Joe Ponzio on Going from Blog to Book: F Wall Street
Although Joe Ponzio started his blog to draw platform to the book he was planning to write (not necessarily blog), like many blog-to-book success stories he feels “ the book and the blog go hand-in-hand.” In the case of Fwallstreet.com, both the blog and the subsequent book, F Wall Street, Joe Ponzio’s No-Nonsense Approach to Value Investing for the Rest of Us, focus on explaining common sense, long-term value investing in plain English.
“Readers understand one better if they also read the other,” says Ponzio. “Both have separate content, but there is a small amount of duplication. I’d say that 90 percent of the website is completely new, original content, which is crucial because readers come back to your site looking for more answers, more explanations, and those tidbits that your editor cut out but that you felt were important.”
Adams Media released F Wall Street in June 2009.
1. Why did you begin blogging?
I launched FWallStreet.com in June of 2007 to accompany the book. I had written a majority of the book at that point, though I didn’t yet have a publisher, and wanted to have an online resource for people to visit and host discussions after reading the book.
I didn’t plan on advertising the website or letting the world know it was out there until the book was published. Still, the website took off. By the end of 2007, just six months after its initial launch, FWallStreet.com had more than one million hits.
2. How did you choose your topic?
The book actually started as a “how-to” guide for my children, then three and soon-to-be-born. It was a simple, 80-page manual on how to think about investing for the long-term and how to evaluate companies and stocks.
I chose investing because that’s what I do for a living. It’s what I’m passionate about. And there is so much bad information out there that only a small percentage of the population ever hear about, learn about, and stick with value investing. I wanted to make sure that my children would be in that select group if I wasn’t around to teach them personally.
3. What, if any, market research did you do before beginning your blog?
None. I didn’t think that hard about it when I started, and I figured my blog would be lost in the sea of constantly-updated, keyword-rich, go-go-go stock market blogs. Readers ended up visiting FWallStreet.com, became curious by the design, and stayed for the content. And…they told their friends about it! Most of my early visitors did not come from link exchanges or advertising (I did none) but from emails from other visitors. People would see FWallStreet.com, email it to a friend, and voila!―another visitor.
One thing I learned over time is that content truly is king. If you produce good content, people will want to come and read it. The only way to produce good content is to blog about something you love.
My advice to aspiring bloggers: Stick with topics you truly know and about which you are passionate, and catch the visitors right away with a good design. Content is king, but you have to present it (via a solid design) in a way that makes them want to meet the king.
4. Did you think you were writing a book, did you plan on blogging a book, or were you simply blogging on your topic? (In retrospect, would doing one or the other have made it easier to later write your book?)
I knew I was writing a book. Rather, I had written a book and knew that the blog was a key part of supporting the book if it were to get picked up by a publisher.
In retrospect, I would have done things the exact same way. I would have written the book (or a majority of it) and then
Add a Comment