Thursday, July 29, 2010

After Newbie Row



There have been a few posts out today about how to get jump started on Empire Avenue, getting your profile done and taking advantage of being on the Newbie board. My fave of course being from (DLB) You can catch it here

So now what? Well, you more than likely haven't been here for the crazy newbie bump that was happening. People would swarm in and buy lots and lots of shares in the new people, get their stock to rise and then sell them. This gave you lots of eaves to play with, but wasn't great for morale.


I will let you in on a secret. I started Empire Avenue about 2 days after the friends and family reset. No one had any money. I wasn't  even getting 50 share buys. It was 5 and 10 share buys all over. I couldn't really use Twitter yet. I had pretty much no twitter followers, no blogs, just a Facebook. And I climbed the boards. And I did it with very little eaves.

 If you can find the really old posts on (JOSH)'s blog,  in the comments you will find exactly what I was doing. He was one of the first people I began talking to on here. He wasn't talking AT me like a couple people were, telling me what to do, he was conversing WITH me, debating with me on his blog while we figured out portfolio strategy and how dividends worked. We didn't even follow each other's advice. He did his thing and his stock picks and I wandered around doing my own thing. We have just hit it off since day one. 

I started exploring the site, and the people. I read their blogs, said hi, had conversations with them. I bought a few shares in the new people. I stayed away from the leader board. I couldn't afford them. 10 shares in a new person beat 1 share in a leader. Those new people were stuck too. They bought you back, they said hi and they are still the ones I talk to on my twitter, the ones I have connected with the most. 

I didn't have a huge amount of money so I spread myself out to as many circles as I could. We didn't have communities yet. I would suggest joining a couple communities, saying hi and joining conversations. Join too many communities and you don't know what is happening in any of them. 

I would also start checking out people's twitter streams when you are buying them. If a person has very few followers, they probably need some. Follow them, say hi and start a conversation. Show them around twitter and both your stocks rise. Simply following people to get followers won't help you much. Try to say hi and learn a bit about them. 

I also paid attention to what my stocks were doing, I flipped stocks, watched dividends and made my portfolio work for me. A lot of people still don't get it, but selling is part of empire avenue. Holding stocks in people is a luxury. You have to work on your portfolio a bit to make the eaves for the upgrades. 

Holding stocks and buying leaders are best saved for later. Trust me, if you are a good stock, and you are rising and making me money, I am going to buy you whether you buy me back or not. I don't even expect it. I would honestly rather you go buy 8 new people instead, get some buy backs and get your stock up than come and invest with me, go broke and get frustrated. I am making money off your stock, you owe me NOTHING. 

However, you are more than welcome to come say thank you, come check out a blog, comment on it, say hi on twitter, whatever, but don't feel you have to buy me. I am doing just fine. Making those kind of connections is honestly going to get you father up in stock price. You will get more twitter followers conversing with you, more profile views and comments, and you will appear more in the headline feed so other people will come look and see if they should be buying you too. 

I think a lot of the coverage really undervalues the connections you make on Empire Avenue, and it breaks my heart a little. It is really what I have loved the most about the site. I am interacting with so many people I never would have and learning so many things. The things you can do with it if you have a business are mind boggling. But first you have to understand it and not play it just to play it. Once you get past the game step and step into the connecting world, you have already won the game. And your stock price will reflect it. 

8 comments:

  1. Great post Fray, I am sure it will help lots of people, I was also one of the newbies, and I to had to learn the hard way!

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  2. Good stuff, Fray. Empire Ave has honestly been responsible for me actually diving full bore in to social media, and I'm finding that I...(gulp)...enjoy it.

    Still not sure if that's good or not...:)

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  3. yeah I went off on a tangent about that, I took that out, it will be a blog post or 2 for later.. it is really crazy what it has done.

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  4. Cheers for the mention, Fray. Seems to be my day for mentions in blogs lately but you're one of the few with something nice to say, haha

    I've actually just cleaned up my blog (www.idreamdigital.com/josh) -- people can now go back into those old posts your talking about without wading through my tweets as well. Maybe some nuggets still worth knowing in there and if nothing else they can find out witty banter on the topics of dividends, branding and more :)

    El: i too am a late adopter of social media, at least in so much as my business is concerned. Empire Ave has been a crash course in the value of just that.

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  5. As always Fray, great post! Although, I was a little disappointed in the lack of swearing, cuss words and expletives in this one ;)

    I really appreciate when you highlight the "connecting with others" value of EAV as opposed to the "play it to win" mentality many folks often have. My hope is that every new Empire Ave member finds their way to your blog and takes that viewpoint to heart.

    I've been wondering, as the social dynamic changes with more and more people joining, do you sense that "connecting" is actually now becoming a greater focus amongst players (both old and new) or is the greater influx making it harder to "really connect" with folks?

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  6. Yeah sorry about the lack of cursing. :( I will try harder next time lol.

    I really have very few play it to win moments, and that is just when I get my panties in a knot. I really do focus on my portfolio more than share price.

    The shareprice has always just happened. It boggles my mind, really. When the bashers say I have no content, they are right, but maybe that is what people like. I have no agenda, I am here to have fun and meet people. Maybe people are just sick of being sold to? I dunno, but one of these days I will just give in and stop trying to wrap my brain around it.

    I am having a harder time connecting with all of the new people coming in, but then do we we really need to connect with everyone, of do we find those nuggets, the people who interest you and have something to say you want to hear and build that relationship more rather than having mostly useless connections with everyone?

    I am still meeting and talking to one or 2 new people a day, and really by the time we connect they are valued in the 20-40 range, so by then they have found their footing and been through the overload of information and can finally get to connecting and talking to people.

    Once we can search the personal communities, I think that should start changing that as well. Right now, people with similar interest still have a hard time connecting and if they can hit those communities and start interacting I think the connection part with be way easier.

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  7. Like beauty, I say "content is in the eye of the beholder." Your content is your perspective, your experience, and on occasion, those posts where you become a bitchy, stark-raving-mad lunatic ranting about how everything on Empire Avenue is unfair to (e)POOKA and everyone is a hater, but I digress ;)

    A working search function for communities will definitely help make it easier to find the nuggets. But it definitely has become more difficult, or at least more time consuming, to sort through the masses to find those of interest.

    Got any tips for efficiently sorting the chaff from the wheat? I find myself using the interests section on my profile more frequently now, seems way easier to click on one of my own interests and see who pops up, than to do any kind of searching anywhere else.

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  8. The last week or so, esp since this has opened up, has been crazy for me at home. My fiance is leaving for Afghanistan for a year, he leaves on Sunday, so as much as I seem here all the time, I am not really. So much to do in very little time.

    I have pretty much been buying up the newbies with feeds hooked up, upgrading a bit and responding to those finding me more that going out and searching for people. My brain can't handle more than that at the moment. In 2 weeks I should be able to think it through again.

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