Do World Events Affect Your Blog or Online Business?
This post was guest blogged by Ali from everybodygoto.com. Ali writes on his blog about new web startups, blogging etc… along with a few personal open source ideas plus stuff like what you’re about to read.
World events are something that everybody has to deal with. The issues could be political, environmental, economical etc.. and could have a direct impact on your blog or online business.
Most internet users hear about YouTube being banned in one new country every other week, or popular social networks being blocked. Regardless, the internet has become a catalyst for moving information at the speed that it happens. But do the current events taking place in the rest of the world have an impact on your online activities?
To those that talk and/or profit from any of the above issues online, they live off of world events. So if nothing news worthy happened in the world for a day, practically impossible, they’d have a low traffic day at the worst. But what about the rest of us, how do world events really impact bloggers and online business in general? I’m not just talking about the U.S, I’m talking about the entire WORLD.
I’ve already said that those that talk about the environment, politics and other people related issues use that information to their leverage. For the making money online blogger, to the general blogger an important event could divert their attention as some area of their personal/business life may get affected by an event that takes place half way across the world.
As an example, say you’re doing really good in online affiliate marketing. You’ve built up a mini-empire over a product. That product, unknown to you, gets produced in a low wage factory somewhere in the East or South. The factory gets caught using child labor and it gets shut down. Your affiliate company informs you of the closure of that particular program, you now have to look for something else to supplement your income. But other affiliates have a lower margin, so your income takes a hit. You now have to start from scratch to figure out another market to supplement your income. Which in most cases would not be hard for an experienced online marketer. But it’s a new beginning altogether, though in a case like this with a clearer conscience.
The truth is you can’t avoid NOT being affected by world events, for your blog or your online business. A recent example is when a Google employee came out against Michael Moore’s film Sicko, which got picked up heavily by the blogosphere. This inadvertently hurt Google’s rep more than it did the employee.
Have you ever had to deal with a situation where something half way around the world, or local, affected your online life?
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On the topic of World Events, obviously it affects your online life, a friend of mine runs a soccer blog, almost never any traffic most of them, but comes the World Cup, for that period, lots of traffic then it dies down again. You have to plan for those world events when managing your online life.
Just my two cent.
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“you can’t avoid NOT being affected by world events”
I think you meant to write that without the “NOT” in there.
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Thanks for posting my guest post.
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I’m sure most legit SEO companies are in this boat for the life of their company. Certain industries, like SEO, constantly get a bad name in the press, from a few bad seeds, and it can be an uphill battle for those who are actually doing an awesome job to earn the recognition their business deserves and help grow their industry as a whole.
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Honestly I don’t have anything going on that would be affected by world events. If everyone stopped being interested in real estate investing, my free lease offer would go downhill but I don’t see that happening.
Good guest post…
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On second thought, holidays affect me most. When people are off their computers, numbers shrink for everyone.
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Great job on the guest post, Ali.
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Four words: we are all connected. Global warming, intercontinental politicking, fashion trends — whether we admit it or not, we are always directly/indirectly affected by these events.
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holiday affects me too
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Sure everything in the Networked world is connected, if not a direct effect, the ripple effect is sure to make some effect on the daily life to ppl connected to the Network.
Vijay
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I think this is a little too broad to be asking only because everything affects you. If there’s a pipeline explosion in the Middle East, that affects your business because your costs go up across the board since the price of fuel goes up.
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Nice Post,
We’re always affected by global events but on a very small scale. Running an online bookshop, whenever X is in the news people want his/her book. It sells immediately and I wonder why I didn’t by 50 of them when I had the chance. A good example is Oprah pushing Poitier’s book. We had a few older copies in stock, all gone in a day. So yes, world events do help propel interest in a subject and give us a few $$.
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United States bans online poker…that hurt.
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That was one of the most retarded moves ever. Just because they can’t tax it? Bleh. That law needs to be overturned.
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Its a great post thanks for sending it
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Great topic,
but we can publish what we want, within legal limits, so our words can go a long way.
Nearly everything that is being sold on our blogs is based on our needs and wants for the items. When there is bad news about an item you are selling it lowers the customer’s “want” for the item and it could even force a customer to change their “need” for such item if it were the case. Hey, blogs are about information so might as well keep up-to-date with information about world events. Also there are some “groundhog’s day” types of things out there that influence how things are affected in the world. I’m not sure how some of our blogs are, expect for the almighty Shoemoney blog
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im a new reader, and its great to see Ali guest post here.
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I have a home repair site. When a hurricane blows through Florida it gets very quiet until the power comes back on, at which point it gets very busy
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Hello Ali first off this is a very good post. Second off, I of course believe that world events affect anyones online buisness. Especially when it has to deal with money and buisness even if your website or blog is over the internet.
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Holidays have big impacts on traffic because usually less people are surfing the net. As for the affiliate marketing situation you proposed, that is why it is good to have a few different sources of income (not just 1) so that if one does fail you can still rely on the others.
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I agree with you, on holidays blogs and websites suffer traffic downfall. And I agree with you on the affiliate marking comment to, you can’t have only one source of income.
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World events definitely have a huge impact on web site traffic. And especially news sites, and social networks. The other side of the coin is, as given in the example of events concerning the products you promote, and how difficult it could become if you loose the only source of income. Never be dependant on only one source of income when having an online business - that’s for sure. This one is a great post Ali, and one that calls for comments
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Although I wouldnt call it an EVENT, the falling value of the American dollar is hurting me alot. Im an Australian and we used to be at 49c against the USD, now we are at 86c. So parts of my earnings have been nearly halved.
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Thanks to all for the kind words. You can read more of my stuff on my blog.
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Interdependence is evident in every aspect of life. The relationship of the dollar with local currency is definitely a strong indicator of that.
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Most bloggers are writing about things tat happend in the world or other things which were influenced by some major event.
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If your blog or site keeps up with your industry (and it should because that’s good for rankings and the visitors) then you and your site should definitely be effected by world events.
In fact, I personally try to relate blog posts to what’s going on in the world (world events) because you can actually receive some traffic if you write about your industry and how it’s related to world events. For example, I recently wrote about Andrew Speaker…and the fact that his site couldn’t handle the traffic he was getting.
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I fully agree - it totally depends on the topic.
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They might affect your traffic.
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mmmmm only if they are massive world events, like christmas.
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yes world events can drastically affect your blog or website. Could be good or could be a bad affect but they can do so greatly.
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Of course events affect us, hopefully the market stays strong for at least 3 more years.
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In todays world..it effects everything in one way or another. With how we are all connected it eventauly hits your in some way. my father has a travel agency and it really doesnt seem to matter what occurs..it gets effected..economy, fuel, weather, war you name it…
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The complexity of our society makes us dependent on one another..
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I don’t know about World news, but Google news surely affects my Blog!
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Yes, of course they do. When things are bad people buy more online, but they also ignore my travel pages and sites more. I can tell how much people are traveling by the traffic I get to my travel sites.
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[...] Well, my guest post is now live after like a week or two I think. So it’s kinda cool to see that he liked it enough to post it. Check it out there and feel free to add to the discussion. World events are something that everybody has to deal with. The issues could be political, environmental, economical etc.. and could have a direct impact on your blog or online business….read full post. [...]
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