How many baskets are your business eggs in?

by JimMichael

Posted: 12 years ago 14 replies

INTERNET MARKETING

Today's Aweber outage (which thankfully didn't affect us) just goes to show how dangerous putting all of your business eggs in one basket can be.

I did a worthwhile task today:-

Listed all of the third-party services I rely on to conduct business.
Assessed what I'd do if they went down/bankrupt/I got booted.
Looked at alternative services out there.
Made a realistic calculation as to how quickly I could get going with these 'replacement' services.
Stood back, from a wider perspective and looked at how any of the above would affect the service from my client's point of view.

I identified some key areas that could be costly if the third party went down:

My web forms are currently hosted by a third party (Formsite.com), and I didn't have an external copy of the form's contents. Therefore, if they shut down, I'd loose all of my form fields. So, I made a copy of what each form contains so I could set up with a new provider.
I didn't have a back up phone number ready to put on my site, should my Voip phone system go down. Due to this, I made sure I have detals of a spare number at hand to publish on my website.
Realized I may be relying on Dropbox too heavily for file storage, so made 2 backups of everything in case DropBox failed.

Any of the above could have seriously affected my ability to take new business, or could have caused serious disruption to existing clients and partners. By realizing the risks I faced, I now hope I am better placed to deal with a failure of a third party service.

So, how many baskets are your eggs in, and do you have a 'Plan B'?

#baskets #business #eggs

Dann Vicker 12 years ago

I just wondered how I'd feel if I woke up one day and all my lists are gone...shivers running down my spine.

Gotta start a back-up programme
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ryanman 12 years ago

There are 101 ways to scare yourself & worry. But the reality is that you will always be dependent on one thing or another specially when it comes to the online world. Think of it this way - What if one day the whole web shut down?

The solution is simple - Keep your calm head and hope for the best. Do take necessary precautions early on which is the only thing within your reach.
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aderra Banned 12 years ago

I'm working on those multiple streams of income that everyone talks about. Right now, my life depends on Google although I'm taking steps to diversify my trafffic. I do have three websites which are in different niches. So, once I branch out with different traffic sources, I feel that I will be in fairly good shape.
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massiveray 12 years ago

I have 8 completely separate streams of income as of today, 3 of which would completely disappear in one way or another if Google didn't exist. Those 3 account for about 70% of my income too.
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Charanjit

12 years ago

Originally Posted by JimMichael

Today's Aweber outage (which thankfully didn't affect us) just goes to show how dangerous putting all of your business eggs in one basket can be.

I did a worthwhile task today:-

Listed all of the third-party services I rely on to conduct business.
Assessed what I'd do if they went down/bankrupt/I got booted.
Looked at alternative services out there.
Made a realistic calculation as to how quickly I could get going with these 'replacement' services.
Stood back, from a wider perspective and looked at how any of the above would affect the service from my client's point of view.

I identified some key areas that could be costly if the third party went down:

My web forms are currently hosted by a third party (Formsite.com), and I didn't have an external copy of the form's contents. Therefore, if they shut down, I'd loose all of my form fields. So, I made a copy of what each form contains so I could set up with a new provider.
I didn't have a back up phone number ready to put on my site, should my Voip phone system go down. Due to this, I made sure I have detals of a spare number at hand to publish on my website.
Realized I may be relying on Dropbox too heavily for file storage, so made 2 backups of everything in case DropBox failed.

quick question have yoy only gone for a voip sustem with out any isdn back up? I would look at having a vopi system with automated isdn back up = phone lines only down for 30 seconds or so

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TopKat22 12 years ago

I back up my site regulary and I download my list off of aweber daily so the most I'd lose is one day of sign ups.

I have all my auto responder emails saved to file and I have a backup email service if I needed it.

All those backups on my computer are saved to 3 hard drives and a flash drive daily.

So the whole internet would have to go down to really affect me in this arena.
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- Wendy Maki 12 years ago
  
  You provide a really good example of what we should do. Too many of us are focused on the immediate today, especially if there are any fires to put out, that we don't look at the bigger picture that solid businesses do: 1) backup systems and plans, and 2) exit strategies.
  
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Jasonsc 12 years ago

Very good thread. I think there will always be something which we depend on the most but diversification and precautions is certainly important.

I think it's probably best though to not worry about too much too fast. For those new to IM it would be a bad idea for example to try and do three different things at once, simply so they can be diverse. It's certainly better to make some sort of income at a small risk through one means than to struggle with three different means and make no money at less risk.

It's just important to manage outside factors as best as you can, diversify when you can and take some level of precautions for the very important factors ... backing up a list for example, or keeping database backups.
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rooze 12 years ago

I hear people talk with scorn about Google and how people are beholden to it for a large percentage of their business traffic and how that's such a foolish way to conduct your business. Then of course the Aweber deal today, Hostgator goes down for an hour, Paypal closes your account, adsense boots you into oblivion, so on and so forth. The reality is that regardless of how poorly you organize your operations online, you still have more protection against loss then running a traditional bricks and mortar business.
Look at those businesses affected by hurricanes, natural disasters, BP oil leaks, fire, flood, famine, petulance, the City closes your access road, the State bans indoor smoking...it goes on and on. What options do they have for recovery? In many cases virtual none whatsoever.
So we're not doing too bad as Internet Marketers or online business owners, sure there are setbacks, but we can always work around issues and overcome temporary problems and setbacks, to get ourselves back online.
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ipostmedia 12 years ago

I was thinking the same things too few months back. I'm making most of my money from Internet and what if one day, suddenly no internet for weeks. I've decided to diversify my portfolio and now I have 3 other offline projects coming up. In term of online business, I only have 3 - 4 stream of income.
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dazkat 12 years ago

Yes it made me realize today that maybe I have all my eggs in one basket. Will follow your lead and look at ways to have back up plans and contingencies in place to handle situations if and when they happen.
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- Ben Armstrong 12 years ago
  
  I currently have all my eggs in one basket. One affiliate platform and one main source of traffic. I've planned to diversify from day one but I want to earn a little more with my current methods before moving on to something else.
  
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jpboxersox 12 years ago

I have 4 different incomes including my day job I get a little worried quitting my job that is making me a good income. I do love Internet marketing but I think I would quit my day job if a had a passive income and 1 year of my current annual salary saved up. Being on my wife's insurance helps too if I decide to quit my day job one day.
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rangga_ryuuzaki 12 years ago

I am doing to leverage my quantity of baskets right now. Now I only have 2 baskets
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How many baskets are your business eggs in?

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