Online Business Risks – Are we too dependant on Google?
Ajith | Jul 2009 | Internet Marketing, Make Money Online, Miscellaneous
This may be a controversial topic (and I hope this page gets indexed by Google)! However, I have the responsibility to write about this issue as a Make Money Online blogger because I have been sensing the risk of getting too dependent on Google when it comes to doing business online.
A lot of people believe that online business, in general, is a risk free and low investment get-rich-overnight option. Of course, I agree that in most cases it is a low investment business option but the chances of making it really big depends a great deal on certain factors and constraints most of which is enforced by Google.
Parameters that drive your online business success and risks involved
The following are some of the attributes that defines the success of your online business :-
#1 WWW Visibility
The visibility here means the search visibility. Unless you get good enough search traffic to your landing pages or blog, you may not be able to convert them into money. As a matter of fact, today most of the search traffic originates from Google and hence all the Search Engine Optimization tricks that you do is only towards impressing Google. I did not mean to say that SEO is bad – it can be considered as a campaign or propaganda that you anyway have to do for offline businesses as well. However, in most online cases it is biased and targeting Google alone.
#2 Monetization options
Most of the monetization (probably except email/social marketing) options available in the online business are highly linked to the page ranks and search ranks defined by Google. Be it paid reviews, text-link-ads or private ad sales, your advertisers will not pay you unless you have impressive page ranks in the books of Google.
And the leading PPC advertisement option – AdSense – is from Google and hence for many bloggers it’s like Google is the employer. Many of these AdSense subscribers, like my blogger friend Pradeep from the tech news blog, get banned from AdSense with no satisfactory explanation from the biggest search engine business on earth.
#3 Feed Subscription
Most of the blogs and websites use feed distribution services provided by Google Feedburner. Have you ever thought how life will be if this kind of free services discontinued? Would you like to miss your ’3000 readers by Feedburner’ chicklet anytime?
#4 Online security
Most online business is vulnerable to hacking and phishing and hence your success depends on how good is your backup plan and risk mitigation.
#5 Social networks/media
Of late, the social media marketing is gathering momentum. Of course, Google’s own social network (Orkut) is not a big player here but Google can decide what sites to index or even whether to extend its advertising services to the competition. This may sound like extreme thinking but nothing impossible.
#6 Government policies
Of course, we know that the social networks and blogs do not have the same freedom and rights in all parts of the world. There are many countries that have banned several social networks and blog sites thereby putting those online entrepreneurs’ lives into misery.
#7 Email policies
If you are talking about Email marketing and campaigns your success will last only till the time somebody marks you a spammer and that gets picked by various Email filter software. With more and more open web patrolling (like OpenDNS) gathering momentum, the risk is increasing.
#8 Verifiability
When you go online, many times you get to deal with unverified partners/vendors. I had a bitter experience earlier this year when an advertiser would not pay for the paid reviews I wrote for him. The case is the same with many services that you might offer online as well.
Over to you…
Now my questions are:
Will your online business still survive even if the Google services go down? Can you think of any alternative monetization instruments for your blog even though there are no search visitors?? How sustainable is your online business in general???
(God save beach bum who used to make $237,000 from Laptop before the recession hit!)
We are definitely dependent on Google, but I think it’s hard to take the leap to say that we’re “too” dependent. SEO biased towards improving only Google rankings will still inevitably raise your rankings on search engines in general, since competing search engines these days and in the future will have to have an algorithm at least resembling PageRank in some way. If we lose the other services that help out so much, something else will replace them. If Google gets taken down, it’ll probably be by something better that replaces it (hard to imagine right now), and so that probably can’t hurt so much. The worst thing we’ll have to do is adapt a little bit.
Just thinking of some places that would still be able to direct traffic to your site without Google, there are sites like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, AdWido, and so on. You can rely on creating an image on these sites and not be totally reliant on Google.
You say “Most of the monetization options available in the online business are highly linked to the page ranks and search ranks defined by Google. Be it paid reviews, text-link-ads or private ad sales, your advertisers will not pay you unless you have impressive page ranks in the books of Google.”
Yet people buy huge amounts of products and services online–and even small players get a slice of this. This is independent of ad revenue (albeit strongly related to SEO ranking).
I’m curious about the balance between online ad revenue and sales of products and services online–esp. for small players.
mvh
Mike Van Horn´s last blog post… How much would you pay for the book I’m writing on direct mail marketing?
Definitely make money online blogs depend on search engines. not social traffic.
social traffic convert less.
Rahul´s last blog post… Blogging Earn Cash For Life
It depends actually, how you explain JohnChow? He made over $40k from his blog without Google search engine (As he was banned by Google 3years ago). It depends how you do it, I’m curious how he did it as well.
But you’re right, MMO blog need the help of search engine, else you need to be like JohnChow.
Regards,
Lee
I agree with most of the things you have written. Just like you, even I am so damn dependent on Google for organic traffic, adsense and feedburner. But then, it has so happened just because Google is so dominating over others in multiple aspects. But I am not too much worried either, will tell you why through my next post soon
Thanks for feeding me with a topic to write about
I believe in WWW visibility i.e. proper niche content for proper kind of people. They would search you from google. And if they liked your 1-2 articles, then they become your subscriber and then finally a fan who works as linkarati.
Social media traffic doesnt provide such value.
Definitely we are dependent on Google…
TechZoomIn´s last blog post… Most Useful Facebook Application and Pages
Google is a major factor to be a blog a success. especially for new blogs, they depend a lot on google
IndianCashMaker´s last blog post… Easy Contact Forms for Blogspot Users
yeah google is our life partner in blogging
teratips´s last blog post… 3 Reasons to Use a Unique Theme for Your Blog
Dependency on google is huge at this point in time….but i believe everything is need based, if google is not around – we all will find some other ways to carry on our business.
Cheers
Sandeep
Yes we are dependent on google.
Do you know any other way than following google.
Please suggest
I worship Google like god for my earning from AdSense, Referring sites visitors and your unique visitors never click your ads.
John Chow is exceptional.
Our ultimate reliance on Google is something that makes me a tad nervous, but with Bing gaining popularity, Wolfram Alpha making its appearance, and twitter taking off I feel that Googles impact will dramatically lessen over the next couple of years.
I think we and most of the website owners are dependent on Google. Its a bit scary to know this fact. While there are also other companies.. Google tend to control the giant share of our income.
Being dependent on one major source is the risk of the internet income. However I think in the coming years we will have to see more other opportunities.
Yeah i agree with you Kurt ..Intelligent comment
Very much so. Even if you don’t have a website and are only doing affiliate marketing you are still dependent on AdWords. If it’s your own blog then AdSense does bring in the most money. Apart from this we are most dependent on Google to bring in the traffic without which nothing much can be accomplished.
@Simon, thanks for your views. Yep, at the moment it’s hard to imagine Google not being the top SE. However, what I was thinking (aloud) was whether we are prepared for a situation where your monetization, traffic etc are not majorly dependant on Google.
@Mike, One of the things that changed with my blog (I just posted about it – inspired by your comment, in fact) is that my income from Google PR (paid reviews, links) and AdSense is only about 10-15% of my total blog income. This was not by choice, but it just happend somehow. Affiliate/Referral income can be dramatically high – even for small blogs – if you find the right products to sell.
@Rahul, mostly true
@Lee, John Chow established his readerbase via Google only (initially) then he wanted to challenge Google and actually lost out a bit of traffic, I guess. He probably didn’t decrease the income mainly because of the viral or multilevel (lifetime) affiliate products that he sold via his blog.
@Raju, I liked your statement. Make hay while the sun shines and then move on if conditions are different, right?
@Google Tricks, thanks for your comment. So you firmly believe that Google (or SE) traffic converts the best
@Lax, @Tushar, @teratips, @Sandeep, thanks for the similar views. @Sandeep, will there be any risk if suddenly you have to move away from Google?
@Chetan, I am trying to figure out. As I mentioned in another comment above, my income from Google products is very low right now
@Shanker, How can you love Google and admire John Chow at the same time?
just kidding – Good to learn that JC has finally patched up with Google via Matt.
@Jacques, I am not sure if Google will loose the No.1 position anytime soon or even in two years. But I strongly feel the need to have similar market shares for top two or three SEs so that we bloggers and online income earners are at lesser risk.
@Kurt, I agree. I am also thinking hard to see how the Google dependency on income can be minimized while I do not want to really challenge Google’s current stature.
@Ronnie, I do agree
@Rajiv, absolutely… It still provides the jumpstart in some way or other.
Thank you all for your comments and sorry for the late reply. I have been lazy!
In PPC advertising Google is the best but most expensive. I found yahoo is must more affordable than Google. Now, BING from Microsoft is in action with it’s on PPC program. I tried it with $50. I got a very good conversion rate but with few hits. As people visit more and more at MSN, hits will increase.
Mairsh
I think we are too dependent on google and right now we don’t really have a choice. There is an article in the current issue of Wired that the US Dept. of Justice is starting to look at google as the next Microsoft and it might not be too long before we see a monopoly lawsuit against them. This may or may not change anything but I think over the years to come they won’t have as much power as they do now.
I totally depend on google adsense and SEO.
I don’t have good set of advertisers/paid reviews/links or affiliates
@Mairsh, welcome to DollarShower! You are right, AdWords is kinda expensive. In a way, that’s good because that’s why AdSense yields a lot
@Kim, Right! Monopoly is the right word and now the question is, if Google becomes an equal player as the top three or four, are we well-prepared to do that change management?
What would it look like for us to be less dependent on Google, with more competitive options? Would these various options all have their own proprietary systems and search strategies and audiences and be incompatible? Would we have to go to Google, Bing, Yahoo, or whatever for different kinds of search or audience? Or would they be build on some kind of common platform as they are now? But if they are on common platforms, how might another one (say Bing) differentiate itself from Google?
Though most monetization option is linked to Google, alternatives to it are still available. People have yet to explore other forms of money making, such as CPA marketing, where alternatives to Adwords/Google could also work towards profit.
@Mike, My take would be to depend on various search engines for traffic, but to convert that you use multiple options (private ads, reviews, referral-affiliate links) than just big online advertisement companies’ products alone!
@Richael, CPA is definitely the route along with own product reviews and private ads.
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