'Round Midnight: These Things I Want To Do

And something else.......an important announcement I want you to hear regarding very powerful improvements coming to this site.......soon..... very soon. For example.......

1) Message Boards ---- Finally..... a way to exchange profitable ideas about the markets directly with other readers, and directly with me...... Alchemy TradeTalk Message Boards.

I've had many requests for them, so Ok, I've listened to you and they're coming.

Yes, and the Boards are a place where I'll be spending time during the trading week -- and a few hours on the weekend as well -- talking shop with you.....about Trade Set-Ups, about the Most Attractive Sectors, about Making Money and keeping it.

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2) Real-Time Trade Alerts ---And something else you asked for...... a "Heads Up" as my trades are placed. Well, I'll be adding Real-Time Trade Alerts to the site as well, giving you the details immediately after the trade goes through, providing you the opprortunitybility to act and -- hopefully -- profit from my moves.

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3) Additional goodies I'll tell you about in the next couple days

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4) All The Other Features From This Site will also continue, including this nightly Charts Of Interest the Live Intraday Stream of Posts With Charts, and Sunday's Notes From The Trading Turret, but with one change.....

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....Your Membership to a brand new, shiny and sparkling Alchemy Real-Time Site with all the benefits described above will be available for what I think is a nominal and fair Monthly Fee of $23.95.

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So, that's where I'm going, and hope that you decide to come along with me in these things I want to do.

But also be aware that I'll continue to make a good bit of information available on a delayed basis, so you won't be shut off.

I'll have more to tell you in the coming days and I'll see you here tomorrow before the Opening as usual.

Stephen

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Comments

[murf the surf]

$23.95?

Sorry, but I'm looking around and I still don't see any blue light flashing or whirling around....

Hmm...

Nope, don't see a smiley face, either.........

[Joseph Alexander]

I like your blog. It's one of the more thoughtful stock blogs around, and I read them all. Charging for it is a fair move, but I urge you to give your faithful readers a free 7 day trial so they can see how it unfolds. In general, $23.95 ain't that cheap.

[Babak]

$24/month...so that's $288/year... for a closet money market fund?

Hmm... I'll have to think about that one.

[manofghoti]

Ouch. I'm sorry to hear that I won't be able to check out this site anymore with the new fee. Seems like it will be a site for funds and such only. Too bad. Ever think of advertising banners? You don't seem like an individual that is hard up for money, but I guess I'm mistaken. Hope it goes well for you. Thanks for the cool site while it lasted.

[trader jim]

Excellent blog, poor idea. If there is one thing that is a certainty on the internet, it is that people won't pay for access to a site no matter how good. There are just too many other places in which to turn for good information or services.

[Prem]

I like your style of trading and looking forward to your new site. Best of luck in your new venture.

[CHRIS]

Its a great idea, lately there have been to many "yahoo like" posts on this board,and the fee should keep some of that out, at $23.95 its a bargain...no price is to much for valuable information. Its about time!

[One Way Stox]

I pay that much for Briefing!! You should enroll in a Google Adsense program if you want to cash in on your blog.

Either that or...have you ever thought about banding together with Trader Mike, GalaTime, Maoxian, Kirk, & Ugly, etc.?? www.blogstreet.com ? I might think about paying a dime/month on that.

[Erich]

Holy crap! (yelling to the other commenters). Not that Steven needs anyone to come to his defense, but I have to respond to a couple of points...

You don't seem like an individual that is hard up for money, but I guess I'm mistaken.
What a cheap, ridiculous shot.

If there is one thing that is a certainty on the internet, it is that people won't pay for access to a site no matter how good
What? Ever heard of the WSJ Online? The Street.com? (all jokes aside, they're still alive) Briefing.com?

You should enroll in a Google Adsense program if you want to cash in on your blog
I doubt that the revenue from Adsense (see the little boxes to the left?) barely even pays for his Typepad subscription.

To be honest, I'm not sure if I'm moving to the real-time site at $23.95/month, but I certainly can't blame him for trying.

[ray]

I will come to his defense also, as I am a bit surpised at the reaction from many of the readers above. You dont' find this type of analysis just anywhere. He also provides some of the guts of research he subscribes to, and also tidbits from successful hedge funds managers.
I honestly will think hard about subscribing. I may substitute a sub to this site rather than to Cramer's RM site which I am currently subscribing to, as I have warmed up to Steven's style of trading.
Ray

[ray]

Steven-will it be strictly a monthly rate, or will there be a discounted annual rate? Secondly-it will be helpful if you provide a complete list of what you are offering-this will be very helpful to future subscribers.
Lastly-someone commented on you managing a money market fund-hey, some fund mgrs wish they could be in cash during these times. Plus, if it works, don't bash it.

Ray

[homie]

This is an interesting and useful site, but honestly $24/mo puts you in the same ballpark with major online publishers. In a sense your content is fresher and more tradeable, but it is also pretty limited. I also wonder if you might not run into problems with your research providers, as they no doubt have policies against their content being distributed.

The other changes strike me as fixing what ain't broke. Message boards? Go to ET. Alerts? Do you really want to ape The Greatest Fade of All Time?

Personally, I say keep the site exactly as it is and charge less. Good luck in any case.

[TraderMike.net]

I'm not at all surprised at the reaction from readers. It's tough to get people to pay for content online, which is why I have ads on my site. They can bring in a decent amount of money if you have a good level of traffic. I'm going to make just over $1,000 from the ads on my site for August.

Stephen, have you considered providing some free & some premium content? Maybe the nightly recaps could be free & the live stuff for subs only???

As for One Way Stock's comment -- a dime/month??? Damn, if my (our) content is so worthless why are you visiting the sites? I really wish I could block your IP address so you could never visit my site again...

[Jon Tait]

It will be interesting to see how this works out. There are so many good reasons for both sides of the argument here. For example, filtering out the yahoo messageboard type of posts. The IBD forums are a shining example of how the coin filter improves post quality significantly. If Stephen is turning his site into a community, then moving to a pay structure provides this advantage as someone else already pointed out.

Unfortunately I don't use any subscription services. I don't want to give away somebody's pay content for free on my own trading blog by accident. I tried using subscription services for a while, but it was way too much trouble to keep track of which ideas came from pay sites and which came from blogs or free sites that I could link to in my writing. So now its just the free stuff for me.

If this is the end of Stephen's free content, then I'll miss his witty writing and wild stories, but I wish him good fortune in his new endeavors. Stephen, you're a gifted individual and I want to thank you for building this great blog over the past year or so.

[Graeme Simpson]

Congrats Stephen on a great blog. And good luck with the new style blog!

[Will]

Steven, people such as yourself and TraderMike are gifted in these fields, fascinating and at times for very challenging.

I have surely appreciated what I've been able to see newly and differently thanks to blogs such as yours these recent months. My appreciation is yours.

Beyond doubt you have thought this move through at length. Please do lay out whatever specifics you can, including annual fees (just a Luddite so abhoring monthly nicks to the plastic), including how what content is to be distributed, etc.

Good health and good fortune wherever this leads you!

Thx.

Will

[Andy Le]

Your website is good, but it isn't that good for me to pay 24 bucks a month for.

[Declan Fallon]

I am surprised with the venom of some of the posters - its probably a good sign as to how many people regularly visit the site and find it useful, but are now in the position of been unable to access it, or having to pay for it. Text ads have their use but you do need very high traffic to make them cost effective (Stephen has the traffic no doubt but I don't know what his returns are). The more blogs which come online using the same advertising affiliate programs, the more dilution you will get on click revenue given everyone will be running the same ads (of course, if advertisers bid the clicks higher it may not impact so much on the bottom line but in my experience the revenues have been disappointing - but as Trader Mike stated earlier this is not the case for everyone).

As for fee charging - I would keep enough of your information free so people can get an idea of your style and success rate. Where possible I would keep as much of what you are doing intact, and try and add services which people can pay for. You don't want to alienate your core readership by blacking out everyone.

As anyone who runs a blog will testify it takes a large chunk of time and effort to run and maintain a site. Just because you see a paragraph of text and 2 or 3 charts does not mean it was rustled up in 5 minutes. There is the time spent running scans, selecting stocks, looking at performance, see whats causing the price reaction, overall market conditions, upcoming economic annoucements etc etc. If people want this information for free they need to visit those advertisers featured on the site and buy their products. Simply stopping buy, taking the information you need and leaving is not an incentive to provide the information at no cost. If you make money from Stephen's picks (or any financial blog for that matter) it should be considered good form to tip for service. It is considered the norm to tip wait staff 15-20% for good service, but it looks like not a penny should be spent if someone helps you make $100s/$1000s on a stock trade.

Yes, there are plenty of blogs providing financial information at no cost, but how long can they expected to keep on doing this if there is no financial incentive to do so? Yes, many make good money from their operation and use the blog as a trade diary. But if a service is provided no matter who makes the money (do you not tip wait staff because the restaurant chain makes $x million a year) is it that odd for some form of payment to be made in exchange?

The key to all this is knowing at what price people are willing to pay. It looks like $23.95 remains unpopular, but fewer people paying more will be eaiser to manage than more paying less!

Good luck and best wishes,
Declan

[ray]

Stephen-I seem to remember that you also posted on Saturday's in the past-was it called "Saturday at the Market" with a picture of a NYC fruitstand?? Any chance of that coming back?

[Rob]

It will be interesting to see how well this works. In one of the comments I have saw that you have had this blog for about a year. Perhaps that is long enough to gain a following that is willing to pay a monthly fee.

Probably a little more pressure to have stock ideas that are successful.

The other comment I saw that is good advice, is to offer a free trial. I have seen that on some other subscription sites (like SSHGuru), and it seems to work.

Good luck from a fellow stock blogger!

Rob