Reasons To Write

A lot of self help, guru-ish content tells people to write everyday. Blog, journal, make lists, whatever you call it but write everyday. If you're not writing, should you be? Well, I don't know whether you should write everyday or once a week or ever but I've been doing it long enough that I can share some observations. 

The first writing I did was back at Schwab in the mid 90's. At that point I was in the middle of a short stint in a trading group for active retail customers. Unsolicited, I just started writing about market mechanics and indicators and distributing it through TOSS which was a precursor to email. I have no idea if anyone read it but I was never discouraged from doing it and it helped me learn more about the subjects I was writing about. I remember writing about the TED Spread, VIX which was a new indicator back then, S&P futures fair value and then-Orange County CA treasurer Bob Citron. 

I did a little more writing at a different stop within Schwab, and just about every aspect of that was identical to the previous paragraph. In 2003 and into 2004 I did some writing for the Motley Fool and then I started my own blog, back at the original randomroger.blogspot.com and long story short while that site is essentially gone, most of that content is available at Seeking Alpha. Back then, there were very few stock market blogs so my site got a lot of media attention, was even deemed to be the top blog by Forbes in late 2004. 

There was a little ad revenue coming in but I never made serious money from blogging despite having some pretty big traffic numbers back then and a lot of reader comments. But I kept on writing. I felt like I was on to something even if I didn't know what the outcome would be. In the summer of 2005 I got what I would call a big break related to writing. I hired on as an outside contributor at TheStreet.com to write articles about ETFs. This gig lasted for eight years and in the context of a secondary income stream, it paid very well, probably close to what a blog that was successfully generating ad revenue.

My blog lead me to many appearances on CNBC Asia, more than I can count, at one point I was on every Sunday night and I also had a few appearance on Fox News.

A couple of years later, Jim Cramer mentioned one of my articles, one about water ETFs, on his show and soon after that I was on CNBC to say that solar stocks were not a bubble, they were a mania and if the whole group went to zero the next day, it would be meaningless for the market. It got to the point where I was being called all the time by CNBC but the novelty wore off for having to drive three hours roundtrip to Phoenix for my appearances. 

Then another big door opened with AdvisorShares, first taking a stab at running an actively managed ETF and then another side gig writing for them and being a secondary face of the firm after the CEO. This came as the Street gig was winding down. 

Then as AdvisorShares wound down, I moved my writing to The Maven which didn't work out the way I'd hoped. There's nothing negative there, my content just never gained any traction there. 

The constant was that I've kept writing throughout even if I write less frequently now. 

The biggest reason to write, IMO, is because it's fun. If it's not enjoyable then I don't know why you'd do it. Maybe one way to ease into could be the list method advocated by James Altucher primarily. 

Beyond being fun, with a long enough time frame, writing is a great way to track your thoughts on many subjects, see how they evolve, see how you grow. To get the most personal reward I think you just need to write whatever you want to write. When people would reach out for advice on how to start blogging, I always included the idea that if you have interesting things to say, people will find you and your content. I'm less confident in that idea now because there are so many blogs, I think the odds of being anonymous are pretty high but that's ok. I've become pretty anonymous with my blogging and I don't care, I enjoy it, it helps me in the ways I mentioned above and occasionally I get to help readers figure some things out. 

Maybe I will have another big writing opportunity again but if I don't, I still have the ability to continue journaling out the various arks I started on in 2004.