Do You Make These Internet Business Mistakes?
I just got a help desk request from one of my customers. I’ll call him “Joe” (not his real name). Joe was complaining that Google had just banned him from the Adsense program and he wanted to know what else he could do to monetize his website. You see, he had just bought his website from someone who had signed a “written guarantee of income” and had shown Joe the Google screen shots of his past profits.
So, “knowing” that his new site was a real money-maker, Joe started spending money to drive traffic to it (I’m assuming through Adwords or some other PPC program). But, without Adsense, he had no way to recoup his investment in the site or cover his advertising expenses.
So, I did a little checking on Joe’s behalf and found that even if Google hadn’t banned him, the site would never have made much money for him. Frankly, the site is worthless. But for Joe, it wasn’t cheap. Joe made a big mistake. He “invested” a lot of money in an “opportunity” without doing his homework.
So, what could Joe have done differently to avoid getting taken to the cleaners?
First, he should have checked the site for duplicate content. One of the things I did for Joe was to take a random set of page addresses from his new site and plug them into the duplicate content finder at Copyscape.com. Copyscape has a free service that will find and report on up to 10 duplicates of the content on any page of your website. For the sample of pages I checked for Joe, Copyscape pegged the needle at 10 matches each. And if the free Copyscape service finds 10 duplicates, you can bet there are many more.
Second, Joe should have checked the site’s rankings in Google and Alexa. If the site was really making as much as the seller said it was, it should be showing up on someone’s radar. But, none of the pages I checked had any page rank from Google (not just zero page rank… no page rank at all!). And the site as a whole has a 4,000,000+ ranking on Alexa. With Alexa, lower is better and a site with any steady traffic should have an Alexa rank of 500,000 or less.
Third–and this was the biggest mistake–Joe should have started out building an Internet business, not trying to buy one. A ready made Adsense site in a box is not an Internet business.
If your only source of traffic is pay-per-click advertising, then your profits are reduced by your advertising expenses. If Google changes the rules for Adwords (they have before and they probably will again) and your advertising costs go up as a result, your profits automatically go down.
And if the only source of income from all the traffic you’re paying for is the pennies-per-click you get for running Adsense ads on your site, then you are in a really bad spot. Google can (as they did with Joe) cancel your Adsense account and ban you for life without any explanation. Or, they can decide to reduce the percentage they pay for each click to Adsense publishers without notice. It’s not a number they share with the public anyway. And if (when) then do, there go your profits.
Bottom line: Unless you have 100 employees banging out new content for you, day in and day out, for thousands of different sites, then for you Adsense publishing is not a business. At best, it’s a supplemental income source. It’s certainly not something you want to rely on for long-term financial security.
What should Joe be doing instead? He should be producing his own content, building a list, working on a product to sell, and building links to his site using free methods (or paying someone else to use the free methods for him). Once his content and link building efforts start delivering traffic to his site, many more options open up for him.
So, to recap: Before spending your money on any “opportunity” you find online, do your homework. Be critical and objective. Ask yourself:
- Does the opportunity promise income with little to no effort on your part?
- Does the opportunity rely on third party programs or services (like Adsense, for instance)?
- And if those programs or services change or end, does the opportunity end, too?
If you answer “Yes” to these questions, then the opportunity is not really much of an opportunity at all. And it’s certainly not a business. So be cautious, be critical, and until next time…
“Build Systems And Prosper!”
- Daniel Joseph Moran
PS: Even though he’s been banned from Google’s Adsense program, Joe could still monetize his site with targeted text ads. All he needs is a copy of my new product, EasyTextAds. If you’d like to find out more about what EasyTextAds can do for your website or blog, just head on over to EasyTextAds.com.
PPS: Would you like to test drive EasyTextAds for free? I’m giving away copies of EasyTextAds Lite to my blog subscribers. To get your copy, just sign up for my blog announcement list. The form is conveniently located near the top right corner of this very page. Just fill in your first name and primary email address (no free or junk addresses allowed). Then click the “Subscribe Now” button. Once you confirm your subscription, I’ll send you a note with the link to download your copy of EasyTextAds Lite.
