master of speaking the truth and rallying your emotions and spur you to action. His refreshing honesty also is at the opposite end of the spectrum of a site like TSD.

While Trent focuses on the little things we can all do to become more frugal, Ramit is after the big wins. I’m somewhere in the middle, but Ramit’ site is valuable because there isn’t anyone else quite like him.

So Many More

I’ve had so much help and inspiration from other bloggers, I can’t even front.

• Frugal Dad has helped me in so many ways, including hooking me up with Wisebread to become a writer for them.
• Lazy Man and Money motivated me and helped me a ton when I was trying to get my site off the ground.
• Brip Blap and I have gone back and forth on the ultimate purpose of even having a blog. Plus his post on making six figures was awesome.

The Importance of Giving

We all know that giving is rewarding and important. But it doesn’t have to mean giving a check or even giving your time to a charity. Helping others by inspiring them and lending them your experience and expertise is just as valuable.

I know firsthand thanks to all the help these and other bloggers have given me. They each bring something unique and different to the table and hopefully I too bring something to the table.

What sites/people/books have influenced you in your own endeavors?