On this joyous day (iBC’s 4th birthday), I will share some of the details of my beginning into the disgusting world of blogging.
Before FlyonWallStreet, I used to mess around with political commentary and news. I was naive to the world and thought the republican party was God’s private club. It just so happens, the republicans are fucktards, just like the democrats.
Moving on.
I had moderate success doing it, even landing a top story headline on Drudge. My commentary once became the centerpiece of Michael Savage’s monologue and during the 2004 Presidential elections my web traffic was double of what iBankCoin gets on a daily basis.
The only problem: it was interfering with my business of managing money. I was so caught up in the bullshit, my business suffered. Well, by most standards, my business was great. But I knew it could do better.
So one day I decided to quit blogging. That was that. My wife was happy and so were my friends. Nothing is more annoying than some ideologue sharing “political wisdom.”
About a year later, I had an itch to start a new site. A fellow coworker of mine was a fairly successful financial website operator and it got my wheels turning. If I blogged about stocks, my productivity wouldn’t suffer and I could write again, something that was ingrained in my genes (I am related to a world famous writer, who happens to be dead now).
It was settled. I was going to launch another website and talk shit to the world.
My first site was idiotic. I designed it myself and I didn’t know anything about web design or programming. Aside from Jeremy the IT guy, no one knows about my first financial site. I posted my picks and linked to some news. There was no real commentary, aside from Briefing.com style notes.
At the time, Jim Cramer was a huge hit with Mad Money. It was a new type of show and everyone was sucking his dick. So, I started a blog that summarized Jim’s picks and commentary. Needless to say, within a few short months, it took off. Then, I launched FOWS blog with my business partner. The idea behind the site was to copy and paste our instant messages to one another, as we traded.
This platform was met with moderate interest from people who wanted to read the true, unvarnished, thoughts of real Wall Street money managers. The only problem with that idea was my partner. He was a fucking lunatic and didn’t want to “waste time” posting bullshit on some “stupid fucking blog.” Shortly after he quit the blog, I broke up our partnership.
Okay, so the Cramer site was still running and people loved it. The FOWS blog was all but dead. However, I knew it would be revamped soon, allowing me to discuss stocks and write. How did I know this? Well, I knew Cramer’s people would freak the fuck out one day and demand that I stop writing about him. I was not only right; I was exactly right.
His lawyers sent me a cease and desist letter, demanding that I stop posting Jim’s shit. I posted a copy of the email to the site and informed my readers I was shutting it down, but would continue blogging at FOWS.
Surprisingly, about 75% of my Cramer readers made the switch and I was off to a running start, garnering about 500 page views per day. Now we do 50-60,000.
The rapid success of FOWS is a whole ‘nother story. I will talk about it next year, on iBC’s 5th birthday.
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