A shameless plug

My original goal when I started the website Canadian Value Stocks years ago was to make money. I was young, idealistic, and quite frankly, an idiot. I thought I’d write some bullshit, put a few ads up, and be rolling in dough.

That never came to fruition. After the biggest problem (not many people looked at the site), the second biggest was that I felt shame putting up many ads, I didn’t want to write sponsored or promotional posts (which I was offered surprisingly frequently), I didn’t want to market myself, and I didn’t want to put in the effort of making a marketable site.

I wanted to swear when it felt right. I wanted to write conversationally. I wanted to write about what I wanted, not what I thought would get views or clicks. I wanted to not write anything at all when the mood struck or when the weather was nice or when I wanted to spend more of my free time lifting weights or when I couldn’t think of anything interesting to write - I had no shortage of reasons not to spend my free time researching and writing.

Then I more or less gave up writing. I didn’t miss it much. I had a few things I thought were worth saying, but figured I could say them on Twitter or find some avenue to communicate them in the future if I felt the need (that’s how this Substack came to be). Since I didn’t want to write, and the website continued to cost me money, I gave it up. I felt no regrets. I copied and pasted a few of the old posts in case I ever wanted to refer back to them, but for the most part I figured Canadian Value Stocks was dead and that part of my life was over.

Then people started reaching out, asking me if I had a copy of this post or that. I shared with them the Google Doc that I had copied all those posts into. They asked me my thoughts on Dream or Morguard or Knight Therapeutics or…. I helped if I could or told them I had no thoughts I sort of don’t do that anymore.

People asked me why. I said I was bored of researching and writing, didn’t want to do it much, was happy with my portfolio, and the hobby had done nothing but cost me money. While the dialogues I had were wonderful, I figured I could get that same interaction and benefit from Twitter.

Then people started telling me they’d pay me. I said I didn’t want to be paid, I didn’t want to feel obligated to write, or to have thoughts on subjects I didn’t want to, or to disappoint someone when they asked me my opinions and I couldn’t help. Some people said they’d pay me without any expectation in return.

On my second Meandering Post on Dream Unlimited I got the idea to just make a subscription option available. I didn’t want anything to come from it. Heck, I made very sure that if people paid a subscription, they wouldn’t expect any value from it. Here’s what the subscription page looked and looks like:

I was just curious. And there were people who were insistent they wanted to pay me. This made it possible, and I got to see if those insistences were genuine. Surprisingly, a few people did. You guy know who you are, thank you very much.

Still more people asked if paying me would prompt more writing. I said no. But I got the curiosity again. So that’s what this is.

If you receive this email, you may value my writing. I don’t think what I am doing is necessarily worth paying for. It may have been when I wrote more regularly (though I doubt that too), but now where I write irregularly, possibly never, I really don’t think it is. But some of you disagree, and bless you for doing so.

This email/post is simply to let you know there is a method of paying for this. I’m not asking you to. I’m not going to provide more value (assuming I provide any value at all) to those who do pay to subscribe. I’m not going to write if I don’t want to just because someone is paying a subscription. You will get exactly what people who pay nothing get. Honestly, I very rarely pay for something that I can get for free - I usually give something when admission is “by donation”, I used to give $20 to Simpletax for doing my taxes before it was bought by Power Corp, but those are the only examples I can think of. I’m pretty sure if I were in your shoes, I wouldn’t pay anything.

But I know some people are different than me. If you are, and you think I have provided value to you, or might in the future, you have options now.

As I said, I want to feel no obligation to write, hence not requiring anyone to pay for anything. If you do pay something, you may cancel later. That’s fine (and again, it’s what I would do).

Anyway, I rambled a lot longer than I planned to. If you choose to pay for this, I very much appreciate it, more than I can say with words. But I don’t expect you to, and you’ll still receive exactly what you’ve been getting from me whether you do so or not.

Thanks,

Tyler

PS. There’s nothing behind the paywall below, it’s simply a convenient way to put the button in this post.