If you regularly follow this site, you’ll probably recall a post I wrote last week critiquing a company called Lamont Trading Advisors, the content of which has since been taken down at the company’s request. I’d like to offer an explanation for what transpired.

I originally received a comment in one of my posts on T-bills last week that I assumed was a spam (a.k.a nuisance) comment. The comment contained no contact or other information, other than a URL link to the company. After visiting the site and considering both its content and the nature of the comment, I came to the conclusion that the company was trying to use a post that I had put time and effort into writing to attract unwary clients to a bad deal. I felt that the fees they charged were unreasonable given the other available options out there for purchasing T-bills and decided to boldly state so in a post.

Yesterday, Paul Lamont, the investment advisor and principal of the firm, contacted me and explained his side of the story. He said that the comment that was left was meant as an answer to another commenter’s question about whether someone could use Treasury Direct to purchase T-bills for an IRA account.

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Just a couple administrative things today: first, Experiments in Finance (this site) is hosting next Tuesday’s Festival of Frugality, so get those juices flowing for submissions! I’ll be trying my best too to come up with a fun or creative layout for it as host. That particular Tuesday will be a busy one for me, so I’m going to stick to the cutoff time — er, hmm, the official site doesn’t seem to list one — but let’s make it 5PM Pacific Time (8PM Eastern) on Monday the 13th.

Second, I wanted to follow up on last week’s drawing of a Christmas blog cartoon. I’m flattered to have been named an honorable mention by Darren at Problogger (who judged the selections), though I really don’t feel like my entry can compare. The winning cartoon shown here with permission was by Ming at Artmaker, and the runner-up was a takeoff of six-figure blogging at Success From The Nest. You can see the full list of cartoons below and the post on the winning entry at Chewing Pencils too. It was fun to see everyone’s take on the challenge of creating a Christmas cartoon with the word “blog” somewhere in it. If Matt holds another group drawing project, I’m sure there will be 10x the number of entries next time. Congrats to Ming, Tony, and everyone, and thanks again Matt!

Full list of entries:

Ming from Artmaker submitted Santa on a laptop
Tony from Success from the Nest submitted a Christmas blob
Adrian from Antrageous Antics submitted one of Santa’s ant elves
William from Artist Hideout submitted Santa as a ProBlogger
Greg from Eeight submitted two cartoons – a long line and a cool sled
Greg from Fauxplay submitted a Desert Kiosk and a Snow Blogger
The two dudes from Mob Motion submitted Santa Strike Squad (The original is worth a mention too – Location, Location and Location)
Chris from Qwertyrash submitted Naughty and Nice and Is Santa Real?
Russ from Toon Blog submitted a Frozen Santa
Bee from Art to Make You Laugh submitted this Christmas Decoration
Dave from The Cartoon Blog submitted a Blog Present
Laura from Out of Context submitted some Blog Reading Reindeer

And Matt from Chewing Pencils kicked the whole thing off with the Changing Face of Christmas

Enjoy!

Earlier in October, I announced that I’d be donating all site earnings to the Grameen Foundation in celebration of Mr. Muhammed Yunus and the Grameen Bank’s 2006 Nobel Peace Prize award. First, thanks to everyone for making it a record earnings month for Experiments in Finance and contributing to this worthy cause. It was the first month I broke the 3-figure barrier and if I can keep this up, maybe can make it to becoming a four-figure blogger.

I’m happy to report that I was wrong in my prediction that I’d have only Adsense earnings to contribute. Here’s how Experiments in Finance’s revenues broke down for October:

Adsense: $85.09
BlogHerAds: $20.52
Amazon: $0.37
Linkworth: $0.33
BlogAds: $3.57

Total: $109.88

Because affiliates have thresholds for disbursing payments, it so happens that I didn’t cross any of them and won’t be getting paid for these amounts for another month at least. But, bad as this might be in terms of revenue recognition, I felt it was right to go ahead and make the donation to the Grameen Foundation as promised. I’m big on transparency, so here’s the screen shot confirming the donation amount (click to enlarge):

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It seems Blueprint for Financial Prosperity will be hitting a big milestone very soon by getting over 500K unique visitors over a period of one-and-half years. Personally, I can’t imagine ever approaching that level, but Jim’s helped me a lot by giving me suggestions and tips on my site, and I am sincerely happy for his good fortune :)

To celebrate, he’s giving away five books at random to a lucky person who leaves a comment on his post with a bad pun/joke in it. So, head on over and give it a try. Oh, and his site’s worth checking out, too.

Just for Jim, here’s my bad pun contribution: “A lot of money is tainted. It taint yours, and it taint mine!” Ok, showing a little too much of my Southern roots here…

Happy weekend everyone!

Matt Glover over at Chewing Pencils, a blog about making money from cartooning, has a group drawing project underway that I just couldn’t resist participating in.

You see, I was the resident cartoonist for my bschool newspaper, where, not surprisingly, I drew comic strip panels related to geeky and fairly obscure bschool-related topics. It was an unpaid side role that I did just for fun, but it was always nice to see faculty and students enjoy my work.

Anyway, the project’s challenge is to draw a Christmas cartoon with the word “blog” in it, and if you’re at all interested, I encourage you to read over the rules and participate. Part of Matt’s challenge is also to sell your work, so I envisioned the cartoon as a Christmas card-format, though I have no expectations of actually pulling in any funds from this :)

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