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?