Why you should never build your business on rented land (and what to do instead!)
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Is your business built on rented land? Are you entirely dependent on third parties like Google, Pinterest, social media or YouTube for your income? Here’s why you should never build your business on rented land (and what to do instead!)
I received an email recently from someone who was considering starting an online business.
They asked two interesting questions:
- Is it better to start a blog or a YouTube channel?
- Is it a good idea to find a high-paying affiliate program and base a blog around that?
My answer to both questions came down to the same thing – the perils of building your business on rented land!
What do I mean by that?
Well, the problem with both ‘YouTube’ and ‘a high-paying affiliate program’ is that both are rented land.
In other words, they are someone else’s platform.
A platform that they own and you have no control over.
There are certainly people who make good money from YouTube – but you don’t truly own your YouTube channel.
The risk with building your entire business on YouTube is that YouTube could literally delete your channel at any time and without warning, claiming that you have violated something in their Terms of Service (even if you haven’t), and wiping out your entire business overnight.
That’s always the biggest danger with building a business on someone else’s platform.
And the same goes with building your entire business around one high-paying affiliate program…
What if that company decided 3 months into you starting your new business that they were going to close down their affiliate program? (It happens all the time.) Or that they were going to slash their affiliate commissions? (As has happened with Amazon several times over the years!)
This is why I always say – build your business on the only three assets you truly own:
- your website (so long as it’s self-hosted – you don’t truly own a hosted website)
- your email list
- your own products
By all means, take advantage of third parties (Google traffic, social media, YouTube, affiliate income, ad income etc.) as a supplement to that. But don’t build your whole business on them!
As one of my favourite quotes goes…
“Never put all your eggs in one basket… Relying on any one channel for all, or nearly all, of your traffic and income is not a business plan. It is a gamble. Never leave yourself at the mercy of any one channel or platform – because you have no control over a third-party. If one algorithm change can wipe out your entire business overnight, you’re doing it wrong.”
So if your business is currently built on rented land, how can you fix that?
Here are 3 things to do ASAP…
1. Convert ‘borrowed’ traffic to ‘owned’ traffic
Most bloggers and online business owners depend very heavily on ‘borrowed traffic’.
Your traffic is ‘borrowed’ if it comes from a third party: Google, Pinterest, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube etc.
To reduce the inherent risk in building your business on borrowed traffic, you should be trying to convert as much of that traffic as you can into ‘owned’ traffic – in other words, your email list.
Your email list is the only source of traffic you truly own.
If you are struggling to grow your email list and convert ‘borrowed’ traffic into ‘owned’ traffic, read this >> 10 reasons why people are NOT signing up to your email list
2. Create and sell your own digital products
Most bloggers are also heavily reliant on other people’s platforms for their income.
Again, that puts you at the mercy of a third party and their decisions / priorities / whims.
Just because the money is good now, doesn’t mean it will always be.
You also have very little control.
A high-paying affiliate program could decide to slash their affiliate commission, or even stop their affiliate program altogether.
An ad company could decide on a whim to kick you out or change their business model. And you have no real control over RPMs.
The only income source you truly own and have complete control over is your own products.
You choose what you sell, where you sell, how much you charge… and you have a lot of control over how much you earn. There are dozens of things you can do to increase your RPMs when you sell your own products. (And digital product RPMs are way better than ad RPMs!)
Ready to create your first digital product? Head this way >> How to build a successful digital product business: The 7 essential ingredients that will take you to $100K and beyond!
3. Build a ‘brand’
And my final piece of advice… build a ‘brand’.
So often, bloggers and online business owners build transient ‘commodity’ businesses.
These are businesses built on transient Google traffic that doesn’t care who you are and probably doesn’t even know what website they are on half the time.
This transient traffic comes, gets what it wants and leaves… and never comes back.
This type of business is inherently risky – if that traffic source dries up, you’d be left with nothing.
Instead build a ‘brand’.
Work on building up your authority in your niche. Become the go-to expert in your niche. And build a community of raving fans, happy customers and advocates.
So instead of going to Google, your people come directly to you, your website and your products for the solutions to their problems.
How do you do that?
Well, partly by converting transient traffic into email subscribers… and nurturing them into raving fans and advocates.
Partly by selling your own digital products… which leads to happy customers, success stories and word-of-mouth marketing.
But also by building up your external authority: be interviewed on podcasts, speak at summits and conferences, participate in bundles and collaborations, get featured in the press…
All of this will boost your visibility, grow your authority and help you become a go-to expert in your niche.
And make you a whole lot less reliant on transient Google traffic.
(Though the irony is that, by boosting your authority, you’re likely to grow your Google traffic too!)
Here are some easy ways to boost your authority >> 15 easy ways to improve your website’s E-E-A-T
But how???
If you’ve just read all of the above thinking… ‘I know I need to do all of this, but it’s just too hard / too overwhelming / I don’t know where to start.’, then I have just the thing for you…
The Digital Product Success Academy!
The DPSA combines:
- Helping you become LESS dependant on Google and other third parties for your traffic and income
- BOOSTING your own personal authority
- Converting BORROWED TRAFFIC into OWNED TRAFFIC
- Growing a STRONG email list, and NURTURING your subscribers into RAVING FANS
- Launching SUCCESSFUL digital products
- INCREASING your income WITHOUT needing more traffic
- Cutting through the noise to give you a CLEAR PATH to follow
- Fun CHALLENGES to increase motivation and maximize success
- And a private COMMUNITY where you can get support and encouragement, bounce ideas off like-minded business owners, celebrate wins and get accountability and motivation
Head here to find out more >>> Digital Product Success Academy
- How to future-proof your blog
- How long does it take to make money blogging?
- How much do bloggers REALLY earn?
- 10 reasons why you should start selling digital products
- Why you should never put all your eggs in one basket – especially not Google’s! (And what to do instead.)
Don’t miss a thing!
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