This website went live on May 17, 2011.  It's been an interesting experience to say the least.  I've been gratified to see the growth.  We now have 456 RSS/email readers and 310 subscribers to the monthly newsletter.  Another 72 follow via Twitter.  93 sites link here, and according to Alexa, this is the 68,721st most popular site in the United States (359,711 in the world).  That doesn't sound so good, until you realize there are over 367 Million websites in the world, putting this site in the top 0.1%.


More importantly, these pages have been viewed over 385,000 times, by over 69,000 people.  There have been 22,500 comments (okay, I admit 21,000 of them were spam, but that still leaves 5 a day.)  Judging by the email and comments I get, there are a lot of people benefiting from the free, unbiased advice here.  That was the whole point of starting the site, so I'm very pleased with that.

A website is a tough business to start, since there is little barrier to entry, and limited ways to monetize it (at least if you feel some obligation not to sell your soul).  Financially, the site hasn't been a total bust, but it certainly is not a significant source of income to me.  Emergency medicine is a far better way to trade my time for money.  The gross income on the site in the last year was a little over $3000 (of course I'm working hard on keeping the net income very close to zero).  Most bloggers will tell you that's a pretty good first year.  But when you divide that income by the 255 pages/posts written, it works out to about $11 a page.  It's passive income going forward, but it certainly was an active process researching, writing, editing, and putting them together in the first place!  But the research benefits me as well, and the writing seems to be helping a lot of other people, so I've recently re-upped my web hosting agreement for another year.

I hope you all have enjoyed the journey as much as I have.  I figure there are nearly a million doctors and dentists out there just in the US (not to mention similar professionals), and at least 25,000 or so new ones every year, so there are plenty of people left to rescue from the clutches of Wall Street.  Please share the word with your friends and colleagues.
Now it's your turn.  What subjects would you like to see covered on The White Coat Investor in the future?