No I did not miss my wedding anniversary. BTW I am way past five years married to the same woman.
Over five years ago in June 2007 Sophisticated Finance was launched. The first post on June 18 is here. A typically short post, with just the barest details. Somethings do not change. Did I stick to the proposed agenda? Maybe, maybe not.
I have written quite alot on strategy, startups and technology. Strategy post are far and away the most popular. In the last two years I have also written quite alot on education and social entrepreneurship. These topics were never anticipated when I started the blog, but social entrepreneurship posts are almost as popular as strategy.
The best device I have found to increase readership is LinkWithin, which probably adds about 30% of daily page views. A good post on Hacker News (no affiliation) can bring 3,000 readers to the blog. Commenting on other blogs also brings alot of readers. Also, I have discovered that I am a natural SEO expert. The number of SF posts that are in the top ten Google search results is much higher than the readership of the blog would suggest. About 40% of viewers come from Google searches.
What would I do differently:
- Use more posts that relate to a single theme and string them together in a week of posts
- Write longer posts where I better show the logic of my thinking
- Ask for more suggested topics from friends (hint: leave your ideas in the comments)
- Do the blog in both Spanish and English
- Discover why there are so few comments (in my opinion) in this blog
To anyone who started with me five years ago, a special thank you, and to everyone else thanks for reading Sophisticated Finance.
Almost forgot--my favorite post--from October 2007. If you enjoy this post, you might want to review this topic archive from SF.