Stock analysis site Seeking Alpha passes 1m members, and expects to double up within 2 years

It’s not every day we report on investment-related platforms. However, one of the preeminent websites for stock market opinion and analysis, Seeking Alpha, has just announced that it has passed one million members, and is adding over 2,000 members “per market day”, which is a significant milestone for the site.

Seeking Alpha was launched in 2004 by David Jackson, and today it has eighty employees around the world, with a distribution network covering Bloomberg, Yahoo Finance, Google Finance, MSN Money and more. It handpicks articles from the world’s major market blogs, money managers, financial experts and investment newsletters, and publishes around 250 articles each day. It has previously received Forbes’ Best of the Web Award.

Seeking Alpha’s Editors select what it deems the most interesting articles from its regular contributors and submitted items, then the articles are edited for clarity and consistency before being tagged so that they’re searchable by stock ticker, sector and theme. All this is complemented by its own real-time news coverage (Market Currents).

Fully signed-up members receive personalization (watchlists and portfolios, the ability to follow authors and customizable email alerts), discussion tools (comments, StockTalks, and Instablogs), and communication (direct messages).

One million members…and counting

Although it has taken eight years to hit one million members, its recent growth is perhaps more notable. “We’ve doubled our size in less than two years, and at our current growth rate expect to double again in even less time,” says Jackson.

Indeed, Jackson says that Seeking Alpha is “one of the handful of new media startups which has built an outstandingly valuable product,” providing valuable insight and information to the investor community.

“Seeking Alpha has become the largest publishing platform for finance professionals and other financial commentators,” says Jackson. “We now publish about 250 articles per market day, after editorial selection, from about 900 active authors per month. People contribute articles to Seeking Alpha for various reasons: to build exposure and reputation, generate customer leads, and supplement their income – we’re one of the only businesses paying meaningful amounts to a large number of contributors, currently $10 per 1,000 page views. There’s a virtuous circle here: as our readership grows, our value to contributors rises, they contribute more articles for our editors to select from, and that increases our comprehensiveness and value to readers.”

Indeed, as an indicator of the discussion that goes on around Seeking Alpha, Jackson added that it publishes around 80,000 comments per month, after moderation. “Unlike ‘Web 1.0’ message boards, the intellectual framework and tone for comments are set by articles, and article authors actively participate,” he says. “This results in comment discussions that are higher quality and more valuable to investors.”