New Blogroll Page

I've been working on an extensive blogroll focusing on dividend growth investing (DGI) and other forms of passive income generation. There is a surprising number of blogs out there and I find it fascinating to scan them from time-to-time to see what others think about these topics. Sometimes, someone else's unique way of thinking spawns new ideas in my mind...

There is a wealth of information in such a large collection of blogs. Of course, it requires work to combine and distill the information. In February, I did such an exercise and wrote my most popular post so far. I compiled a spreadsheet containing the combined holdings of 20 publicly available portfolios, counting the number of appearances of each ticker. The 4 most popular dividend growth stocks, based on this composite view, were MCD, CVX, JNJ and KO.

I find that quick access to the public portfolios of other blogs is quite helpful when you just want to see what other bloggers are up to. For this reason, I include a link to public portfolios, where available, in my blogroll page. These links are marked ¶.

In addition, I'm highlighting active blogs that are at least one year old, providing a short description to tell readers what the blog is about. I hope this will be helpful, especially for those new to dividend growth investing. There are 23 25 of these blogs and a total of 88 92 blogs in my blogroll.

To Advertise or Not to Advertise...

You may have noticed that I've also worked a little on the layout of my blog. This is the beginning of a number of changes that I'm planning, including the possible introduction of advertisements. I'm not a great fan of ads in blogs and, so far, I've resisted the temptation to add them. I'm not yet sure if I will do so.

It would be great to get my reader's perspectives on this... especially if you have a blog and are serving ads. Which ad publisher are you using? Google AdSense, Yahoo Publisher, Adbrite, blogadds, or Affiliation Advertisements? Another publisher? How about Text Link Ads? Any words of advise will be appreciated... and bonus points if you share what type of income you typically generate by serving ads. Of course, I'll welcome counterarguments, too! 

Networking

I've been blogging for 20 months now and I feel it is time for me to network more actively with other investors focused on dividend growth investing. One way to do so is to publish original articles on sites with wider readership. To that end, I'm applying for Associate Membership of The DIV-Net, "a network of investors focused on dividend investing, value investing and a long-term buy and hold philosophy." 

I'll also be submitting original articles to Seeking Alpha, a platform for investment research with broad coverage of stocks, asset classes, ETFs and investment strategy. Seeking Alpha has an extensive readership and more than 7,000 contributing authors. Contributing authors receive payment for articles and, of course, exposure to a wide audience.

Are you a contributor to The DIV-Net or Seeking Alpha, or any other sites with wider readership? If so, please share your experiences in the comments below!

Full Disclosure: Long CVX, JNJ