An Online Business Built On Sand Is At Risk Of Total Failure
* Autoresponder services
* Web hosting services
* Blog providers
* Payment systems
* Link building systems
* Article directories
* Link directories
* Advertising services (PPC etc)
* Affiliate companies
* Split-revenue advertisers (Adsense etc)
* Video hosting
* Bookmarking websites
* Email providers
* Search Engines
* etc.
In many cases, we rely upon these other websites and companies with the whole of our businesses...
In many cases, we do so at great risk to the long-term viability of our businesses...
There is a thread running through the forum right now of some poor person whose gmail account was shut down.
Yahoo announced earlier this week the coming demise of Delicious and Alta Vista, after last years' folding of Yahoo 360.
I used to host my personal blog on blogger, along with my 10yo's personal stories (he fancies himself one day being a writer)... I lost all of my blogs in 2009, because somehow they targeted my blogs for deletion for being "too commercial", even though I had proven five times that I was a human and not a spam bot.
I lost 6 weeks of business in May-June of 2009, because my web host changed my server and DNS servers, but my domain registrar was on the outs with ICANN, so I was effectively put out of business until ICANN moved my domain registration to a new registrar.
E. Brian Rose and others are currently having issues with Paypal.
I keep hearing reports that Aweber is having various issues.
Facebook was misfiring or offline for half an hour yesterday.
I heard a story about another Warrior whose website had some downtime, because his web host could not pay the bandwidth bill.
Google often closes Adsense accounts, and does not release earnings due to the account holders.
Google more frequently closes Adwords accounts, with little or no explanation.
Are you starting to see my point?
So many of us put our businesses at risk every single day, because we employ and rely upon third-party service providers to do certain tasks for us.
In the Bible, it said something to the effect of:
A house built on sand cannot stand. |
I don't think we can escape the need for third-party providers, but we can always plan and prepare for the worst-case scenarios.
For example:
* Back up your website frequently to your hard drive.
* Back up your hard drives frequently.
* Back up your mailing list at Aweber and similar services.
* Get back up DNS servers.
* Diversify your advertising sources, so that if Google turns on you in Adwords or your Search Engine rankings, then you will not lose all of your traffic overnight.
* Get backup merchant accounts to protect you if and when Paypal decides you are too much of a risk for them to bear.
Do a bookkeeping of your business to figure out where you may be vulnerable, then takes steps to provide yourself with backup systems to protect your business in the event of the worst-case scenario.
While there is no way we can completely insulate our businesses against having to use third-party providers, we can plan for the worst and be prepared if it does go wrong at some day in the unforeseeable future.
Expect the best, but always plan for the worst...
Dan's content is irregularly read by handfuls of people. Join the elite few by reading his blog: dcrBlogs.com, following him on Twitter: dcrTweets.com or reading his fiction: dcrWrites.com but NOT by Clicking Here!
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Publish Coloring Books for Profit (WSOTD 7-30-2015)
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Publish Coloring Books for Profit (WSOTD 7-30-2015)