I wrote this business strategy article in 2010, updated April 2014.
As an online business owner I was hit by the global recession, fortunately I was in an online niche business (search engine optimization services: SEO services) where I’d been turning potential business clients away for years.
I didn’t run an online business just to make money, I want to enjoy what I do so was very picky with which businesses I took on as SEO clients and I’m very good at what I do, so there’s always been more potential SEO clients than I could cope with.
Good Business Plans Change
Since writing this I’ve stopped offering SEO services altogether, interesting how business plans can change over 4 years and concentrate my time on making money from my websites rather than making other businesses money from their websites.
Still doing the same sorts of stuff (search engine optimization), but now only for my own sites so no time wasted explaining SEO techniques to SEO clients, much more efficient process for making money.
When I first wrote this article wasn’t thinking about changing my SEO business. I’d lost important SEO clients because of the global credit crunch and recession, for example I had a very successful Italian hotel and vacation business that was ranked top 5 for many relevant SERPs as an SEO client and they had to stop paying for SEO services completely during the credit crunch, people stopped going on holiday!
They were such good clients (been with me years) I continued to help them for free after they stopped paying: didn’t want their site to loose rankings during the summer months, they were still doing well in the SERPs in 2010 thankfully. Looks like they aren’t doing as well in 2014, used to be number one for the Italy Hotels SERP, still in the top 10, but no longer at the top :-(
Business Diversification Strategy
Since I lost some good SEO clients after the financial crisis of 2008 to maintain income I replaced them with new SEO clients (in a couple of cases not as picky as I’d normally be).
It’s been a hard time for many businesses and I personally don’t like the idea of relying on others for paying the mortgage (paid the mortgage off in full in 2011/12) and feeding my family (still have to feed people :-)), so I was looking into diversifying my business in the future to protect my earnings long term.
If there’s something I’ve learnt during the recession, governments and financial institutions are run by bloody idiots and we can not rely on them to do the right thing: we all need a business plan B to fall back on.
Overall I’m doing better money wise than before the credit crunch and recession, (over compensated a little) but many businesses will be on the verge of failure and bankruptcy and diversifying could be the answer. I’m still doing really well in 2014 despite taking quite a bit of time off working due to health problems.
Failed Business Model
Look at Woolworth’s in the UK, they were one of the first major businesses to fail and it wasn’t just because of the credit crunch.
Woolworth’s had been struggling for years, their business model no longer worked, they were failing in the growth years due to the wrong business strategy!
For Woolworth’s to have survived this financial crisis, they’d have had to realise their business model was flawed and no longer worked and change their approach BEFORE the credit crunch hit.
If you struggle in the good times, you are screwed in the bad!
New Successful Businesses
From the ashes of Woolworth’s we have some new successful businesses, they have taken what was good about the old Woolworth’s and improved on what worked.
If you own a struggling business, take a step back and find parts of it that work or new related ventures that might work better than your current business model and move forward with those new business ideas.
Don’t get stuck with an old idea just because it used to work, things change and businesses have to adapt or fail. For example Kodak would have failed had they insisted on ONLY following the instant Polaroid camera business model. Polaroid cameras were awesome when they were first developed, but technology (digital cameras) have made Kodak’s original business plan obsolete.
Successful Businesses Adapt or Die
A bloke with a bucket and ladder is a window cleaner, but he could also clean cars with the bucket and clear out leaves from guttering on his ladder.
A delivery driver who normally delivers furniture could also do small house removals.
If your online website ecommerce store isn’t taking order currently, try selling advertising from your site until the economy picks up. Better to make a small amount of money from your online business than nothing at all.
Diversify your business and survive until things pick up and you never know you might find a better way to move your business forward in the future that is more idiot proof: the idiots being those in power and in control of our financial institutions.
David Law
Website - SEO Gold
Making Money With Websites
With your 100 domains have you ever thought of consolidating so you have say 5 of your best sites? Or even two sites and you with full focus build content for those two?
I have a score of domains also and sometimes think it would be easier with a couple good ones (less stuff to maintain).
The are two reasons I do not consolidate now:
The first reason is they are all growing slowly and I like the idea of diversification, just in case one gets hacked or banned or I have an idea to market with one of them in the future.
So my thought is at some point, as long as I keep adding unique interesting content they will increase in value with age.
The second reason is with one large site, older posts somehow get lost, but with say ten niche sites with a moderate amount of content I think maybe things get indexed better. Maybe I am wrong.
On another note this WordPress 3.0 will have some great features including a MU SU merge. You will be able to run a social network (buddy press) with a plugin (unlike before with the ridiculously hard set up). Now it is easy. Adding buddy press to a site like your political site with mu when WP 3.0 comes out could be dangerous or interesting. People would have their own blogs, chat features etc.
I enjoy reading your revenue reports but I guess they are time consuming so you have moved them to quarterly (:
How are your Adsense alternative themes etc coming? Or is this idea on the back burner? There has to be a way to diversify from just Adsense that is just as profitable, maybe not, as Adsense is very easy to set up and pays.
Best regards!
Making Money With Websites
Money Making Network of Websites
Network of domains/sites vs a small number of sites.
Yes I’ve thought about it, but as you’ve pretty much answered your own questions with why I keep creating new sites rather than concentrate on a small number.
Take the General Election site for example:general-election-2010.co.uk. I registered the domain in June 2009, so it’s 9 months old, but didn’t start adding a decent amount of content until September 2009. When I register a new domain I’ll usually add a little bit of content (few pages) so Google’s got something to index and I have something to link to. I’ll then start building links. Sometimes I’ll get bored with an idea, $5 to register a domain for a year I buy domains on a whim and never really use some of them. With this one I didn’t get bored and added a fair amount of content and traffic picked up (currently can see 5,000 visitors a day).
Now had I tried to create this site as a sub section of an existing site in principle it would have made the ranking process faster and I wouldn’t have had to go to so much effort with links. However, I don’t have another site just about politics or even one with a lot about politics, so I’d have no where obvious to put it.
But more important than all of this, sites get banned/downgraded by Google all the time for not doing anything obviously wrong. My recipe site free-recipes.co.uk had broke the 12,000 visitors a day mark, great rankings when Google downgraded it for no obvious reason! It started to recover for a week, but currently it’s still downgraded and so it would be stupid to add more content to it.
So to protect my content I like to spread it out on plenty of domains, it’s more work since you’ve got the Google sandbox to get over which takes links and time. Some of my domains don’t even break even, mainly because I’ve got bored with them, but overall they make money.
It’s also a heck of a lot easier to find links for 100 domains than it is 5.
I’m in the process of setting up a link exchange with the Times online newspaper which is pretty cool. I doubt I’d have got the offer if the election content was on say my classic literature domain say classic-literature.co.uk. But then I can create sections which is 100% affiliate content and in the last 12 months made £130 from AdSense. Had I put that on a new domain I’d have been lucky to make £20 a year even with links.
Another one again affiliate content, made £2.85 in the same period :-) Was testing the concept of translating affiliate content to other languages to see if it could get past the thin affiliate content filters, I’d say no it didn’t work every well.
The monthly reports take quite some time to compile and as there’s already a lot of them, they don’t really add anything SEO wise to this site. So quarterly makes sense.
The AdSense alternative themes have been put on hold for a bit, I wasn’t impressed with the Clickbank AdSense like ads tests and switched everything back to AdSense where I could, so not sure what I’m going to do now.
If you don’t mind going overly spammy with ads Clicksor can compete with AdSense, but it’s the pop unders that make the money, not the AdSense like ads. You could have the standard AdSense ads and the Clicksor pop unders if you have a site that you don’t care about the visitors too much. They are very intrusive ads, free-funny-jokes.com has Clicksor and it’s competing with what the site used to make from AdSense, before it was banned from the AdSense program: I’ve stopped moderating that site, added racist jokes since if you check the jokes SERPs they are the main traffic joke SERPs! but it’s resulted in a LOT of racist comments (hence the AdSense ban)!
David Law
Money Making Network of Websites
Business Diversification
Hi David,
I’m not sure the date on your article, but it really appears to be a trend… We have seen some large businesses being hit hard as well, and diversification is a key.
That was very kind to be able to help support the business during their tough times, and very admirable. Nice work!
As a leader in the press release business for medium sized businesses, we have seen many companies affected by the economy AND by, most recently Google. I think that is also where you are key on diversification, or where it could be recognized. Not to become dependent on one source.
Hopefully things will start to turn around for everyone!
Michael.
Business Diversification