Dont build a house of reeds
If you have known me for any amount of time you will know that I have a daughter. Elizabeth was 3 last weekend and she is a funny, beautiful and smart kid (first one to say she gets her brains from her mum is in trouble).
We have a bedtime routine which involves me reading her what seems to be endless rounds of books. The books change as she gets older, they also change depending on what she has been doing and who she has spoken to.
Something that happened online this week reminded me of one of her books, the three little pigs. I imagine that everyone has read this story, yet many people don’t ever learn from it.
All to many marketers have been teaching people to build sites on squidoo, hubpages,livejournal,blogger and just about any other “web 2.0″ site that seemed to get get rankings easily. You earn money for very little work and that is what everyone wants isn’t it?
Vox.com is closing its doors at the end of Sept 2010
So if you had spent the last 6 months,year, two years or even more building the masterpiece of all sites on Vox it will be gone..yep gone
Sure you can export the posts and add it to a blog on typepad or just about anywhere else, but you will lose the domain strength and the aging and the links that you have built up over the years.
You have no control over this so why do it?
Don’t tell me it won’t happen to Squidoo, Hubpages or anywhere else because you do not know!
Let me say i am not a web2.0 hater, I love Hubpages, they send great traffic the value of the links is high and you can earn some money from them. But if they disappeared tomorrow (and I dont for a minute think they will) my business wouldn’t die, I wouldnt be affected by the income loss enough to panic.
There have been a couple of high profile marketers who have started to move away from Squidoo recently and are now telling people to get their own sites..What Took You So LONG?
If you are doing this for playtime then it doesn’t really matter too much, if you are looking to do this as a business then think of it like a business.
I give you the choice to borrow a bit of property to invest all your time and energy into or you can pay $10 and own it..
nahh its ok I will save the $10 (or $9 with discount codes) for pizza thanks.
How on earth can that make sense to anyone?
So use web 2 for all its worth, links galore, feeder sites out of your ears, just don’t park all your money on it.
If you do then don’t come moaning at me when they shut down and your income is gone!
Paul
EDIT:- I just read this article which talks about downtime on Tumblr, posterous and wordpress.com
They do not have to close they can change the rules like Squidoo did and dump your sites that do agree with the new policy. I know they did it to me.
as I have never made a dime so far, I guess I am blessed never to have experienced in income drop. Just kidding.
Whatever happened to those 10 sites you were building with your if I had $1000 to invest plan?
There are a million free sites out there as well free PR services that you can use. Sure, they might go away eventually, but that doesn’t mean you didn’t get business during the time they were in business. Still worth the “trouble” as I see it
Eric
As feeder sites yes they are worth it, I use hubpages extensively and make money with them as well as getting good links to my sites. I use posterous, I use a few other places as link builders.
I am not saying that they are not worth the trouble, what I want to stop seeing is people ONLY using them. We all know people who have had Squidoo lenses earning them a fortune on Monday and be closed down on Tuesday.
If they had been using some of the squid power to promote their own site AS WELL as enjoying the income on squidoo they wouldn’t be in such dire straits when their lens was canned.
Paul
p.s that is a nice looked outdoor sports gear site you have there
I alway beleived on having your own site, give you more control of content. Good article.
Hi Paul,
Interesting reading – it would be scary to some who have everything invested in one place. Isn’t it being stressed at wpgoldmine that you shouldn’t put “all your eggs into one basket”? I mean, if you spread out the “love”, then if something like this VOX fiasco happens, it wouldn’t impact you as bad, because you would have links coming in from all over.
Hi Paul
You’re absolutely right re the sites/services other than your own.
From past experience, one thing to watch out for is Ed Dale’s annual 30 Day Challenge. Don’t get me wrong, I like what Ed does, especially the doing a whole bunch for free every August.
BUT the problem is this. He teaches some new strategy, a bazillion people jump onto it, and there’s an almost immediate backlash. A few years ago Tumblr was featured, and all of a sudden wasn’t effective any more. Not sure what the solution is, other than stop running the course, which would be a shame.
Just my 2c worth…
Philip
I love the 30 day challenge, I was lucky enough meet Ed once and he comes across as a real nice guy.
I imagine they have learned a lot from the use of Tumblr, they recommend posterous this year (i think they recommended it last year as well).
These are all just spokes in the wheel to keep you moving forward, they should not be the whole wheel.
Paul
Our Father and Mother told us a long time ago, we should never put all our eggs into one basket. These websites have their place in helping us to build our online businesses. However, we ought not build our businesses with them at the core.
Thanks and God bless.
Very well put Randy, much more succinct than I put it!
I agree with you , Paul.
Plus, web 2 sites are good for generating traffic while your own site is getting up to speed.
I try to send them a few backlinks to prop up their rankings. Your trackback tool helps with that.
Cheers, Alco
Building a website and using all resources is what having a web business is all about. Free and easy does not always constitute good business sense. However, if you build a strong site based on excellent information, you can build links in and out from all sources and there is no backlash.
Paul has some great software and it has given me another resource to use building links and you have to have…..
I could not agree more – and believe in diversity of everything, even income sources to keep things nice and safe.
If you need $2000 a month, reach $2000 a month with adsense, and then aim for $2000 a month with clickbank and the same for amazon, then if one source goes you still prosper.
Keep diversifying all avenues – promotion from articles/hub/forums etc, then diversify your hosting in case a hots gets hit – diversify the way a site gets built/script in case of hackers – diversify(if possible) the currency you get paid in, in case of currency related problems that affcet the world, diversify data centers.
Diversify backups – backup sites to online resources – to offline resources such as a DVD or usb stick or even a tape drive.
Just one or 2 steps will help, but all the above helps to protect you in life long term.
cheers
shaun