Ian1

"The Company Should Never Have Gone Public" (JRJC)

I agree that "Marketing works when you have a product or service that people want." But you don't have to make your money from selling that product or service (in this case, financial information). That's why advertisers look at the web site hit stats, not the number of subscribers. There are too many examples to list of sites with no paying subscribers that are worth millions becasue of their hit stats. Therefore I don't agree that "Growth in advertising revenue is WORTHLESS unless you have growth in user base". Of course, you do have to have a good product or service that people want to have good hit stats and the declining subscriber base may give an indication or the quality of the site, or maybe a lack of demand for financial information, given the state of the Chinese stock market. Or maybe its still got the best free content, but charges too much for the subcriber services. I presume that Seeking Alpha, and chinastockblog makes money but has no subscribers....