Saturday, August 30, 2003

Blog$shares 101 - Part Two: How to Start Investing

Ideally, investing in blogshares would be a case of buying shares in blogs you really like, or in blogs you think will grow in value because they are so good they are sure to become popular and get more links in the future.

Realistically, though, $500 just isn't going to do that. And when you register with Blogshares all you get is $500 seed money. You need to invest in cheap blogs whose value will go up enough that you can make some capital.

I'm sure you recognize the possible problem with this approach. How do you find cheap blogs? Well, fear not, Seyed (the creator of Blogshares) has thought of that, and provided a simple way to find those blogs.

First off, make sure you are registered. You should see a "Members Area" over on the right side of every page that gives you your current status. When you start, your cash balance will be $500. The number of Transactions is important unless you've paid for Premium Membership, because you can only do 20 transactions in a 24 hour period. Keep that in mind, because timing might get important later, and you'll always want to keep a transaction in reserve when it does.

Now, to actually find a cheap blog... Along the left side of your browser window, you should see a column of links. Click on Stock Tips. This will list 100 blogs whose value is currently low and which are considered "growing blogs". You should be able to pick up at least a couple there whose price per share is 20 cents. Those are the ones you want to start with.

After you've found one of these cheap blogs, you want to buy shares. To do that, click on the name of the blog, and you should get its blog listing. You should see several links underneath the "Share Market" heading. The one you want to click is "Buy Shares". This will bring up another page that tells you how many shares you are currently allowed to buy, and at what price. You will not be able to buy every share in a blog on one transaction. That's a limitation to keep people from abusing the system. At this point, you just want shares, so buy as many as you can (usually 1250). Just hit the "Buy Shares" button.

After your transaction goes through, you should get a nice window that tells you how many shares you bought, and the total price. You will also notice that the price of the shares changed. That's the key to getting a little spare change. For low priced blogs, the price per share always goes up if you buy some shares.

At this point, you want to hit the "Portfolio" button to look at your new possessions. The blog you own shares in is listed, along with the number of shares you hold (the number available is underneath). The Price is the current price per share. The Buy Price is how much you spent. The important thing is that when you sell the shares, you sell them for more than you bought them for. With a new, cheap blog, that will be easy. You won't make a huge profit, but you will build up enough cash to start playing in earnest.

Well, you've bought some shares, and you are ready for the next step. Unfortunately for you, the system is not. There are various restrictions to prevent abuse, and one of them is that you can only buy shares in a single blog every 20 minutes. So, if you have enough leftover cash to buy more shares in your blog, you are going to have to wait for 20 minutes before buying them. Another restriction is that you must wait 6 hours after buying shares in a blog before you can sell them. This effectively stops the worst kind of "day trading", but it means that you might want to buy your shares before you go off to work or school, then come back in the evening to sell them.

That's enough for lesson two. Watch for lesson three: "Selling those suckers".

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