Join me for Adventures in Listbuilding: An Evolution of List Automation and Segmentation

I will be the guest on the NAMS (Niche Affiliate Marketing System) weekly training call tomorrow evening, Wednesday, January 4th at 8pm eastern. Join me and David Perdew for an hour of education and chat on using email marketing profitably for digital products and your site. Hope you can join me - use the guest registration process if you're not a NAMS member.

I'm also going to be running some training at the NAMS7 conference in Atlanta in early February. You can find out more about that here - I'm really looking forward to it. See you tomorrow!

N.B. The links in this post are affiliate links

   

Facebook New Design Fallout: Your Traffic?

"What if Google went away?"

It's one of the things I like to say when I speak about the importance of email marketing and list building for bloggers. It's a deliberately attention-getting phrase, and it matters. Still, too many people ignore it, though, because, LOL, no way Google's going away, right? What could possibly go wrong?

It matters because if your traffic (and therefore your dependent downstream revenue) depends on Google, and your search engine ranking changes, or you're dropped from the index, your ability to get new traffic is slaughtered. Without a solid list, your ability to continue to monetize your site and grow your business can be crippled, overnight.

So. In a post about Facebook, why the hell am I talking about Google? To illustrate this simple point: Facebook just "went away" for many blogging businesses. The new design has dramatically reduced Facebook referrals - and subsequent revenues - for many bloggers. Sure, Facebook.com is still there; it just isn't bringing most people nearly as much traffic and business as it used to.  It's the same idea, different web site. And prior to last week, I bet nobody would have thought that Facebook would "go away" either. Silly Phil, suggesting such a thing.

Yet here we are.

If you're relying on a third party site - Facebook, Google, Etsy, whatever - and building your business on it, last week's Facebook changes shows the real risks you are running. I'm not saying don't use, sell or manage your communities on Facebook; far from it. But pay more attention to bringing your traffic from third party sites to yours - the only one you actually control - and pay MUCH more attention to keeping visitors there and turning them into subscribers. 

Remember: Google, Facebook, whatever site you're "share cropping" on, don't know you, don't care about you, and are not in business to help you. They are there to help themselves, and if your business takes the hit while they take care of their business, it is not their problem. It is yours. What are you going to do about it?

Google's never going away?

Facebook just went away for many small businesses.

Who's next?

Are you ready?