Did you know that there's such a thing as a fantasy blog stock market? And that people can buy/sell shares of your blog without you even knowing? Who comes up with this stuff? My blog has it's very own listing with stats and everything. Some guy called Jonny Sprout owns 50% of my blog, apparently. I'm not sure if I should be irked or flattered but I guess if some total stranger has to pretend own my blog I'm happy that he has a name like 'Jonny Sprout'. He's got 2 blogs of his own, one that's writing and the other that's photos of random places in Chicago. The photo blog is part of a wider network of 'Oh, The Urbanity' blogs which are blogs of photos of random places in various cities. There's even one for Golden, CO. I should do one for Boulder but I won't. Maybe I'll start having 'Oh the Urbanity' Fridays. Or maybe not. Or maybe random Fridays when I happen to remember this idea.
Anyway, I'm not sure if his investment has turned out to be a good one. My blog's 'valuation', whatever that means, started out at just under $210,000 on Sept. 11, 2008 and has plummeted to $7745 on Feb.6, 2010. On the other hand the share price has gone from $48.73 to $268.31. The stock market makes my head hurt. My retirement money lives in the stock market but my real money lives in the bank in a nice easy savings account. I know, I'll never get to retire using this type of financial planning but at least I don't wake up at 2 a.m. fretting about my money being plundered by the next Bernie Madoff.
Now if only there was some way to make real life money off my blog in the real life stock market.
I'm not sure any of us will ever get to retire.
ReplyDeleteUgh, I know. I'll have to adopt some wealthy 30 year old to take care of me in my old age.
ReplyDeleteI am Jonny Sprout, the total stranger who pretends to own a fifty percent stake your blog (commenting here thanks to the sad/wonderful magic of StatCounter). But hey, it's cold and nasty outside, and going out, socializing with flesh-and-blood people on a Monday is just going to tire me out.
ReplyDeleteThe BlogShares market DOES sound silly when approached with fresh eyes, but it's a game that gives me a reason to read (at least in a cursory sense) different people's viewpoints from around the country and around the world. Imaginary investments be damned, I think it makes me more tolerant and enlightened.
So don't be irked.
I love the wide-open dog mouth picture on the post above. And nothing is as exciting as poop.
Oh I'm not really irked, I was just kidding. My hobbies involve getting up at 4 am to drive 2 hours and pay lots of money to chase dogs that may or may not listen to me around a stinky, dusty horse arena for 15-40 seconds at a time and maybe if I'm lucky it'll be really cold. Or I'll be outside in an unshaded field huddled under an EZ Up and the sun will be blaring and it'll be 100 degrees. Let's not even discuss the sardines but there are sometimes sardines involved. So I'm not exactly in a position to judge other people's hobbies. Did I mention the part about getting up at 5:30 a.m. to go swimming in a freezing cold, glacier fed reservoir before work? I have paid actual money and gotten on a plane to swim in Montrose Harbor for a triathlon race.
ReplyDeleteI'm a native Chicagoan and I used to live on the north side so I enjoy your photo blog. I used to wander around the city and take random pictures too but that was back in the days of film and I've never gotten around to scanning some of the better ones. I've got some great ones of the old Granada Theater just before they tore it down.
Amazing. Apparently I can't search to see whether my blog is there unless I'm logged in, which I'm not going to do.
ReplyDeleteYou can make real life money off your blog, not in the stock market, but getting set up so that *if* you talk about books or objects that you use, you can get some small fee for referring people to a site where they can be bought. I keep meaning to do this. Johann the Dog of course has made this a priority and now gets to use tons of products so she/he can post reviews on their blog.
You don't have to be logged in to search, I don't have an account either and I was able to use the search function. But you do have to be mindful of the search engine. You have to pick URL, name of blog, or whatever in addition to the search words.
ReplyDeleteOK, I was apparently trying a differert search thing the first time; found it this time.
ReplyDelete