Google Algo Changes – Is it time for a change?
It’s been a while since I’ve done a post so I’ve saved up this long post so I apologise now if I rant on but I needed to get it off my big fat hairy chest!
Google has certainly gone and thrown a big f**k off spanner in the works. Affiliates and Webmasters who are use to these regular updates but the recent change AKA penguin update, has really screwed up many online web businesses by knocking them off the rankings and in some instances showing results that are either not relevant or don’t have hardly any content.
I tweeted yesterday saying ‘There seems to be a theme for Google’s major algo updates. Black & White animals Panda/Penguin. Will it be Killer Whale,Zebra or Skunk next?’ This I believe is because Google see this in Black and white or Black and White Hat as a common SEO term.
Webmasters in the early days of Google use to stuff keywords on the page to manipulate their search engine rankings and it worked. If only I started back then I would have done the same thing. After all if that is what others are doing to get ahead in the game why not. Although as a long term strategy cheating the system will get you in the end. But what if you are playing by the rules and still get knocked back. I think this is the reason so many people in the industry are more sceptical and I’ve even heard many people saying they want to get out of the game, what is the point! I can certainly understand their thoughts as I’ve had some of my websites lose a lot of traffic and income.
For those that do Affiliate Marketing full time, I do feel for them and hope they manage to recover any lost income. It’s a risky business and its even made me rethink about a change of direction.
Can I see people moving to other search engines to find what they are looking for? Maybe, this all depends if the crap results that Google are showing continues or if they can roll back the latest algo updates or fix what is broken and show visitors proper results.
Other Ways to Make Money online without Google
What other options are available online to make a living?
Content writing services – I can’t write content for toffee. I can ramble in my own words but I wouldn’t be able to write about topics I have no skills in. It would take me too long to do this. This doesn’t have to mean that I couldn’t offer a content writing service and nor could you. There are freelance sites where you would be able to start, but this relies on you finding and relying on a decent content writer. Then you simply manage the relationship and bring the work in. Is this for me? Not sure to be honest, but I certainly won’t rule this out
SEO services – I have a keen interest in SEO, I’ve done all SEO for my sites and have some very good success. Some might say well you’ve lost rankings why would I want to use you. To be honest, many SEO companies will at some point rank a site and also seen an algo update affect their clients rankings. I believe I know the ins and outs of SEO and what affects it, how to structure websites for onsite seo as well as how to do link building effectively for Offsite SEO. On my major site, I have noticed a bit of movement with the latest update but to be honest it went up for a few days and back to 2nd spot so I feel that where I’ve put most of the effort in and done this all ‘White Hat’ it has stood its ground. So I feel very confident to take this on.
Blog – Blog owners will get traffic from search engines but they don’t just rely on this as they will have followers and regular readers. This would require you to build up something that you had a real interest for or experience in and can write regular. You earn money from advertisers but will take time while you build up the traffic. This is not for me, although you could if you have some money to invest initially outsource the content to specialist content writers in a chosen niche and do quite well I’m sure. After all Content is King!
Social Media – This requires you to have lots of followers or be famous if you want to make money off social media from Twitter sponsors for example, but there are also other ways you can make money from this. Doing fiverr gigs to help give people extra facebook fans/twitter followers or social bookmarks. I don’t feel this is for me and don’t think this will work as a good money earner in the long run.
PPC Management - Most of these types of jobs are used by bigger clients who will unlikely go to Joe Bloggs PPC Management company and say can you manage my PPC campaigns. I have done this for a friend briefly in the past but I don’t have much interest in it.
Directory Site – People want to advertise a link on directory sites all the time, but there are thousands out there. Either yours needs to be targeted to their niche and not only the site has page rank but also each page where there link will go will needs some authority too. This doesn’t necessarily rely on traffic from my experience. I’ve got links on directory sites because it was relevant and had a good page authority. It helps mix up your link profile and I don’t think this element will change. It may become more difficult if Page Rank disappears at some point.
Develop an App – Many people have made decent iphone apps and made a lot of money from these. All it needs is a decent idea and some marketing. If you can’t develop this yourself then outsource the coding to someone else. I have wanted to do this but just need that idea. I’m sure like anything getting it popular is not an easy task.
Setup an Ecommerce Shop – Still rely on Google quite a lot for this, either you’ll want to rank organically, use PPC or a mixture of both. However you will be building up a brand instead of an Affiliate type site. In some instances you may be able to use Ebay/Amazon for your source of shoppers/leads
Domaining – Buy and Sell domains. This is a great form of investment and requires skills in finding the right domains that are in demand at good prices that you can sell on for more money. There are so many domainers doing this that it can be difficult to compete. I like to dabble in domain names but have not yet found it to be a successful route, partly because I’ve not had the money to invest and partly because some of my domain names are not that valuable to most people.
There are many other ways to make money online such as selling photos/art buying and selling at auctions sites. Some are ok for extra pocket money but I’d be looking for ways to make a business that is going to help give that freedom and opportunities for my family to explore the world without the worries that comes with being on the bread line!
What are you going to do, please share your views below?
Smoking is not just a habit for some, the addiction is life long for some. I’m not a smoker myself and have only ever smoked the odd fag when I was a young lad. I just couldn’t understand why so many people smoked in the world because of the taste, the smell and also the drain on the wallet.
