What Next For SeekingAlpha?

Barry Ritholtz touched off a firestorm in his comments last night with a post wondering aloud whether he should continue to syndicate his content via the site SeekingAlpha, a the blog finance portal. The tone of his post suggested that he sees little value in the arrangement, and he ticked off a number of ways that he loses out on the proposition. Of course, Barry is kind of the Instapundit (deservedly so) of the financial blogosphere, so his situation is different than your run-of-the-mill fin blogger.

He's not the first we've seen though to publicly object to the system, whereby bloggers hand over their content for some more exposure, perhaps some traffic, and also a shot to get their writing up on  Yahoo! Finance, which is pretty cool. Controlled Greed, another well-regarded and highly intelligent site, announced the same thing last December, that the value wasn't there.

I'll note here that articles from The 'Wart are from time to time syndicated there, though it's sort of rare, given the direction this site has gone over the years. Basically, I don't write as much about stocks as much as I used to, or would like to.

Now, I think what David Jackson and crew have done over at SeekingAlpha is pretty impressive. In some respects, it's more sophisticated than Yahoo! Finance itself, and I think the site's ongoing investment in transcribing conference calls is a brilliant move. I don't know how the business looks on the backend, but from a strategic point of view that was huge. It's also done a good job of building a community of amateur investors, which explains the popularity of its message boards.

However, I think the site has some issues to work out going forward. Surviving on "donated" content is fine if the donors think they're getting enough in return. Some obviously don't, but I'm sure many do. Do I? I can't say for sure. I have no intention of pulling my stuff from the site, cause I don't see much upside in doing that. But, if I were honest, I don't think I get a whole lot of exposure or attention from my presence there. One thing I've noticed -- and this must frustrate a lot of people -- is that when posts get cited, they're frequently cited as "An interesting post over at SeekingAlpha..." In other words, the individual blogger often doesn't get the credit in the final count. And since credit is about the only thing that SeekingAlpha can offer to contributing writers, this is a real problem. Part of the problem is that people are just lazy. Another problem is that success is a self-defeating, for as a user's site gets more and more attention, it makes less and less sense to syndicate elsewhere. Where the site makes the most sense is for small, un-read sites.

Though I'll note it's interesting that some very big sites do show up there, like TechCrunch (occasionally) and TechTraderDaily --- always been surprised that they agreed to the deal.

I suspect that these are issues the company thinks a lot about and are wrestling. I'm certain there's room for a focal point for the burgeoning financial blogosphere. The Techosphere has a couple, though I think Techmeme is pretty clearly the big one. Of course, the two sites have the exact opposite model. One is all about taking in all the content, while the other is just a collection of links. One is curated by a computer, while the other features hand-selected posts.

They key will be in figuring out a real way to compensate contributors. If not necessarily through money (and I don't think that'd work, because if anything, I suspect a lot of contributors would just feel insulted when their monthly check of $10.50 came in), then through serious traffic or exposure -- something more than what they're getting now. Otherwise, I suspect that over the long term, more bloggers will being to feel as Barry is, that there's not much value in diluting the brand, when instead they could keep all the attention, and attendant community on their own site.

Comments

[Mike Masnick]

Heh. I just got hit up by an as-yet-unlaunched site that's got the same model. It asked me to be the "Tech Stock" blogger, but offered *nothing* in return other than exposure. But from an unlaunched site? The email was hilarious in hyping up how wonderful the exposure would be... but in this case, it was even worse. It wouldn't repurpose content I'd already created. It wanted me to write up special posts for the site.

[Joe]

Yeah, I've seen a bunch of those. I think SeekingAlpha has probably done the best job of this, as it legitimately has a community and really impressive traffic. And I think that exposure can be key, especially for unknown bloggers, but it has to really deliver. Just knowing that your stuff is being read somewhere is nice, but if you're not really getting any tangible recognition for it, it's frustrating.

[Barry Ritholtz]

What Seeking Alpha has created is impressive. I only listed my problems with the way my content was treated, and what I recieved in exchange for it. I'm not sure it really works --- or ever worked -- for me.

Several bloggers emailed me privately to say that they thought the SA business model was completely inequitable. I cannot say I disagree . . .

[David]

Good post, Joseph.

Speaking from the point-of-view of a occassional SA contributer (a point we share in common), I think you are very fair in your estimate of the situation.

As you mentioned, Barry's is the latest in a series of posts that have provided some food for thought on this topic.

Along with posts at Controlled Greed, No Doodahs, Abnormal Returns, and these latest, I think I've read five such posts in the last few weeks.

[Joe]

Thanks David.
Yes, the point I'd hope to get across is this: SeekingAlpha isn't some parasite stealing content. They've built up a legitimate community through totally transparent means. But for it to be sustainable, it needs to find a more concrete way of giving back -- otherwise more folks will opt out over time. Even if there's nothing to be gained from opting out, the perception of not getting much in return will cause people to pull their stuff. And if you get someone like Techmeme in the finance/biz space, where they're organizing blog posts, but linking back a lot, then watch out.

[David]

Hmm, I will have to check out the Techmeme site and see how they do things.

That would be something to look forward to, as I think most bloggers would sooner look forward to a reasonable amount of link-through traffic (or the prospect of gaining a few new repeat visitors/readers) than receiving small checks from rather lopsided ad network schemes, as you mentioned.

[Dividend Growth Investor]

I like submitting articles to SeekingAlpha twice to three times a week. I get pretty good exposure to readers that might not have found my blog otherwise. I do agree that changing content, once it is on SeekingAlpha could be an issue for some bloggers. I had to change something once, and SA fixed the issue when they received my e-mail.(it was my mistake, not theirs that I had to change something).
Honestly, if they shared some of their revenues from advertising with their bloggers that would be great; I doubt that I would be getting a ton of money though out of this ( $10/month forever sounds appealing though)

[Jay (market folly)]

Joe, excellent stuff here. I'm just grappling over the SA business model myself here and went digging through everyone's old posts.

This says it all: "when posts get cited, they're frequently cited as "An interesting post over at SeekingAlpha..." In other words, the individual blogger often doesn't get the credit in the final count. And since credit is about the only thing that SeekingAlpha can offer to contributing writers, this is a real problem ... as a user's site gets more and more attention, it makes less and less sense to syndicate elsewhere. Where the site makes the most sense is for small, un-read sites."

Completely agree with this and I've found less and less appeal in contributing there lately. Back over a year ago when the whole Ritholtz argument went down, Dave Jackson said they were evaluating other options. Yet, a year later... still nothing.

Would love to talk to you more about this topic if you could drop me an email: marketfolly@gmail.com

Hopefully you see this comment even though its from an older post. Thanks

Jay