It’s been a month since I’ve joined EmpireAvenue, and I want to share some best practices for sustainable growth for players. So this isn’t going to be a rehash of Chris Pirillo’s wildly popular newbie tips and this isn’t going to be “how to make a million dollars eaves in 30 days (you can actually spend some real $ and buy those million eaves, if you want — I did!)”. This isn’t even going to be an article about how to “break that $100/share” ceiling, which, now that I’m a month into this game, isn’t what I’m lusting after.
OK, on with the post.
Best practice #1 — Know why you’re playing EmpireAvenue
Are you doing this for the fun of it? To grow your social media scores? Sheer curiosity? Whatever it is, make sure you know why you’re playing the game.
For me, I was curious when I heard EmpireAvenue mentioned on Quora. Then I started playing it as a distraction from constantly checking my (real) stocks. Now I’m playing it because I’m seeing some interesting outcomes from my participation, from meeting new groups of people to becoming more disciplined about my social media activities.
Best practice #2 — Formulate an investment philosophy AND STICK TO IT
Technically, you don’t need to even have an investment approach or philosophy to do well at this game. But if you want to have “sustainable” growth and aren’t willing to quit your job or kiss your personal life goodbye to crouch in front of your computer monitoring social media share prices… then you need to formulate an investment philosophy.
If you like, you can post that on your bio. I have:
If you can’t see the above image, the text for my bio, which includes my investment philosophy, is:
PLEASE READ FOR INVESTMENT PHILOSOPHY & BIO!
ABOUT ME — Visit my Amazon Author Page http://janechin.com/amazon – Author of Practical Leadership for Pharmaceutical Executives, PhD [alternative] Career Clinic, and The Youngest Light.
MY INVESTMENT PHILOSOPHY — I want to create an investment philosophy to make my trading activities more disciplined, and also so that EmpireAvenue doesn’t take over my life. Also, I want to have a consistent approach in buying/selling stocks.
First I look at dividends/share: if your divs are 1% or better, I don’t care if the stock’s share price has decreased, I’ll hold onto the stock unless there is a compelling (and it had to be compelling) reason to sell.
Second, I look at share price: if the divs are less than 1% and your share price is climbing up, I will hold onto the stock. I know how hard it is to keep up both divs and share prices; even I can’t always maintain a 1% daily dividend! This is why I take multiple factors into consideration.
Third, I assess the stock’s potential direction (up or down): I usually look at linked social media profiles and levels of activities across the key ones to gauge whether the stock is likely to increase or decrease.
I know this is an imperfect science and I’m never offended if for any reason you need to sell shares of (e)JANECHIN… I’m here for the long haul and not for a quick buck (since virtual quick bucks don’t do me any good anyway.
Best practice #3 — Make sure your EmpireAvenue share price is based on your current, “normal” social media activity!
This is where I had to learn my lesson the hard way… and why I say that lusting after a high share price is truly not your goal if you’re in this for the long haul. Instead, enduring and sustainable dividend earnings are the goal.
This is because most investors and shareholders are fickle. They see a few cents decrease in your share price and *bam!* they sell off the stock, when in fact, they should be watching the dividend earnings. But maybe that’s their objective: some people want to accumulate as much eaves as possible, because that’s their objective.
Others are interested in having a stable portfolio of dividend-paying stocks and they are more likely to ignore minor fluctuations in share prices as long as the dividends remain above their established threshold (for most, the magic % seems to be 1%). Still others balance a portfolio of “long term/ short term” investments; that’s diversification and perfectly OK.
If you started out gungho on EmpireAvenue and inflate your share prices from all this great activity but then you remembered that you still have a day job and your family’s about to throw your butt out into the streets for ignoring them for so long, your share prices and dividends will suffer once you dial back your activities to “normal person” intensity.
Then the fickle shareholders start to panic and suddenly it’s “oh my god let’s sell off this stock!” and the next thing you know, your share prices tank… although, if you think about it, you can always dust yourself off and bring your social media share prices back up and do this the right way second time around.