The biggest fear...

[GeorgR.]

As so many IMers, i own a bunch of websites and some of them are very highly ranked in Google for specific search terms. A major junk of income is indeed coming from organic traffic where i worked very hard to rank the sites.

As so many IMers, i am also actively "promoting" my own sites. We do the usual like digging, submitting articles to facebook, social bookmarking and so on. Trying to get backlinks, trying to outrank the one or the other competitor.

Now, it is very easy that something disastrous might happen - if someone on those social bookmarking, dig, twitter etc. sites thinks you are a spammer or thinks you are acting against their TOS.

It happened to me ONCE, i admit i did something very stupid...i autoblogged right to my twitter account. Someone didnt like it and my twitter account was deleted. To make things worse, a site which got a few thousands visitors/day at peak times was completely erased from Google's index - from one day to the other together with my twitter account.

Now, i am completely aware that it was part my fault, i just risked it with that particular site and shouldn't have used twitter in that way.

But it makes me worried with the other sites and the usual activities like social bookmarking or link building.

I know that most bookmarking sites got more and more strict, i had a problem with Squidoo not long ago...and Digg also seemed to have gotten more strict. You never know what can happen ;/

[Mike Hill]

Thats why people build lists... your own marketing list in your niche is a business asset that no one can take away from you. You won't be at the mercy of all the services out there you currently rely on heavily.

Structure your business to use services but always build your customer database (list). There are so many people that just don't get it until they are thrown under the bus by Google, Twitter or FaceBook.

[bgmacaw]

Originally Posted by Mike Hill

your own marketing list in your niche is a business asset that no one can take away from you.

The government has done exactly that to marketers that they decided to persecute for one reason or another, usually because, like George with Twitter, they did something public and stupid. Others have run into less serious problems with autoresponder providers, hosting companies and domain registrars.

But, yeah, having your own assets is better than being overly dependent on others' online properties and services, especially a single one. And always have backup plans and multiple streams of income.

[Zeus66]

Mike Hill nails it once again. My wake-up call came earlier this year, when my top grossing Adsense site got hammered by Google. Big chunk of steady income went kaput overnight. It came back, but not all the way. This was not the first time, believe me. So I finally said to myself, 'Self, that's enough of this roller coaster ride, amigo.' That's how I roll when I talk to myself. Don't give me any crap about it.

Where was I? Oh yeah. So I've been on a list building tear since then. The aforementioned Mike Hill has a nifty guide on how to build a list wisely and quickly. Worth picking up.

My list is small, but it's all mine and it is responsive. I'm on track to make about $1 per subscriber per month, and I'm not hammering it with offers. Only once a week or so. What I am doing is kicking myself for not starting a LONG time ago. The list is the answer, folks.

John

[trishworks4u]

yep - huge fear for me. I hit a great niche this year and that site is making up a majority of my income. it got hacked in Sept. and I my head just about exploded.

they say "find something that works and then rinse and repeat". not that simple to find those pay dirt niches. I agree that a list a key element to survival.