Discontinuing VIB Premium

I’ve decided to stop with the premium service on this website. Any unspent credits that current users of the service have in their accounts will be refunded. I hope to complete this process this week, but it is possible that it will take until sometime next week.

My main reason for quitting this service is that it would take a lot more time for me to build up visitor numbers for this site in order to reach a scale that would make it worth the extra administrative trouble. I would have to do a lot of the type of writing that could appeal to a larger audience. Articles of the “Top 10 investment mistakes” variety, Buffett and Munger quotes, posts about large caps and lengthy posts about my investment philosophy. In other words: posts that can score well in Google for more popular search terms and that have some hope of attracting an audience.

I’ve done a lot of work like this in the past for other websites, but during this year I’ve come to realize that I’m no longer interested in doing that sort of writing. I also find I’m not enjoying reading about those sorts of topics on other investment blogs and in investment letters anymore and often think to myself: just tell me what you own and why! So I think it’s better to quit the premium service if that is how I feel.

I will continue to blog. I’ll probably also keep the software for the premium section alive and will use it as a semi-private blog when I want to share some illiquid ideas with a small audience. Current users of VIB Premium will have access to those posts, but this will not be a paid service anymore.

Finally, I’d like to wish everyone a very happy and successful 2019!

Update January 12: Over the past week I’ve sent the PayPal payments. If you had unclaimed credits in your account, you should now have received a refund for those unspent credits. Please accept the payment in your PayPal account if you haven’t already done so.

I’ve not been able to complete a payment to one user, because I get an error message from PayPal (“this recipient accepts PayPal payments only through their website”). I’ve e-mailed this person about this, but have not received a reply yet. So, if you have unspent credits in your account and have not received a payment yet, please contact me to resolve this issue.