May 12, 2009
As we mark our second anniversary, I’d like to take a moment to reflect on some of our accomplishments over the last year and explain our plans for the future.
During the past year, our readership doubled, as measured by unique visitors to our web site and by page views on our site. Our readership now ranks well ahead of those of virtually all on-line publications targeted to wealth managers, as measured by the independent service Quantcast.
I recognize that our target audience is highly discriminating; writing for investment advisors is far more challenging than writing for individual investors. I appreciate that you have been spreading the word about the publication and I take it as a positive commentary on the quality of our analysis.
Our content has also expanded. Each issue now contains six to eight articles, versus four or five a year ago. I respect our role as a forum to discuss and debate relevant topics, and value the clarity this discourse brings to challenging issues.
I am extraordinarily grateful for the many guest contributions and letters to the editor we have received from the advisory community. Our contributors have grown in number, and include Adam Apt, Michael Edesess, Dave Loeper, Kristen Luke, Robert Pardes, Dan Richards, Ron Surz and many others. (Sadly, Robert Pardes lost his father last week, and we extend our sincerest condolences to him and his family.)
The Advisor Market Commentary section of our service has grown, with roughly twice as many contributions per week as a year ago. We recently began using Twitter, and you can now follow us and get a “Tweet” every time we publish our newsletter or post a Commentary.
This week we will introduce a feature that will show the most popular articles and commentaries over the last 30 days and since the inception of our service. These lists will be updated each day, based on unique visitors. Our goal is to provide an objective standard to gauge the popularity of our content, and to make this information readily available to you.
We also will introduce soon a feature to help you search for other content relevant to a given article. You will be able to view a list of articles that share certain “tags,” such as “active versus passive,” “oil prices,” or “housing crisis.”
Our overriding goal continues to be to provide independent and unbiased analysis. At the same time, however, we will not avoid controversy, and we eagerly address the most problematic issues facing advisors. We recognize that we are writing for a demanding audience, and we will work very hard to maintain your respect.
We will continue to refine our analysis and ensure we are covering the topics that matter most to you. To help us achieve that goal, please continue to provide your ideas, comments and criticisms.
Regrettably, we made our share of errors this past year, both factual and typographical. Although the factual errors were by and large insignificant and the typographical ones infrequent, I apologize and we will strive to improve our record over the coming year.
This publication would not be possible without the support of our advertisers, and I am immensely grateful for their sponsorship. Despite a very slow economy that has been especially tough on the financial services sector, we have added many new advertisers, and our revenues have grown substantially.
We look forward to serving you over the coming year.
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