The poster you quote was saying JD Roth at Get Rich Slowly sold his blog (though he continues to blog there), not Jacob at ERE.
He was saying part of the reason JD can now travel is that he sold his blog and only works as a writer there now, not owner running everything.
I know about JD selling to Quinstreet but I got the impression that our vaporizing poster was referring to ERE. I guess I'll never be able to check what I was reading, though, will I?
I agree. That was a large part of what motivated me to write. Now, start thinking about what you're going to do once you've shared everything you know and it's all out there in the form of a thousand or however many blog posts and a book. Do you keep repeating yourself? Do you deal well with repetitive tasks? I don't. Others do.
Gotta admit, Jacob, I feel a little sorry for you if that's the logic you're using on yourself. You seem to feel that you've thoroughly explored the topic and you're done. You're putting it up on the shelf and moving on.
Meanwhile I've put up over 23,000 posts here (admittedly of varying quality), written a book, written almost 200 blog posts, and started on the second edition. It's been over seven years and I still feel as though I'm just getting started. Every day here a poster manages to find a new freakin' way to get started on the road to ER. Many of them also find a way to screw it up, which helps us figure out what else not to do.
Apparently I do handle repetitive tasks, but without repeating myself word-for-word. I can find something fresh about the subject, or approach it from a new angle, or (worst case) analyze someone else's lessons learned (whether the lessons were new or not).
Your writing strikes me as being a fairly "old soul" for your chronological age. However you also may have a trend of performing a certain occupation to a certain point and then dropping it in favor of starting something new. I'm at a point in my life where I'm trying to master activities that I'll need to last me the rest of my life. I doubt I'll be sparring taekwondo in my 70s but my reflexes & proprioception will be much better than the average 70s guy. I doubt I'll be surfing the Triple Crown, either, but I'll be the studliest geezer in the lineup. Heaven help me, I'll be replacing toilets and fixing leaky faucets. And I suspect that I'll still be writing about ER and the lessons we've learned from the Great Recession.
You know you'll never completely plumb the depths of kendo or sailing. I'm not sure why you feel you're tapped out on ERE.
Your experiences are (and will be) different than mine. However I've watched my spouse go from an organization's volunteer to its paid employee. The paycheck was for 10 hours/week, and she felt pressured to take it because otherwise the non-profit wouldn't pay the other people in that position. We pay the taxes on it and donate the rest to charity (which tends to make the taxes a wash anyway).
When she was a volunteer she was a shining star. As soon as she signed up for that paycheck, however, the non-profit's HQ started treating her like a wage slave. "We need your time card." "We need your W-4." "We need you to sign these 401(k) forms." "We need you to fill out this database". "We need you to phone in for this training conference call..." and on & on. It was no longer "Thanks!" but rather "Now go do this." Oddly enough none of the things they "need" have anything to do with what she does for the non-profit's beneficiaries. When she was a volunteer, she could ignore the petty admin and HQ had to put up with it. As a paid employee there's an implicit quid pro quo which both sides feel obligated to honor. Luckily she's learning to ignore the petty admin all over again, but she had to overcome several decades of serious psychological conditioning.
So I hope things work out for you when your employer discovers that their plans & goals differ from your objectives. I hope the honeymoon never ends.
Also, what will happen if the blog becomes big is that the "douchebag"-count, which measures personal attacks/libel/people posting wrong presumptions about you as if they were facts/etc., increases from an average of 1/year to 1/day or 1/hour on some days. Will it still be fun to run a blog? How thick is one's skin? How thick is the skin of friends and family? There's a big difference between a small blog and a big blog. I'd say "year 2" or 20000 visitors/month of blogging was the best time: You're big enough to attract the positive people but not too big to attract the negative people.
Throw me in that big-time briar patch. Moderating a blog is one-tenth the hassle of moderating a discussion board. I hope I get to check that ratio for myself at a much larger scale.
I admit that 20 years of Navy nuclear power have left us submariners with epidermis layers that are envied by elephants and rhinos.
To answer your other question, I still own all the rights to everything: The blog is mine and the book is mine. That's not to say that I'll guarantee that I'm immune to selling those rights, but the price would be severe. I'll keep recycling posts on the blog. Some prefer a daily dose instead of just reading all the archives. The reposter works for this purpose. Frankly I'm surprised that more bloggers aren't using it if they're writing timeless material anyway.
OK, thanks.
I suspect bloggers avoid reposters out of fear that Google will dump their rankings or that their audience will decamp. I have to admit that I check the date of your posts before I read them, and if they're from 2008/2009 then they get skimmed a lot faster than your recent posts... especially if you're using phrases like "current values" or "the latest economic news"
Most bloggers might have blogged for current events, too, which would be rendered stale in a few months. It takes thoughtful consideration to write with analogies & examples that age well. I'll have to take a look at designing a "classic Nords" archive.
Pursuit of most skills at the highest levels requires becoming a professional in that field. You pay dues through work, but in return get access to experienced peers, mentors and their resources. The end result is performance that far exceeds all but the most exceptional hobbyists.
Imagine if I developed an interest in submarines and tried to be an expert submariner without learning through the Navy or a major defense contractor. I bet my skill set, even with years of study, would be laughable.
I'm a smart guy, but still young and short on life experience. Maybe I'll come around to your perspective as I learn more about the world.
You're right, if you wanted to learn about submarines then you'd train with the best! That's how Japan and Republic of Korea developed their submarine forces-- they sent their crews through U.S. trainers and exercises.
I think the difference is the paycheck. Like UncleMick says, if you're donating your paycheck to charity then you truly love your work. And if you choose to go back to work but you also choose to keep the paychecks, then you open yourself to accusations of hypocrisy.
"I'm FI and ER'd, but I want to pursue a new skill to its highest level by seeking paid employment." Well, sure, buddy, but how do you convince your audience that you're still FI and ER'd? Where's your credibility? Copies of your tax returns? Signing over your paychecks to the Gates Foundation?
But when someone sets out for such a hallmark standout goal of retiring in their early 30s, and makes a point of doing it on such a shoestring budget, then 'returns to work out of boredom', it would be like someone training for a marathon, then running the race's first 2 miles at a 4:25/mile pace, and then quitting because they were so far ahead of the pack that "it wasn't worth the challenge of continuing". In all probability, they wouldn't have been able to continue that 4:25/mile pace for the rest of the 24.2 miles...
I'm all for people taking on challenges, and continuing to work to build buffers to add to their stash to minimize the chance they'll ever have to return to work once they reach FI - but I'm not quite sold on trying to make a name for yourself precisely because of an "early retirement extreme" concept...then hitting the reboot button because of 'boredom'. If he had retired with a portfolio of several million, kept withdrawals to under 3%, had amazing traveling/social experiences and still chose to return to work for the 'challenge', I might be a little more convinced than someone who lived on half of a shoestring budget and was trying to woo a significant other....
This is much more elegantly (and tactfully) stated than my previous comment. And, again, it gets to the core of the issues surrounding the paycheck.
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