I wrote to Jimbob some questions mosly about the change of his site from a hobby site to a pay site: "What prompted the change? A little discussion of history and your motivation for the site would be interesting and even maybe help to gain subscribers. What's the need that it fills that isn't available on IH or TMF, for example, and that's worth $1.95/mo? Is the fee just to filter out the noise posters? Do you plan to make money from the site, gain new insight, glory, fame, what? What's your background that qualifies you as guru? What relationship does Myst have with the site?
Not getting on your case about this - but I do think that once you start charging, these questions gain new legitimacy."
To which Jimbob replied "I will respond to your questions in full later this evening... Why is this information important to YOU?"
Well, some self-interest, a tad of impatience, but mostly curiosity. Clearly the $1.95/mo price isn't, in absolute terms, much of a concern. The price is high on a comparative basis, however, where many sites such as IH are free, and TMF has much more content, and a free trial period, for about the same price ($30/yr vs. $23.40/yr). For-profit sites (like realmoney.com or Morningstar) average about $20/mo I believe. It puzzles me why you put the barrier of pay-for-service in the way of enrollment, when you don't appear to have any motivation other than maybe covering your costs. I can't imagine that you can make any profit at that price, when you have to involve Paypal on a monthly basis to collect your fee. So, I can't think of a good reason for an individual to pick that price point - which makes me a bit cautious.
One goal of the hobby site was to make some tests of X_DEV, to provide an independent evaluation of some X_DEV plays. This seems to have been dropped, and replaced by a simple endorsement of X_DEV. Now, I'm not ragging on the program - I bought it - but the main source of info about X_DEV remains Myst's site. I know how that goes... I've designed plenty of computing tools in the past which I thought were terrific but which noone else could use (or at least to the same level of proficiency as me).
It's disappointing to see the X_DEV testing dropped. If I were to test, I'd need to test in a realistic way that removes the retrospective bias in Myst's examples. I have some ideas - anyone else?
I've only been at this investing lark for about 9 months now, and much of that I spent figuring out what I wanted to do with my 403b(7) money. So far, my main problem has been filtering the abundance of information and opinion to find what's important. I'm curious about the circumstances of your site, and about it's likely future direction, and I'm reluctant to hang around your developing site to get a feel for its direction.
Hope this helps - best regards Tim
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