Don't put all your eggs in one basket!!

Don’t throw all your eggs in one basket!! I am seeing a lot of posts recently about building up an Squidoo empire or a Blogger blog to drive traffic to and make sales. This seems completely insane in my eyes… These sites can be shut down without any given notice! If you are sitting there saying that these sites wont get shut down, just look at what Twitter just did to Posterous.

Posterous Will Shut Down On April 30th, Co-Founder Garry Tan Launches Posthaven To Save Your Sites | TechCrunch

Twitter owns Posterous so they have the right to do what they want with it, they are shutting down a site, which has over 15 million monthly users on it. 15million, that is a huge number of blogs, which have just been shut down. Now if you have built your “empire” on it, all your business is done through Posterous, you’re screwed. You will have till the 30th April to start finding alternative sources of income before your whole business goes down the toilet… Do you know the worse thing about it? You have absolutely ZERO control over what they do!

I want to also debunk a very common myth which is still around (No idea why) Google does not rank It’s own services more highly then others! Blogger will not yield you better SEO results then your own website! Don’t take my word for it, take the FTC’s: News Headlines this isn’t a report which was done 5-10 years ago, this was finished only a month ago! Google does not rank Blogger (Or its other services) higher then others.

Maybe we need further proof that you shouldn’t build an empire on something you have no control over. Just take a look at some of these threads where people have been banned, deleted and given no reason why except a generic email.

http://www.warriorforum.com/main-int...g-removed.html

http://www.warriorforum.com/main-int...e-seconds.html

http://www.warriorforum.com/main-int...en-locked.html

http://www.warriorforum.com/main-int...sappeared.html

These are just a few of the ones I found here on the Warrior Forum, I am sure if I did a quick Google search I would find even more stories like these.

It is actually mind boggling to me why people would put so much time and effort into marketing online off someone else’s platform. People argue and say because it is “Free”. Are you kidding me? Lets be realistic here people, this is a business, investments need to be made!! I am not even talking big investments either, you can purchase a domain and hosting so cheaply, I doubt you would even spend 10 bucks initially. If you literally have 0 in your bank account then go do two Fiverr gigs a month and accumulate enough funds to pay for hosting each month! Heck write 1 article for 10 bucks each month and pay for it that way, it isn’t hard to figure out a way to pay for hosting each month. So the free argument doesn’t work…

People also say that it is quick and easy to set up a lens, hub page, blogger etc... I call BS, it is just as easy to write an article on your own site, if not easier! Do you know what the most important thing when you write an article on your own site is, YOU OWN IT! No one else can lay claim to it, it is yours and yours alone!

People say you earn money on auto-pilot, yeah right… Go create a lens and see how well it does, it takes a lot of effort and a lot of skill to keep a lens/hubpage etc… running on auto pilot.

So now we know 4 important things…

- These sites can kill your business when ever the hell they like.
- It costs so little to start your own site its unreal
- If you post on your own site, you own the content, not them.
- They aren’t making you insane amounts of money on auto pilot.

Now this is the important part…

I am not saying that you shouldn’t use these platforms, you should, they can be a nice addition for promoting your website. What I am saying is, create your own website and publish your content to that first. Don’t build it on something you have no control over, it only takes one mistake for it to be gone over night. If you want to go ahead and build it on another persons platform, go for it, but, if it gets deleted, don’t complain because you knew the risks.

Anyone want to add anything?