Internet Business Blog By James Schramko

How To Maintain Control Of Your Destiny

Posted by James in Business growth, List Building, Podcast

It seems there are some people in the Internet Marketing space who have a few things to learn about control and being able to predict the future. I have often said “own the racecourse, not the race horse” It was a lesson I had learned whilst running a large business.

The repeating cycle of avoidable hardship

As early as my first full year of online marketing (2006) I identified that many people online making a strategic error online building on other people’s platforms.  Every year without fail I see the crying bleats of web marketers who have fallen foul of this simplistic error.

•  Originally it was AdSense.  Google shut down a lot of ‘traffic equalizer’ auto -gen sites  in 2006
• Then came Adwords.  Affiliates everywhere were complaining after they were shut down from their accounts.
• Next was YouTube shutting down people’s videos
• Then there was the great Google slaps knocking out blog networks. Panda, Penguin etc…
• Amazon cleared out all the spammy Kindles
• Apple are getting stricter with app submissions
• Now people are complaining about Facebook not showing their free content to everyone…

When was it ever a good idea to be single platform dependant? 

Never. It is never been a good idea to build your business on other people’s platforms because they will change. As an employee I knew exactly how much compromise you invite when all of your income is coming from one place. It is risky. Hence my  affinity for ownership. When you aren’t using a platform that you can control, then you have no say in the choices they make.

So what should you do today is…

You should identify which assets and which platforms you are utilizing belong to other people. Make a plan around what you wil do when they stop working. Realize that when you use someone else’s platform they can change the rules at any time and then most probably will. They owe you nothing. Especially when it is a free service.

Build on your own website and create your own marketing list/database

And this is especially important if you build your business around supplying people from a certain platform. I have an SEO service that does seven figures a year worth of SEO and it primarily focuses on Google ranking results. There is a very good reason why not more than 50% of my income is coming from any single business.  The rest of my income comes from Non-Google dependent businesses. Such as a Mastermind and coaching services.

If your business supplies customers and it depends on one platform…

Make sure you know where the exit door is . As a minimum know what the big pivot might be. Take an inventory of all the core skills and assets your business contains so that you can move in a new direction quickly if required. It’s a good idea to know exactly where the back door is when you walk in the front door.  For example,  I ensure we have a strong research and development team. This remains our advantage in staying on top of ever shifting market changes.

make the big sites work for you, not the other way around

Utilize other people’s platforms to bring people to your website and into your list

Once you earn the customer relationship on your terms, that’s when you will have a strong business. The next time you here someone having a moan about a big company ‘slapping’ them keep in mind that they are really allowing themselves to be slapped.

Tweet

Tags: amazon kindle, apple developer, facebook, google, own the racecourse, youtube