A few blog related things

Every once in a while I like to take a break from money related topics and discuss something else, and today I’m going to discuss about some blog related things that have been on my mind lately.

Email

I’ll start with the topic of email – a lot of you reply to the daily emails, and that’s not a very good way to ask questions or engage in a discussion because of the heavy volume of email and difficulty in handling them.

I try to respond to most emails but if I didn’t respond to your email the moment I read it – chances are it will get buried in more email and you will never get a response.

I read all the emails so if you don’t expect a response then sending one is fine, but it’s a lot better to post comments if you expect a response because I can look at all comments consolidated in one place from the blog dashboard and reply to them one by one quite easily. So, please leave comments instead of emails as far as possible.

Suggest a topic posts

It normally takes me about two weeks or longer to get to a topic suggested in the suggest a topic page, and I know this is too long a wait in this world of instant gratification.

As things stand today, there’s not much I can do about this – I like to do one post every weekday and write one post in a sitting. Some posts take a lot longer than others, and when I know something will take more than a couple of hours, that usually gets pushed to later.

To be clear, no one till date has complained about this, and I really appreciate that but at the same time I want you to know that it’s on my mind that these posts shouldn’t take so long, and although I don’t have a solution now – something might come up in the future.

Bloggers and advisers interested in getting featured here

There is a very simple way to get featured here, and that’s to leave helpful comments and answer reader’s questions. That’s all you have to do. Please don’t write in to me to get featured here – it will not happen. The only way to get a profile page is if you have left helpful comments on the site. And the reason behind that is there is no other way for me or others to judge the quality of your work. Leaving a few comments on the site easily gives a window on what you’re interested in and whether it will be a good fit with the audience here. If it will be, then I’ll reach out to you and if it doesn’t, then well, it just doesn’t.

Guest Posts

I’m very very reluctant in accepting guest posts because of more or less the same reason. If you just offer to write a post out of the blue – I don’t have any idea of what the post is going to look like and it’s quite difficult to say no if I’ve already invited you to write it. Even if you do send me a link to your blog it’s hard for me to go through it and arrive at a conclusion at what the future post will look like. If we don’t know each other already, it’s unlikely that your guest post will be featured here.

Anonymous Commenters

There are occasional emails from people who want to know if it’s okay to use their blog / company name instead of their real name or comment anonymously, and that’s totally fine. You are free to use whatever you want.

These are a few behind the scenes things that I have to deal with on a daily basis and I wanted to share them with everyone because in my early days of blogging I have felt some of these frustrations myself.

I used to wonder why bloggers reject free guest posts or never bother to respond, but having worked on this for some time gives me a better perspective on some of those decisions, and I hope it gives you a new perspective on some of these things also.

5 thoughts on “A few blog related things”

  1. I have a few topics that I think will be of immediate interest:
    – A primer on DTC (focussing, of course, on the topics relevant in this group)
    – How do I reshuffle my MF portfolio regularly when you are looking at a long-term horizon – looks contradictory
    – Benefits of investing in tax savings FDs given the upper limit of Rs. 1 lac per bank per year Vs liquid MFs of or tax savigns MFs
    – Any software, web tools available to help in the derivatives computations – options in particular
    – What are the key ratios that are important from the balance sheets, profit and loss statement and the cash flow statements. Any website where I can compare companies according to some of these ratios and some commentary

    1. I already have a few posts on DTC and I think they cover a lot of ground already.

      Here are the links:

      http://www.onemint.com/2011/06/20/wealth-tax-under-the-direct-tax-code/
      http://www.onemint.com/2011/07/13/equity-mutual-fund-dividends-will-be-taxed-under-the-direct-tax-code/
      http://www.onemint.com/2011/05/01/dtc-impact-capital-gains-on-sale-of-shares/
      http://www.onemint.com/2011/04/05/elss-mutual-funds-effect-of-dtc-and-current-status/

      I think I should write an overview post which then references these posts – that can be a good idea.

      I don’t have any thoughts on portfolio reshuffling.

      I have a post on FMP and FD comparison here:

      http://www.onemint.com/2011/04/19/fmp-taxation-and-fd-comparison/

      ELSS mutual funds are equity products and are in no way comparable to a tax saving FD because the risk profile is completely different. Doing that comparison is meaningless.

      I’m sure there must be calculators for this but I’m not proficient enough in the Black Scholes model to understand it fully and then explain it. I’ll have to pass this one thought it’s a good topic suggestion.

      Good idea about balance sheet and cash flow statement ratios – I’ll try to do a post on that.

    1. All the best to you too – people who want to start the blog can learn a lot from you and the way you interact with other bloggers – that’s the right way to do it in my opinion. Unfortunately, not many people do it, and I certainly never did that.

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