Sometimes I can’t help thinking that some people have too much time on their hands…
And are not happy unless they’re meddling and spoiling the enjoyment for others.
Take ice cream vans, for example.
As a child in the UK there used to be numerous ice cream vans (or trucks, if you’re in the USA) driving up and down our street and you’d know they were coming because of the sound of their chimes.
But, in times of political correctness and easy offence, there are “campaigners” who want them silenced.
Unfortunately, these killjoys will probably get their own way…
But I expect it won’t be a simple case of mute vans trundling up and down the road.
Not in the United Kingdom!
Instead, I anticipate a huge handbook relating to volume, duration, permitted times to broadcast and even appropriate choices of tune which will be open to all sorts of interpretation, abuse and leave everybody involved more confused than ever before.
As Internet Marketers, the plight of the humble ice cream van is none of our concern…
But mixed messages and confusion from say, the world’s largest search engine certainly is.
Just a few days ago, Pat Flynn from Smart Passive Income fame was pulled up by Google for an apparent Adsense offence…
His crime?
The adverts he placed on his website were guilty of “format mimicking” and according to Google’s guidelines: “publishers may not implement Google ads in a manner that disguises the ads in any way”.
All well and good you might think…
Until you go through Google’s Adsense tutorials which go to great effort to teach you how to “blend” your adverts into your existing content and they state: “we recommend using colors for your ad text and links that already exist on your site“.
Seriously, you couldn’t make this up!
The point of all this is, if your business relies on the whims of others, whether you’re selling ice cream from a van or publishing adverts on a website, it could all come crashing down at any minute.
Therefore, I encourage you to take control of your own business as much as possible…
And keep things as simple as you can.
The cornerstone of any online business should be email marketing…
As long as you make regular backups of your subscribers, even if your service provider shuts you down and refuses to talk to you…
Your business is not wiped out because you have your subscriber list and can simply set up somewhere else.
Plus, email marketing is fast and easy…
Even more so as an Inbox Rockstar member because each month, you can download a minimum of 20 “fill in the blanks” email marketing templates that can be used in any niche to promote any product!
When the brown stuff hits the fan, you’ll still be smelling of roses…
Talk Soon,
P.S. In his blog post, Pat admitted his heart “skipped a beat” when he received an email from Google’s Adsense team. Living in fear of your “master” pulling the rug from under you every day is hardly living the online dream.
Focus on email marketing and take back control:
Image Attributed to: Tamsin Slater
