How to apologize correctly, Seeking Alpha edition

I don't really know why I'm still on Seeking Alpha's mailing list as a contributor, as I stopped using that website as an outlet many but many moons ago and have also made it quite plain to the SA people that I've zero interest in being part of their world in the present or future, but on their list I am. This means I get all the dist list mails they send out to real contributors, including one today that was really quite breathtaking in its arrogance. Here it is pasted out in full:

Dear Otto,

We thank you for your article contributions. We have recently changed our procedure for all authors and now require photo IDs for identification purposes.

Please submit a photo ID along with an updated phone number and postal address. Kindly e-mail this information to contributors@seekingalpha.com so we can continue to post your articles on the site. To make this process as efficient as possible, please include a link to your SA profile in your e-mail.

Thank you,
Contributor Development Team

When I read this, it was "thank gawd I haven't cared about them for a long while", because if this is how they speak to and value their current content-makers I'd hate to think how they treat people like me who've slagged them off on more than one occasion. Seriously, it's like "give us your photo and personal records and documents or you can't play with us any longer" and a very large case of WTF from Otto. And I thought this until a second mail arrived, signed by head honcho Eli Hoffmann. Here it is in full:

Dear Contributor,

Earlier this afternoon, our Contributor Development department sent out an email that I was not made aware of, and that I feel the need to apologize for and explain.

At Seeking Alpha, we have always, and will continue to embrace contributors' right to anonymity. We do require, for our internal records, contributors' real names and contact information.

In a few cases - particularly contributors without established blogs or online personas - we have nothing more than contributors' word as to their true identity. Hence, we have discussed initiating a policy that would require some form of substantive verification that a contributor is who he says he is - potentially via photo ID. This was only a discussion, however, and had not and has not been finalized. Also, it would obviously not apply to authors that participate in the Premium Partnership Program (we already have their banking details); authors with whom we have an established relationship; and authors who have an established online persona using their real identity.

Furthermore, the email was abrupt bordering on rude; failed to clearly explain what we were asking for and why; and made it sound as if we were making a 'my-way-or-the-highway' ultimatum.

I apologize sincerely for both the email's tone and content.

For those of you who have already complied with the request, rest assured that we will treat your personal information with the utmost discretion and security.

Seeking Alpha shares confidential contributor information with no one, and will never - short of a court order -  publicize contributors' contact information or anonymous contributors' identities.

Once again, please accept my sincere apologies for the misstep.

Sincerely,

Eli Hoffmann
Editor-in-Chief

So it's fair to say that even though I disagree with their business model and Seeking Alpha isn't my thing, Eli Hoffmann is a good person. It takes integrity and honesty to stand up just a couple of hours later and say "we goofed, I'm sorry" like that. Kudos to you, Eli, you can take me off your distribution lists now if you like.

A Seeking Alpha management implosion over the $10/1000 views stupidity?

Unofficial word has it (and it's a tweet from zerohedge which is an unofficial as it gets) that Boaz Berkowitz, the guy that just happens to be Seeking Alpha's Director of Contributor Relations, has been "let go" (why does the image of a large black boot making contact with someone's nether regions spring to ming every time i see that oh-so simple phrasal verb?) by the website. Your author mailed Berkowitz to find out whether this was true and got an auto-response by way of reply 3 seconds later (out of office, limited access to mail), for what it's worth.

Strange that such a rumour does the rounds the same time that Seeking Alpha's contributor relations people come up with a cockamamey plan to turn financial bloggers into their ticket to publishing riches and the same moment that its staff send crass and arrogant mails to potential subscribers, innit?

UPDATE: Interesting. When told of the Zerohedge tweet, Boaz wrote back to your author with "Really?  Can you send me the link?  Thanks." I'm doing that right now, so watch this space.

UPDATE 2: So apparently Berkowitz is in fact planning to leave SA soon, but for personal reasons. He has definitely not "been let go", as in the zerohedge tweet.

So Michal Slawny of Seeking Alpha got back to me today....

...and sent me this. I really think it's best that I don't reply to her directly because...well, see for youself as I've highlighted her killer sentence in red:

Hi Otto,
You can always choose which articles you'd like to submit as exclusive content and which ones you'd like to submit as non-exclusive. If you submit your articles as non-exclusive you can post the articles on your site immediately and if you submit them as exclusive, you'll know within approx. 6-8 hours whether they've been accepted or declined. If they've been declined you're welcome to run the full piece on your blog. If they're accepted as premium articles than you can post an up to a 250 word excerpt with a link back to the full article on Seeking Alpha.
Please don't hesitate to contact me should you have further questions.

Best, Michal

--------

Ms. Michal Slawny

Contributor Relations Manager

Seeking Alpha

Oh well, that's nice of them, isn't it? If I join their scheme and allow them full and exclusive publishing rights to my work (emphasis on MY) and they don't like what I've written, SA will graciously allow me to publish the reject guff on this grotty little corner of cyberspace. I mean, it's not like I'm actually grovelling after them begging and pleading to get on their pay-peanuts-get-monkeys plan, these people are coming after me and my stuff that they read on this blog (which may well be an error of judgement on their part, but that's the way it is). Seriously, WTF is this? I give up my independence and get the stunning chance to grow somebody else's already overrated and bloated website for ten freakin' bucks per 1000 views and they come at me like they're doing me a favour?

So here's an official IKN policy statement: If Seeking Alpha wants to vacuum up all the independent bizbloggers out there in the world of the interwebpipes and pay them a pittance to grow their empire they can kiss my hairy fat ass. I'll bet dollars to donuts that the only ones interested in this one-way-street of a scheme are the mediocrity and as a result, their already quality-challenged product gets watered down even further.

Seeking Alpha offers ten bucks for IKN posts

I gave up contributing to Seeking Alpha many moons ago, basically because if this whole blogging thing was going to work or fail I much prefer that it works or fails for me alone. At the time I thought that if it turns out to be a waste of time, the people at Seeking Alpha lose nothing for my failure but on the other hand, if it turns out that my random brainspewings get popular, all the content shipped out to them would benefit them far more than me. You dilute yourself, you lower the bluesky potential.

There was also the thing about how Seeking Alpha didn't pay for third party content. For one thing, I come from a place that says "if it's good enough to sell it's good enough to pay for" and seeing my articles on SA with their adverts stuck next to them stuck in my craw after a while. For another, writing "for exposure" is all well and good and the bigger audience may lead to something, but as the old journalistic saying goes "you can die of exposure". If I want to write for free on my own little humble corner of cyberspace, well that's my decision. But if somebody else likes my work and wants to use it in their space, thanks for the compliment but what's in it for me? (yes i know you think i'm a raving commie at times, but scratch the surface and find a capitalist).

So with that preamble out the way, here we are in early 2011, IKN is tootling along quite happily and I've been interested in the blogosphere chatter this week about Seeking Alpha's new initiative to pay contributors. Basically, on the plus side you can hand over an article to SA and if it's published under their new exclusivity terms they'll pay you $10 per every 1000 pageviews. However, it also means that you can't reproduce your own material on your own blog, or anywhere else for that matter. And it means you hand over exclusive rights to SA and they can sell on your material and keep any proceeds for themselves. The issue has been looked at in great detail with good comments sections over at Felix Salmon's blog here and here, also other places like Barry Ritholtz (here) and to get up to full speed on the whys and wherefores of it all, including smart comments from SA contributors, those links are highly recommended.

So anyway, there I was looking on at this debate, not thinking about how it would affect me, when I get this mail from Seeking Alpha. For some weird reason they seem to remember me:

Dear Otto,

I hope this e-mail finds you well. We contacted you in March 2009 about the possibility of contributing to Seeking Alpha. You politely declined saying that you would like to be compensated for your articles. You'll be happy to hear that we are now paying contributors for their articles. Far above the industry standard, we pay $10 per thousand pageviews for exclusive articles that are selected for publication by our Editorial team. You can read more about the Premium Partnership Program here and the program FAQs here. Please note our standards for publication here for the best way to get an article accepted.

Seeking Alpha has over 4 million unique monthly visitors and combined with Seeking Alpha's distribution partners, articles that you submit to Seeking Alpha can have a total reach of over 50 million unique monthly readers. We have over 4,000 contributing authors.

We hope that you will reconsider our offer to join Seeking Alpha's team of contributors.

Please don't hesitate to contact me should you have further questions.

Best, Michal

Ms. Michal Slawny
Contributor Relations Manager
Seeking Alpha
mslawny AT seekingalpha.com

And I was all, "Oh whoopydoo, I get to write an article, send it to Seeking Alpha, hope that their editorial team accept it, if they do I have to accept their editorial changes to my writings, get it published on their site, I can't publish it here at any time before or after submission unless it gets rejected by SA and if it all works wonderfully and I get, let's say, 10,000 view over there, they then send me $100, which is about what I'll need to pay for a commission on one trade. And they think that's a good deal?". I was also kind of perplexed on his her line about how I "politely declined", because I recall being rather snotty with them. So i wrote this back:

Dear Michael,

A question: As far as I understand on reading your new system, if I post an article on my own site and then submit it to Seeking Alpha it wouldn't get any sort of compensation. Is that correct?

O

To which Michal replied:

That's correct Otto. However, you may post a 250-word excerpt on your site and then link to the entire article on Seeking Alpha. You could receive compensation in that scenario.

We can also monitor your blog if you'd like to post articles without compensation.

Best,

Michal

So I then sent

Michal (spelling correct this time, apologies),

Please tell me that you see the weak point in what you're offering here. I write an article and if I want to make it part of the $10-per-1000-views Seeking Alpha program I have to submit it to you, I can't publish myself on my own blog and if you decide to run my piece I only have the right to publish a small excerpt of my own work on my own blog, most probably after the editorial decision to publish and run it on Seeking Alpha has been made. It reminds me of the smallprint on a Radiohead album I own: "All lyrics reproduced with kind permission of the record company, even though we wrote them."

I appreciate that you guys are actually willing to stump up some cash for your contributors or (in my case) potential contributors, but the conditions that your trying to impose aren't very impressive so far. Do you have a better offer?

That was yesterday. He She hasn't gotten round to replying yet, which I think is wise on his  her part as he's  she's probably swamped with the same kind of exchanges and fed up to the back teeth with them. As it happens, even the best posts on IKN may be worth much less than ten bucks, but in my own little Walter Mitty world I like to think they're worth a lot more. Seriously, ten bucks for 1000 pageviews under a strict exclusivity clause isn't going to attract decent writers to your shop, SA. Au contraire mes braves, you're going to deter the exact type of contributor you need to make SA the kind of website you want to make it. If you pay peanuts you get monkeys and what you're offering, especially under a rules system that says I wouldn't be able to post my own content on my own site, is peanuts.

Rant over. I'll now go back to watching my own stocks drop while other people's stocks go up. Have a nice day.

PS: As pointed out by kind reader 'HA' who sent me the above link, the comments policy statement on Ritholtz's blog is excellent. Here it is reproduced:

"Please use the comments to demonstrate your own ignorance, unfamiliarity with empirical data, ability to repeat discredited memes, and lack of respect for scientific knowledge. Also, be sure to create straw men and argue against things I have neither said nor even implied. Any irrelevancies you can mention will also be appreciated. Lastly, kindly forgo all civility in your discourse . . . you are, after all, anonymous."

UPDATE: There are many things that I don't know. One of them was that Michal is a girl's name, not a boy's name. I learn and thanks for the corrections.

That Sinking Feeling

Let's find out if they can take a joke, shall we?

These last few days I've been contacted several times by a dude at SeekingAlpha, cos what they want to do is, with my permission of course, to slurp my feed and automatically put my posts up on their site. It's supposed to be an honour. Uff.

• I ignored the first mail, but they couldn't take a hint

• I sent a terse one-liner as a reply to the second mail, which earned me a reply I ignored again (don't worry mother, I didn't use any bad words).

• I got another mail yesterday morning (they don't give up easily) asking me to think it over. This is why I'm posting here.

People that have read this humble corner of cyberspace for a while should know by now what I think about SinkingAlpha; it's kinda ok for big picture stuff, the ConfCall transcript service is very good but the metals, mining, gold section (or sections?) totally suck and are best used as a contrary indicators (e.g. too many bullish posts from the dumbasses and you sell like yesterday, or abject depression amongst the tinfoilhats = pick a few shares up). The tech corner might be good, as might the banking articles but I wouldn't have the first clue. Not my scene.

So anyway, they want me to be "a partner" with them. Well great, whoopdedoo. The only difference is that if I agreed to their offer, instead of submitting manually they'd just read my feed, decide if they like this-or-that article and bang!, up it goes on their site. So for the record my issues about contributing to SinkingAlpha are varied:

1) You're providing your original content for free. They don't pay, not a bean. What they offer you (apart from some books I'd never read and free tickets to conferences I'd never attend anyway) is that vague concept of "exposure". Because they get 84 quadsquillion eyeballs per day and this humble corner gets a few thousand I get to be famous and stuff. But I fail to see why somebody who reads my story over there would click through to this blog to read it again.......but hey, that's me, y'know. Meanwhile they add value to their own pockets via advertising (although they swear they're making an overall loss) and asset appreciation (one day they'll sell the site and go live in the tropics and sip margaritas all day or summink). I get the fun of watching how badly I do against Peter Schiff on their popularity leaderboard....all very exciting and competitive, I'm sure.

2) They make up their own title to put on your article. When I used to contribute there (stopped ages ago) that would really get on my nerves. It's like "my script is good enough for them but my title sucks? WTF?". They also demand editorial control. PAY ME DUDES! Then I'm an employee and you have the right to boss me around...until then I'm this "partner" who'd get a real rump end of the partnership.

3) The neighbours are crappy. The quality of articles on offer at the place most of my stuff would land (i.e. the mining posts, as I doubt they'd care about Lugo's latest lovechild or Evo's police forces putting holes in Irishmen) is mediocre. For every one good one (eg Gary throws 'em a bone sometimes, as does Cam Hui who I enjoy reading) there are three dozen articles that seem to be written by undergrads who've read up on the concept of fiat currency then landed on the GATA site and think they've discovered the Holy Grail or something. Either that or some dude who promotes company X or company Y for a living (i.e. gets paid by them) will hammer the same stocks at you month after month after month.

4) etc

So when the SinkingAlpha dude couldn't take the hint and wrote me again yesterday asking if I'd thought further about their offer, I sent him a longer reply. Here it is reprinted in full below (with the spelling and grammar brushed up a bit and one or two words added to make the context clear). Any further questions on SinkingAlpha?

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Dear XXXX

I'd like you to know where I'm coming from here, so this might ramble a little.

The basic point i'm trying to make is that i feel, rightly or wrongly, that a partnership (or whatever you'd like to call it, it's just a label) with seekingalpha will certainly favour you guys more than I. But this is only part of the problem that i see, because if i think like this then many others will think the same way, too.

I'm really not a high'n'mighty arrogant type (despite the façade :-). Not trying to tell you what to do. Not trying to impose my will or my viewpoint on you guys. However, what i do see in the gold , metals and mining articles of seekingalpha (the part i'd imagine ending up more often than not if a contributor) are boring, thin and intellectually unstimulating articles that don't do much more than either a) preach to the goldbug choir or b) use polemic against the goldbug viewpoint to start an argument.

It's bullshit. Maybe one in 30 articles there are worth my time...and i just can't be bothered to wade through the crud to find the goodstuff when i can visit/RSS the blog of Cam Hui, Gary Tanashian etc directly and get their smarter brains condensed on one page of a dozen articles.

So why is there so much mediocrity on SeekingAlpha (in my view of course...at this point i'd expect you to defend your publication and then we can play batball with the theme all morning---ho hum)? I think it's because better quality bloggers don't want to dilute themselves for very little or no return while adding free content to your site. Or in other words, there's a problem with your business model....in my opinion.

I don't want to be lumped in with the crowd that appears in SeekingAlpha metals/mining right now. It's not just a question of money. I'd much prefer to build value (both financial and energetic) separately via my own blog and get 100 readers a day than get 100,000 or whatever-it-is eyeballs on the article that then read moronic comments underneath. SeekingAlpha metals&mining used to be much better than it is, but is being dragged down by the lowest common denominators of the Marc Courtneys of this world who'll write any old crap as a pure ego trip (sold FCX at U$18 late last year and told your audience that he was lucky cos it sunk to $17 the next day.....classic stuff, dude..he nailed the bottom). I don't want to read self-promoters like Mike Niehuser telling me about Minefinders and Novagold and Minefinders and Novagold and Minefinders and freaking Novagold ad infinitum.

To sum up, i think you need to attract decent contributors (and yes, i count myself in that pile, but i know my place and that's really way down on the long list of quality possibles) and more importantly keep them. This is a set of people that respond to capitalist button-pushing, not altruistic and vague offers of "exposure". I think you guys need to re-think the model else face a serious problem down the line. Try offering something far more solid than tickets to NYC conferences for people that live hundreds or thousands of miles away from WallSt. It's not my problem...repeat not my problem... that you're running at a loss. Your model is build, build, build then sell to a big boy and that's fine by me. Good luck to you, seriously. But WTF does that have to do with me and others if you hoard the pie for yourselves?

My, you guys take me back to the web 1.0 and what Patagon dot com did to its non shareholding staff the day it sold out to Banco Santander! There was nothing offered and nothing given to the somewhat naive experts that spent hours building the finest financial bullboard forum in the Spanish language...the forum that accounted for 90% of the site's traffic. Then when the naives woke up and saw the site owners get a multimillion dollar payday they went and said "where's mine?...i built this for you" but it was too late. Not even a crumb offered. Why don't you do some DD and find out what happened to patagon dot com afterwards? I guarantee that any potential buyer of Seekingalpha will know that story and a dozen others like it backwards by now.

Bottom line: I and many others will not accept your current terms. Quality financial bloggers that accept them will, in my opinion, quickly become disenchanted. Meanwhile very little of the content supplied by current contributors is worth reading (talking about the mining/metals sectors and talking in my opinion...i don't feel like arguing the point because you won't change my mind on that...let's just take it that you disagree and be done). I suggest you re-think you model before it's too late.

The bit that SinkingAlpha does well

Stuck in amongst the re-hashed posts from good commentators (that you can just as easily get at their own sites..learn RSS, people) and the mediocre guff written by people that are nothing but a herd of contrary indicators, there is one thing that SinkingAlpha does well and for which it deserves applause.

Here's the link to go visit the SinkingAlpha transcript of Alcoa's (AA) Conference Call from last night and it is well worth your time to read every word from the brass at AA. It is always a mistake (repeat always a mistake) to read about conference calls from a media report, as getting the information filtered through another person's brain (and as we're talking about finance reporters I use the word 'brain' in its figurative sense) defeats the whole object of a CC.

Reading the AA transcript will take you 10 or 15 minutes, but it is well worth it. You will learn much more from taking time and hearing it from the horse's mouth than reading any words I or any other will throw at you. Go read it now, metalshead.

FCX: let the lemmings run

Yesterday I had this to say about Freeport McMoRan (FCX) and its heavy drop on the news of its 2009 cutback plans:

"..With the decks cleared, give the stock a couple of days to settle and then it's a trading buy. FCX is now front'n'centre on my radar."

Lo and behold, this morning presents a great example of what I'm talking about. Some dude named Marc Courtney writes at SeekingAlpha today on how he's bailing on FCX due to yesterday's news. So as I'd never read the guy before and on the basis of "If it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck, we have at least to consider the possibility that we have a small aquatic bird of the family anatidae on our hands*", your DD loving Otto checked out Courtney's previous market musings.

And as suspected, he's an idiot.

In this post dated September 14th he was long Petrobras (it was U$45 at the time).

This post dated September 9th is entitled "Seven reasons why inflation won't vanish" should be re-titled "Seven reason why my net worth is vanishing"

In this post dated October 5th, this joker is long FCX amongst other stuff (plenty of crap written about silver in this one). Strange how he claims he'd "just bought" FCX yesterday, writing today that "I was fortunate. My buy limit order was executed at $17.80 and I was able to sell my shares of Freeport-McMoRan Copper & Gold (FCX) at $17.50."

There's a whole heap of crap to choose from and the above is scratching the surface of his mediocrity. The guy has no scruples, or is delusional, or most likely both. What he must be is a lot poorer than he was six months ago. I haven't even started on all the goldbug and silverbug conspiracy crap he comes out with. Go have a look at his library of titles yourself.

I don't bother submitting my stuff to SeekingAlpha any more and it's because of dumbasses like Courtney. The site has contributors of value (the macro stuff is good), but the resource sectors in particular are full of crud and dragged down by lowest common denominators like this clown. However, checking out the site (via the title lines every few days) is a useful exercise in sheep psyche.

Put simply, half-baked analyses from ego-monsters like the Courtneys of this world are gift-wrapped contrary indicators. Use them wisely.


*Douglas Adams quote (and if you don't know who Adams is (well...was), you're seriously missing out).