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....

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

While I think we are all fairly under-whelmed with the earnings results, I don't understand the comment above - increasing traffic by advertising the site and then selling advertising is a standard business plan for most, if not all, websites. They are not eating themselves, as a result of this very legitimate business strategy, as they are still making money even with increased advertising expenses.

Although I do tend to agree why go public if you <b>just</b>... use the money for a buy back - but they are not just using the money for this - see increases in advertising and product development expenses. Also, I note that the share buy-back was decided by the previous management team.

However, I am concerned by the size of the contribution to the results of the currency fluctuation, although if anything the Yuan should continue to go up against the dolar and JRJC should continue to benefit as its earnings are in Yuan. I also have some basic concerns about the image of the website as it does seem to use just about every possible aspect of bad website design, such as pop-ups and other "mouse catching" tricks that don't seem to befit serious financial website, and which must annoy regular subscribers.