Crazy Idea: WSO Book
I was just reading Deal Team Six's response in the Happiness thread this week and I realized that over the years, I've read an amazing set of life philosophies that have changed how I view the world and myself. If someone (like Chief Monkey in Charge) aggregated all of the life learnings from the past ~5-10 years into a single book of advice, life stories, life philosophies, career paths, steps and missteps, I can think of a lot of people that would buy it in a heart beat.
Thoughts?
While it technically wouldn’t violate the ToS (since there is a clause that releases published content to WSO for any use including commercial), I would definitely feel uneasy if management here actually started taking what was given for free to help prospects and the general user base and start monetizing on that advice.
Additionally, I feel like a lot of advice here is good because it is unfiltered and the audience here understands that dynamic. Once that advice is presented to the general public, I wouldn’t be surprised to see people trying to get this website off the web and censor the unfiltered content or on the other end of the spectrum attempting to use this website to spread extremist views with little to no interest for finance.
I truly believe the value add of WSO is the right balance between having a small enough number of users that makes it feel like a community, while having a breadth of high power careers covered. Any type of published book outside of this platform will lead to effects that lowers the value of this site.
I wouldn't be opposed to having a compilation of life advice in a digital guide format, similar to the finance interview guides sold by this site. WSO could compile and just give it away to people if they become Certified Users or something. The psychological aspect of how to manage and think about your career and life is an area basically untouched formally.
this reminds me of some interview-type posts that were posted a couple years ago that I think WSO interviewed some of the older accounts on here, something along those lines
This reminds me of my favorite coffee shop. I like it because it's sort of empty and you see the same faces there. Well, the owner probably feels differently about that.
They don’t make money directly through the forums (although one could argue that the forums are what drives user retention) - they make money through the courses which are specialized towards IB, PE, HF. The people who are here and have interested in such fields (myself included) have purchased some of the resources and by extension the owners make money. Because the courses are so specialized, I’m not certain that trying to market this forum publicly for all professions (in the way that publishing a book would) would actually drive immediate substantial revenue growth. It would take some time for WSO to adapt to have more generalized courses and they would also have a lot more competitors to deal with once they go down that route. There’s certainly a potential reward, but it comes with the risk of losing the specialized niche that WSO currently has. WSO (Wall Street Oasis) would turn into WCO (White Collar Oasis). The forums would basically be another version of Reddit.
I definitely think a compilation of life advice/mental health advice would be helpful. sometimes I find it difficult to find high value comments that have been written over the years
idk if a book is the best format, and quite frankly I'd be fine to make this available for free within WSO, I don't know how I feel about monetizing it as that does change the dynamic
WallStreetOasis.com
Traffic that you're driving to the site with good content is already providing monetary benefit even though it's not a direct payment. And I say that especially for your great comments.
I love this site a lot, but can't shake the unwelcome experience of publishing my book and posting about it on here. Basically, got all my posts removed or made where they can't refresh with new comments.
WSO couldn't stand that I could be potentially earning a whopping $5 per book. This really left a sour taste in my mouth considering that I've submited a lot of free advice and content for the site on a separate account and didn't get reciprical treatment to help get a few more readers. The experience has changed how much I submit on WSO and my thoughts about how my content could be used in the future unfortunately.
I’m not sure how frequently you use this site, but over the years there’s been a lot of spam related to selling products (whether it be finance related or not) and as a matter of quality control all of these ads get immediately deleted. It doesn’t really help that you said you used an alternate account to give advice as there’s no way to verify that you weren’t a spammer or a bot. Even then you’d probably still have to pay Patrick to advertise here.
The book has potential. Think if you could filter all the topics with 50+ SBs on a post and you automatically have a good book of quotes. Someone would have to edit and delete some obviously.
Personally, I've copy-pasted starting from the most voted topics and going downwards until I got tired and got a total of ~ 300 pages in a Word file. I've put it into Kindle and I read it.
After you do that, you have a general sense of WSO vibes, some industry knowledge, interviews, etc. than you don't need to loose more time with the day-to-day topics because they are a repetition of older - and better - posts.
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