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As of 2009, there are more than 10,000 English-language finance and investment blogs on the web. More than 1,000 of these are updated daily and it is often hard to know which are worth tracking on a daily or weekly basis. While determining whether a blog is worth following there are four key benchmarks to review:

The author's incentive
Uniqueness of content
The blog's sources
The author's professional consistency.

These considerations help separate the trustworthy blogs from the unreliable websites. Let's examine these benchmarks in detail.


What's the Motive?
The first aspect to examine is the writer's vested interest. Owning a blog can offer an abundance of profitable opportunities such as hosting paid advertisements, complimentary invitations to events and discounts on various products. While many of these business agreements are ethical, some blogs may violate readers' trust by selling them on a product that benefits the author.

Some blog authors may go so far as to praise their own firms. Unfortunately, some readers might interpret such statements as unbiased endorsements of the firm. However, many blogs address this problem by transparently disclosing their incentives for promoting the company. An example of providing disclosure is "I am a partner at Third Party Financial Planners X, a firm that strives to be one of the best in the business. For a history of our returns please speak with a representative of the company."

What's the Content?

Another benchmark for assessing whether a blog is worth following is whether the blog provides a unique service to the reader. This aspect is often relative to readers' needs. Some of the most popular blogs simply sort through the day's events and summarize the most relevant information to the blog topic. These blogs may provide only a portion of the article or report along with a link so readers can read the whole article. Other blogs draw readers because they provide their own unique commentary on news items, often relying on their expertise within the industry to add their own spin on the story.


What Are the Author's Sources?
One of the most controversial issues about blogging is how or if the author cites sources. Many blogs use another website's content but do not cite the source, which would be considered plagiarism by journalistic and legal standards. Yet some blogging proponents argue that blogs do not have to adhere to such strict guidelines for citation because they are different from newspapers or books. While the citation requirements may be more lenient for blogs, most bloggers agree that authors should cite the source of their content in some way. A simple link can pass for citation, but the most careful bloggers often include a link and explanation of the use of the source, such as "The data shown here is from X Research Company and was displayed in its report entitled "Hedge Fund Statistics 2009", which can be purchased at the following link ..."


Who Is This Guy?
The final aspect to consider when evaluating a blog is the professional consistency of the blog. If the blogger provides some information about his or her professional background, this is a good start. Do a little research to find out whether the blogger works in the industry or has any professional accreditations or knowledge. However, keep in mind that many good finance and investing blogs, particularly personal finance ones, are written by everyday Joes.

In addition, if one article from the blog is highly professional and insightful, this may not be true for all the blog articles. A financial blog author focused on investing may also write about a variety of topics from family matters to the latest phone gadget. Upon first visit, a reader may see one of the investment articles and decide to subscribe to the blog, assuming future articles will be similar. Then, the subscriber is bombarded with posts about the author's new dog, bad day at work or other irrelevant things that a reader looking for investment insight probably isn't interested in.



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