This entry was posted on Saturday, January 5th, 2008 at 3:23 am and is filed under Conspiracy Theories, Google Specific. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
01.05.08
Google is a Big, Fat Manipulator
Today, I wanted to talk about how all webmasters are told they should not sell advertisements on their websites unless it is done the way Google wants it done. You know, I watched for years as other webmasters profited while I sat back and ‘did the right thing’ by not selling links. In hindsight, my sites in that market could’ve easily generated more than $7,500 per month in additional revenue. I had three sites at PR7 (naturally!), a couple of PR5′s and PR6′s, and several dozen PR4′s and below.
Over the two to three years that I refused to succumb to the pressure, selling text links would’ve netted me at least $225,000 in EXTRA income. Man. Now that I’ve actually sat down and done the math, I’m really disheartened.
So anyway, doing what Google told everyone was ‘the right thing to do’ cost me well over a quarter of a million dollars! But wait, wait! There is an upside and a benefit to doing the right thing, right? I -like a million others- believed that we would be rewarded for our good deeds in ‘trying to make the Internet a better place’ with traffic and visitors. Thus, we would be able to grow our businesses ‘the right way.’
“At the end of the day we are likely to be punished for our kindnesses.” – Ronin (1998)
So, how are my sites doing now-a-days? Hmm. Well, I have had ZERO traffic from Google for over a year and although I should have started looking out for MY best interests back then, I decided to wait it out and give them the benefit of the doubt. So, as of today, my portfolio of sites is still getting roughly …umm… ZERO traffic from Google and their value for selling links has diminished to the point of possibly generating $1,000 per month -if I’m lucky. And, even then, that could end at any moment when Google blindly wipes out another million websites from its ranking index, just for fun.
I’m sure many people who still have some Google traffic (by no doing of their own despite their beliefs) will swear by Google’s generosity -if you stay the course. I’m sure they would say that I must not know anything about marketing online or I must’ve employed some kinds of “black hat” techniques. Sadly, no, I never employed any tricks and I do know how to market online. I’ve made quite a bit of money marketing online for myself and others.
Ah well. Most people were born and raised to look out for themselves, but I guess I missed that day in class. For me, the moral of the story is that I must -to survive- start to look out for myself and myself alone. If I can better someone else or another business in the process, then great. If not, too bad. I am on the right path now, but is it too late?
January 5th, 2008 at 3:35 am
[...] I’m referring to one of my many search engine conspiracies in which all webmasters are told they should not sell advertisements on their websites unless it is [...]