It was a busy Tuesday in the Landis household, as I had my first day back at work after Christmas vacation, and with my son’s 5th birthday coming up tomorrow, we needed to make a Costco run to pick up some supplies for his big day.

After making the trek through the store with my two sons in tow, getting the loot loaded into the mini-van, and then freezing my ears off filling gas in sub-zero wind chills, I got a nice surprise when I checked my phone and saw an alert from Twitter.

Enclosed was a message from Lewys Thomas and a link to his blog post highlighting his picks as the Top 100 Blogs For Dividend Investors That Will Drive Returns. To my surprise, he called me out as #25 on the list, along the likes of some of my favorite authors including: Brad Thomas, Jason Fieber, Chuck Carnevale, and Mr. Money Mustache.

To say that I feel honored to be mentioned among them is quite an understatement. Never in my wildest dreams did I think my passion for investing, and interest in sharing my thoughts on it, would earn me notoriety or any sort of following. It was simply a way for me to continue learning about the market and hopefully make a few bucks a month to pay for my fantasy sports habit.

Now, nearly four years after penning my first piece, I have over 3,000 followers on Seeking Alpha, 99 published articles that have generated a half-million pages views, and this sparkling new website. All I’ve ever wanted to do was share my passion about the stock market with others, and I am humbled and ecstatic that people value my work.

I’m hopeful that this website can live up to my dream for it (and the ranking bestowed to it by Lewys), and that it can prove useful to others trying to build up the courage to start their own portfolios.

We all start from scratch, here’s to continued learning and making the most of what we’re blessed with!

Best wishes,

Eric