SBI: Updates for September

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It’s been three or four months since my last update on SBI blogging. Since then a lot has changed, and not much.

Site #1: PCB

Traffic is growing now, in some ways dramatically. In crude stats terms:

Pages: we have now 101 pages of content on the site vs. about 75 pages in May. So content has accelerated. We’re now taking a break from content, but for a good reason.

image

Traffic is now approaching about 9~10K pageviews a month. In fairness, Analytics reports numbers much lower than this, but they also show month-on-month growth. And Analytics is quite restrictive in how it counts visitors.

Also, I added Adsense in May and that generated a minimal amount. This month looks like it means that the website paid for its hosting this month, the first to do so.

The challenge very much is to increase backlinks: through more Ezine Articles, some of which are doing well; directory submissions, I’ve already had some help; and tidying up the content/structure/images. There’s quite a lot to do even though I’m not adding any content.

My frustrations revolve around the Dreamhost Server which has been acting up all month. I’m still not sure what caused the dramatic jumps in server activity, but I’ve split up some sites, blocked a lot of Chinese spiders on several sites, and am now looking at what went wrong.

It seems that with using my server as a kind of hotimage linking for some of my other sites, and an adserver that it may be too much for the server to handle along with thousands of requests from Sogou, Baidu, etc.

Site #2: SST and Site #3: TCG

Site #2 is now back on. I’ve started adding a page a week to this site, more later on what’s going on with it. Site #3 is also up, though at the moment, I’m just lightly repurposing and redirecting content from my blogs to this site. Still, it bodes well.

Both of the other sites are showing similar levels of traffic to PCB in the early days, though I’m not sure how big any of them will be. So I’m focusing on just adding one page a week until I have a better time arrangement in the new year!

It may be that in 2011, both InvestorBlogger and Obblogatory Blogs will cease new posts, I’m undecided about this at the moment, but I’m increasingly skeptical that blogging content is hanging around longer than a few weeks.

Anyway, more soon, I hope.

Worries: it’s a craiglist/facebook world!

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Some of my readers might worry about why I’m telling you about our London trip just now… nearly a month after it happened!

In short, when people know you’re travelling … it’s an open invitation to trouble while you’re away. So we are trying to exercise a little caution about this by not publicising our trip any more.

Lack of ‘freshness’ or ‘it just happened’ Twitter like updates are a small price to pay for this … but I’d rather come back to a house that’s intact to one that’s been sold on Craigslist or Robbed by those using geolocation tools on Facebook (Facebook Places!).

So there!

New Front Page for SST

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Successful Stock Trade

Ask readers some stock related questions… get their juices stimulated?

Have you lost 50% of your portfolio in the recent market gyrations?

Have you traded in and out of stocks with no clear goals or directions?

Are you facing personal finance troubles?

Your Financial Journey Begins…

This site started out as a personal journey on another website, a journey for me that began in 1995. What happened you may ask? One of life’s turning points: my marriage. For many people, the onset of marriage, the birth of a child, the prospect of retirement or redundancy, all act to focus the mind on one’s personal finances.

While I take you through the steps to successful stock trading, I will encourage, describe and examine the basic steps in light of my own personal experience. However, each of your own situations may be quite different from mine, and the story of how you arrived at your current place also different. As you correspond with me, I’ll try to offer my own insights, too.

Start at the very beginning

For those interested in stock trading, it’s a risky field, but one thing is certain: everyone needs proper foundations. By building up your foundations before you start investing, you will lay the the concrete for a stronger and much more satisfying experience in the stock market.

So let’s take a look at the basic steps to successful stock trading.

Order, order!

Step 1: put your financial house in order

In the excitement to invest or trade stocks, many investors risk losing (and do lose) their shirts because what starts out as a gamble on a hot tip often means that person’s savings have gone down the tube, or perhaps even their next mortgage payment or more.

So putting your finances in good stead, though the least exciting part of the journey to successful stock trades, is in fact the most important.

You will learn the basics of how to budget, why to pay down high interest loans, the risks of borrowing. More than this, you will gain an insight into the laying of your foundations. You will also find out how and why you should set aside some real savings in the bank, even before you make your first successful trade.

This blog doesn’t aim to be a personal finance blog, so we won’t necessarily delve as deeply into this area as could be done. You’ll be pointed to other resources for that.

Ready, set, … wait!

Step 2: We will find out about the stockmarket, what trading is, the ways to trade stocks, which brokers are best, and which are suitable for successful stock trading.

We’ll also look briefly at the different markets you can invest in: stocks, bonds, commodities, options, and much more.

 

 

 

Step 3: We’ll look at what kind of risk profile and rewards you are looking for by taking part in the stockmarket.

Are you looking for early retirement, saving for a house, your child’s education or you just want to be ‘rich’… Whichever of these is your situation, we may have some suggestions that you could look at.

 

Step 5: We’ll also be having a look at some stock portfolios that you could trade. Although I won’t be suggesting particular trades, we’ll look at some strategies and ways of organizing your port

What qualifications do I bring to this whole affair? None. I’m a teacher who fell into business, started working on website development and reading about the stock market in depth. I’ve traded stocks through the dot com boom era, earning a decent return before losing it all in the bust that followed. I’ve clawed my way back with some effort to a portfolio that is currently worth around 50% of the dotcom boom period, but with a monthly dividend, and about 10% in cash at the moment.