One of the advantages of running this blog is that it brings (what used to be) unexpected and useful insights into the habits of the investment and business population. Today I explain just one of them but before we get to the punchline, a little background is needed in order that you see things the way they are. So here comes the story, point by point, as seen from these backrooms.
1) Cam Hui, over at his blog Humble Student of the Market, ran this piece entitled “Have we seen this golden movie before” on Friday and at the end of his post, put in a link to this IKN post of yore. Before we go on, be clear that your humble scribe has no problem or issue whatsoever with Cam Hui; in fact quite the contrary, he’s one of the best financial bloggers out there.
2) As a result IKN picked up quite a few hits from his blog, which is normal (plenty of people read his blog).
3) But then, as Cam Hui is syndicated over there, his post was picked up and run by Seeking Alpha thus gaining the eyeballs of a new and much wider audience. Here’s the SA post (it’s the same as the original) and as you’ll see if you (can be bothered to) go over and look, the IKN link is still part of the gig.
4) So suddenly come Saturday morning, your author gets a whole bunch of click-thru visitors from Sinking Alpha. Which is where Google Adsense comes in. Now I run Adsense on this blog and have done so from basically day one because it provides a little (i.e. about U$5/day on average) extra income, pays the household bills, things like that. I know the vast majority of you ignore them but you’ll get the occasional clicker and therefore a few pennies of revenue. All good, no problems. Thing is, what you notice over time is that when a link comes through from one of the high traffic websites such as Sinking Alpha, a high proportion of those that arrive will see and click on an Ad they find here. This brings a few extra dollars in clicks that day (which is fine but not life-changing) but it was a puzzle for a while, until it dawned on this humble scribe what was happening; these dudes are the ones who click on the bullshit ads. You know the ones, the Casey Research bullshit teasers or the Wealth Daily bullshit teasers or the “Gold To Reach $5k By Friday Morning Here’s What You Need To Know” pumps from gawd knows who running a scam from Slovenia.
5) I know that most adverts aren’t like that and there are some that are even quite useful (hence Adsense stays and is welcome), but I also know that the ads placed against old posts such as the one Cam Hui linked to tend to be the cheapo fillers, the ones that are designed to tempt the market fools, the parasites in waiting for their next victim paying a few pennies instead of a few dimes for placements. Hence the influx of clicks on ads this weekend.
6) Conclusion drawn: The Seeking Alpha readership are a bunch of mouthbreathers. They’re the ones who’ll read anything, believe anything, click on anything, send money to anyone in return for the latest incarnation of PT Barnum’s American Dream. It’s no coincidence that the ad revenue at IKN is as steady as it is, because its regular but niche audience is also numerically level and steady, day in week out. But the percentage of readers to advert clickers shoots sky high when a lesss sophisticated bunch of market sheep turn up and that’s exactly what you get from the Seeking Alpha faithful.