Dear Reader,
I started this blog and website in May 2011 with the primary purpose of “helping those who wear the white coat get a fair shake on Wall Street.” Like many of you, I had received less than a square deal from several different types of financial professionals, including a realtor, a mortgage lender, an insurance agent, a financial advisor, an appraiser, and even a military recruiter. Part of the reason for my pitfalls was my own lack of financial knowledge, but that was significantly compounded by a lack of disclosure/transparency by the professionals. As such, with this website I strive to be fully transparent with regards to the sources of my income, and that's the main purpose of this annual post. If you're curious, you can find the 2012, 2013, and 2014 State of the Blog posts with these links.
Thank You
However, aside from the important disclosures (which also provide a bit of a voyeuristic look into my business- my new business manager says she is very interested in seeing the comments to this post), this is also a fantastic opportunity to talk about the mission of The White Coat Investor, LLC, and to thank you, dear reader, for your assistance in fulfilling it. The primary purpose of this business is to provide high-income professionals the information and education they need to optimize their financial lives and allow them to focus on their own families and practices. By any measure, we have seen smashing success in this regard this year.
This site now consists of 51 pages and 630 posts, 172 of which I published in 2014. There are over 13,024 comments on the blog (not counting tens of thousands of spam comments) of which over 7000 are from 2014. I have received about 9000 emails and responded to every one of them that came from a reader (not sure exactly how many, but it's at least 1500).
I published my first book, The White Coat Investor: A Doctor's Guide to Personal Finance and Investing, in February and it has been successful beyond my wildest dreams. 9559 copies were sold in 2014. It has received 222 reviews on Amazon, 90% of which were five star reviews, 7% of which were four star reviews and 3% of which were presumably written by whole life salesmen. The biggest criticism of the book is that “most of this stuff is available for free on the blog.” I can live with that. The book is still ranked #2, #2, and # 3 in its Amazon/Kindle categories, ahead of many books by authors that I greatly respect. More importantly, it has enabled me to reach an entirely new segment of readers who would not have received the important message of The White Coat Investor from the website alone.
The number of RSS readers has increased from 1477 to 2286 and the number of newsletter subscribers has increased from 1353 to 3339. Another 65,573 unique readers visit the site each month, providing a total of 242,332 page views. In the last 3 1/2 years, over 1.2 Million unique visitors have visited the blog, for a total of 5.2 Million page views. Although many of these visitors simply came from a search engine (found the site themselves) many more came as a direct result of word of mouth. If this site has helped you, and because of that you have shared it with colleagues, friends, and families, I thank you on their behalf.
The site is also listed on this list of Top Finance Blogs. Our initial position is 113 (out of 454), but if ranked purely by traffic to the site, it would be ranked 23rd. I guess I better spend more time on Facebook.
A Second Purpose of the Site
More and more each month, I have readers, both new and long-term, asking me for referrals to financial service providers who will treat them right. This was not something I anticipated when I first started the site (especially with all the negative things I say about financial service providers), but it has become a bigger and bigger part of what I do. While many readers are die-hard do-it-yourselfers like I am, most, especially occasional readers, are not. Many of those want a regular financial planner or asset manager, and even if an ongoing advisory relationship isn't needed or desired, all of us have an occasional need for a mortgage lender, a student loan refinancer, a contract negotiator/reviewer, an insurance agent, a tax adviser, a practice retirement plan advisor etc.
So I see a second mission of this site to connect doctors and other high-income professionals with “the good guys” in the financial services industry. Of course, this also has the added benefit of being able to sell advertisements to “the good guys.” Although it is impossible to completely vet any of these firms, I do the best I can, and if we receive significant complaints about them, we don't renew their contracts. So please continue to send me feedback, both good and bad, about advertisers. Thank you for supporting those who support this site. It helps you get a “fair shake on Wall Street,” it helps me earn an income, it helps the “good guys” to be successful, and it helps future high-income professionals get the same “fair shake” you received.
In order to make it easier to find these recommended professionals, you will notice a new tab at the top of the site, labeled recommendations. This includes not only the recommended book page and websites page, but also lists insurance agents, financial advisors, mortgage lenders, refinancing companies and other professionals. We will continue to add to the lists as we see needs and find resources to fill those needs.
Feeding My Entrepreneurial Spirit
The third purpose of this site is to feed my entrepreneurial spirit. When I first started the site, I had hoped to provide a passive source of income for myself. While I have managed to provide a surprisingly good income, it has been anything but passive. In fact, much of the income I have seen this year is really payment for work I did during the first 2 years (when I made nearly nothing.) As the site's income goes up, it also becomes a more valuable asset that I may even be able to sell someday.
I find it interesting to learn about and experiment with all the various ways to make money on the internet and really get under the hood to see how both the internet and business in general really work. However, I confess that there have been several times this year, especially during the summer when life gets really busy, that I thought about just dropping it all. I've laid aside a couple of hobbies I enjoy in order to keep up with the needs of the The White Coat Investor, LLC and its readers. Sometimes, frankly, it is a lot more fun to go play than to write, keep up with the comments and emails, argue with random insurance agents commenting on articles published years ago, or read and edit the numerous guest posts I have submitted each month.
So what keeps me going when the primary mission of the site (to help readers) isn't cutting it? Two things- first, the money is nice and second, I've made a commitment to advertisers to keep going, at least until the term of their ad is up! Perhaps it would be better if I were a saint and willing to put in all this time and effort for free, but frankly, I'm not. Just as most of you don't practice medicine (or law, or whatever) for free, I also don't run this site for free and would have quit after a year or two if it wasn't generating any income.
Starting this Fall, I have another contract that helps keep me going. As of September, I have a business manager, Cindy, who is doing a lot to free up some of my time. She has been managing the advertisements and other money-making aspects of the site and also helping with final preparation and publication of the posts. While I suppose I've been doing this in my practice for a long time, it's really fun to know that my work is not only supporting my family, but also providing income for another family. Entrepreneurs create jobs, and I think that's pretty cool. I hope there will be more opportunities to hire others, spread the workload, and accomplish more moving forward.
Financial Disclosure
Now, the part you've all been waiting for- what did WCI earn in 2014 on this crazy project? First, and most importantly, we'll discuss where my income comes from. This blog has been for-profit from the very beginning, and I make no apologies for it. No margin, no mission.
Income
- Ad-Serving (Primarily Google Adsense) – $6,727.72
- Affiliate agreements (Primarily Amazon and SoFi)- $12,945.28
- Donations- $30
- Writing and speaking Fees- $14,081.92
- Book Royalties- $83,587.07
- Privately Placed Ads- $66,801
Total Income 2014- $187,862.99
Aside from the monetary income, I also received a T shirt, a dozen books (many of which I sent on to readers at my own expense), and hundreds of dollars worth of amazon gift certificates I received when a bunch of you signed up for QuantiaMD after I did some presentations there, and listed me as the referring source (thanks for that by the way, it was totally unexpected.)
This is the part where I thank the advertisers for trusting me with their limited advertising dollars, and you, readers, both for providing the eyeballs I sell to the advertisers, and also for purchasing the book for yourself and those you care about. As you can see, that's where the lion's share of WCI income comes from. Thank you.
Financial Conflicts of Interest
Of course, the point of revealing the sources of my income is to provide disclosure to you of my financial conflicts of interest. While I try not to let these affect the content of the site, I'm sure there is some small, perhaps even subconscious, effect in how I write, what I write, and what is published. Most conflicts of interest come from my relationships with private ad purchasers. My financial conflicts of interest might encourage you to do the following:
- Buy a house when you shouldn't
- Use a mortgage with less than 20% down when you shouldn't
- Get your contract evaluated when it may not matter
- Pay a financial advisor for advice you may not need
- Buy disability or life insurance you may not need
- Buy my book when you may not need it
- Buy other books you may not need
- Refinance your student loans when you may be better off not doing so
I can live with all of those and I bet you can too.
The redneck water slide at the WCI Retreat at Lake Powell
Expenses
Of course, any business also comes with significant expenses, although an internet-based business run out of your home minimizes these pretty well. These include:
- Book related expenses
- Travel expenses
- Website related expenses
- Paypal fees
- Business and tax fees
- Business Manager fees
- Cell phone and internet fees
- WCI Retreat expenses
I doubt you all care about the individual costs of these, since they don't involve any conflicts of interest, and I don't really feel like itemizing them all, but they totaled $17,381.37.
So our profit for 2014 was $170,481.62. I almost feel a little guilty telling the residents, military docs, many of the non-physician professionals, and some of the primary care docs out there that I made more on my website than they did in their practice. Such is the strange economic landscape in which we find ourselves- Society doesn't always pay based on the true value of the work performed, but rather purely on the economic value. But I really don't feel that guilty. Many of you have asked how much time I spend on WCI-related activities. The truth is that many weeks during the year I spend more time on WCI than I do at the hospital. I suppose it's okay to be paid for that time (I assure you my hourly rate for WCI time is far lower than hospital time.) Some of that, of course, is time taken away from the family so it's nice to at least be able to have a little more income to show for that sacrifice. And, of course, all that income (at least the portion not going into the WCI Individual 401(k)) or donated to charity,) is taxed at a well-paid physician's marginal tax rate.
What's Coming in 2015
As you can see, one of the best things I did in 2014, both to fulfill the main mission of WCI and to boost its income, was to write a book, I hope to repeat the feat in 2015. However, I had hoped to really get started back in November, and here it is January already and I haven't made much progress. I'm probably going to have to either cut back on my shift load or on my vacation schedule to actually get it done, and neither of those seem particularly appealing at the moment! More details to come.
We are also going to start a WCI Scholarship for a medical or other professional student. We see it as a great way to “pay forward” some of the success that we have seen. Besides, today's students need all the help they can get. We hope to involve readers and advertisers in helping me to fund the scholarship, and a committee of readers in choosing the recipient. I think this will be a lot of fun. More details to come.
Aside from that, I anticipate continuing to publish 3 posts a week, including a guest post most weeks, and continuing to respond directly to readers as best I can via comments, emails, and the various forums I participate in. Although the latter activity is the biggest unreimbursed time-suck I have, it is also one of the parts I enjoy the most about this crazy adventure. Unfortunately, I am often forced to choose between doing an activity that benefits “the masses” a little bit at a time and one that benefits an individual's personal situation a great deal.
I will also continue to write for other publications and travel for speaking engagements from time to time. Speaking engagements already scheduled or in the process of being lined up for this year are in Bend, San Francisco, Salt Lake City, Boise, and Tucson, and that's just the first four months. I had hoped to limit those to about one per quarter, so you can see how good I am at saying “no.”
WCI in Tuolumne Meadows, August 2014
The monthly newsletter will also continue to be published. A lot of readers might not realize they're missing out on some great stuff that doesn't appear on the website, like this month's article about taking advantage of little-known state 529 rules to get some extra tax deductions. The newsletter is just as free to you as the RSS/email feed of the regular blog posts, but you do have to sign-up for both of them individually. Speaking of free, it has been recommended to me from time to time to either sell subscriptions to the entire site, or to bottle it up as an online course and sell it directly to readers. While that may very well be a profitable activity, I prefer to keep this information free to you, the reader. In order to continue to do that, I encourage you to include our advertisers in your search for any financial services you may need.
I hope 2015 is a great year for you personally, professionally, and financially. If you have found the site helpful, please share it with your colleagues.
Jim
James M. Dahle, MD, FACEP
Editor
The White Coat Investor, LLC
Congratulations and well done. It’s great that you are being rewarded for your hard work.
This site is my primary source for financial info along with The Finance Buff. I check every day for the posts and comments. On that note, I believe it is your interaction (and advice) through the comments that further sets this site apart and makes it valuable.
As an aside, I am not in the medical profession. I’m part of the 20% (?) of other high-income professionals tagging along.
Thanks again.
Awesome work, and thank you for sharing your numbers with us.
You should not feel bad for taking a chance and being successful. Think about how much your readers are saving from not being ripped off by whole life salesmen, brokers etc.
I was a pretty savvy investor previously (low expense index funds, etc.) but had no idea about things like the backdoor Roth.
I liked the book but think it is even better as a gift for medical students, residents, fellows, etc. I am always looking for graduation gifts for our fellows and realized the WCI book is perfect. Maybe they could get the same info from the website but the book puts it all together in an easily digested form
Jim, thanks for your hardwork and congrats on your success! Well-deserved. I have been a long time reader on your site and bogleheads since early in residency training and now in my 3rd year as an attending at an academic institution. I refer my friends and colleagues to your site. I appreciate your transparency/disclosures and wish other groups would do the same. Your site has probably saved me several hundreds thousand dollars now with the money I saved on my mortgage, disability insurance, term life insurance, 529 for my newborn daughter, and retirement accounts (maxed out 403, 457, Roth IRA backdoor). In almost all of these I had dealt with insurance agents or mortgage brokers who had offered me variable annuities, whole life insurance, higher mortgage interest rates or ARMs but in every one of these I have been able to get a better deal thanks to the information on your site. I have maxed out my retirement accounts since residency in 403b and Roth IRAs and after training also started maxing out 457 and doing backdoor Roth IRA conversions plus maxing out HSAs. My family is in solid financial shape and much of it I gained from here.
Long time reader here – congrats and keep up the great work! Very interesting to see the hardnumbers income from the book. Remarkable how well that has done, doing a second book seems like a no-brainer! (so long as it has new content!)
A great source of info to get investors on the right path
keep up the great work
Billions of dollars are lost to investors simply because they are not financially educated
its really so simple you can teach a 5th grader
Just think of the money that WCI has saved the readers who might have purchased Whole life insurance or paid 1% or more AUM to an advisor who might put the physician in a high loaded, high-expense group of funds! Imagine if Jim could base the income of the site on the amount saved by his readers!
The mission of this website is righteous, and Jim is truly doing good work to those he serves. Thank you Jim and I’m proud of you. Your “profit” from the website is justified and we all know that you put in the time and effort. You deserve this success!!!
fantastic, congratulations
Congratulations on such a successful year! I do hope you keep it going. I also love the scholarship idea; what a wonderful way to give back.
Awesome! I am a second year medical student, and would love to be considered for the WCI scholarship. I recently started my own blog where I am publicly tracking my debt load and writing posts about trying to keep that debt load as low as possible through budgeting and smart living.
Way to go Jim. Sky’s the limit for WCI, I think. Maybe a slot on one of the financial TV networks in the future?
Keep up the good work! After reading threads on Sermo, there are a lot of doctors that still need LOTS of help.
Congrats! It is great to see that not only are you fulfulling your mission, you are being rewarded financially for it. Thanks for posting this information, I really enjoy hearing of others success stories.
Jim,
I’ve followed your blog since your transition from your old SDN screenname. I left the Navy around the same time. I was a total financial neophyte and, because I “knew” you, I let myself trust this blog. You also recommended (again years ago) half a dozen books that I read. I don’t know what I would have done otherwise, so I can’t prove it, but I bet your blog has generated more income for me than it has for you. I’ve become more sophisticated over time, but starting off with a good strategy now seems so obvious and simple.
So, thank you. BTW, in my new semiprivate but still teaching job, your book is a graduation present for our fellows. No one resents your success. As for a pay site, I’d pay for a podcast that I could listen to on my commute. Again, well done and sincerely appreciated shipmate.
G
Thank you very much for all your help and guidance.
I’m amazed at how much you accomplished in 2014 for your family, yourself and the masses!
Just curious, combining your physician work hours and your WCI work hours, what is the average number of hours you work weekly?
You are an inspiration to all, regardless of profession or income!
I’m scared to really track how much time I spend on WCI. I’m afraid it would talk me into quitting it. I bet I spend 7 hours a week just on emails and comments. That doesn’t include any of the real work.
I had to laugh when one of the ads in the article is for accumulating cash value life insurance, with a link to The insurance Pro Blog. These guys are relentless.
That is funny. Remember Google ads are served to you based both on the content of the page, as well as what you have been searching for. I can actually block an ad like that manually, but I actually like that blog. We have a little different opinion about the value of whole life, but we’re both very much into making sure that anyone who purchases one knows how it really works before buying it.
Congratulations on doing so well!!! I think it’s great that your hard work and effort is paying off. I also appreciate your personal response to our emails/questions. I was quite surprised you even had time to respond. I personally appreciate the transparent financial advice and we use it to our advantage. We also have the book and while its true that much of it is covered in the blog, it does summarize key points quite well and makes it much easier to refer to. Keep up the great work!!!
Congrats and well wishes!! Fantastic site and helluva job.
Congrats! Keep on the great work. And while as you mention, yes you get some financial benefit, this has really been a great public service for so many!
So which job do you consider more personally satisfying? Practicing medicine or blog/book author? 🙂
Seriously I give you and your wife alot of credit for the huge time sink this must be. I’m glad it’s rewarded you financially at least.
Any news on when the iBooks version of your book is due to come out?
After a couple of days of working on the site or going on a speaking engagement, I’m glad to get back into the ED. And after 3 or 4 shifts in a row at the hospital, I’m more than happy to do some writing. I think both jobs help me to enjoy the other one more. I’m the type that doesn’t really enjoy anything enough to do it more than 30 hours a week. Variety is the spice of life.
I’ve still got the iBooks version on my list of stuff to do. The truth is there is very little economic incentive to do so. I’ve only sold 92 books on Nook in the last year, and I would expect similar results on iBooks. But I do plan to get it done eventually. Hopefully this month. Thanks for the reminder.
One other thing about having another job. Sometimes you get into a group of doctors online or in person and everyone starts whining about how bad they have it and how other jobs are less hassle for more money etc etc. But very few of those folks have gone out and tried to make doctor money in another line of work, it isn’t as easy as it looks! Certainly not impossible, but most jobs that pay as much as doctors require plenty of effort and talent too.
Totally agree. What they are really complaining about it is the high opportunity cost coupled with a insecurity due to fear (probably overstated) that you can lose it all at any time.
We almost never see or evaluate all the time put in (such as yourself)where there was not only no income, but tons of money being paid in time and effort. This may or may not get paid back down the road, but we happen to only examine ourselves in the context of those that not only won, but also in a single year where they did well. Both are untrue and can lead to false impressions. Really thinking about starting a small business gives you some perspective on that real risk you take in the time before you start to break even.
Great job.
Jim, Congrats on a wonderfully successful labor of love and thank you for the tremendous resource you have provided for all of us. I think I speak for all of us (or at least most!) when I say that we are happy for your personal as well as financial success with WCI! This place has helped so many of us get out of trouble and, as it grows in popularity, will hopefully prevent some of our fellow white coats from getting into trouble. I was telling a med student about WCI recently and I was pleased to hear that he was already a regular reader!
Wow Jim! Congratulations! I can’t stop smiling that WCI is finally really making you money! Sadly, it’s still less than half what my almost financial planner is making. Hopefully next year.
I was a long time lurker, read the books you recommended and finally decided to go in. The thing that impressed me the most was that you wrote back to me. I was a few of those thousands of emails you got. I’ve always been frugal, but never really knew what to do with it besides pay down my debt from school and home, which there was a lot of. Once I found WCI a few years ago, I was able to start really saving.
Congratulations again, and be sure to keep us up to date on the lectures. I would love to hear you in Tucson this year.
Best line was “and 3% of which were presumably written by whole life salesmen.”
Also, your tip jar link is down. Granted it’s a pittance of your income, but I did always like seeing that go up each year. Let us know if the link is up again.
Maybe I should put it back up. It kind of seemed silly to have it up since it brought in so little. But I got a tip after publishing this post that was more than all the other tips I’ve gotten in 4 years combined!
Heck, being frugal and paying down debt…you were already 90% of the way there!
I’m hoping to be in Tucson in April at the U of A. They’re still working out details.
Congratulations, WCI. This is an invaluable source of information for the medical profession and others and I’m delighted you are making a few bucks from it. My personal favourites are the life insurance posts, especially the comments section!
I’m a doc (anesthesiologist) in Canada, and although our tax laws and retirement accounts are a bit different, portfolio management and financial planning is universal. I give a copy of your book to all the new staff in my Department and only wish I had the book when I was starting out.
I’ve been following this website since 2012 and used to check it out daily in order to see the new posts. The pages on taxes, backdoor IRAs, and personal finance plans are what hooked me, and I still reference them. However, with three posts per week. I rarely check the site any more becuase it seems to be almost all fluff, often repeating what has already been posted.
We’ll work hard to improve the signal to noise ratio, although one thing to consider is that your experience is exactly like mine- the first few things you learn are really high yield!
Very happy for you!
What is the ratio of paperback : ebooks sold?
What is the general theme of book2? Is it aimed at students/residents again or more experienced?
You are honestly one of my heroes; you have brought a lot of monetary value into my family’s life. Thank you so much.
You are quite deserving to reap what you sow.
It’s about 2:1. The book starts with pre-meds and works its way right through to attendings. The earlier you get it in your career, the more good it can do. It definitely focuses more on accumulation than distribution, of course.