The recent discussions over at Matt Cutts’ google blog on their new developments over reporting paid links highlighted a number of things for me. One, was a point that Marlon Saunders raised in one of his newsletters a few weeks ago about not relying on natural search and SEO. I would extend that to not relying on any one source of traffic. And a parallel issue about not relying on any one single source of monetization.

It’s certainly easy when starting out, when you’re not really sure if this ‘internet thing’ will work, to pick the ‘easiest’ monetization model. That was adsense. But contextual advertising does rely on a lot of traffic, and unless you are quite skilled at adsense arbitrage, it does require a lot of free, organic search traffic.

To this end, a lot of publishers have built content sites that have no product, and rely on paid advertising. There’s nothing wrong with this approach to start out, which enables you to learn as you go along. But it is hardly the makings of a long term business. All businesses need to diversify their income if they are to be cushioned from changes in the marketplace. So, at some point along the way, webmasters and internet publishing businesses have to ask themselves some hard questions about the direction they’d like to take their sites.

Perhaps if the site doesn’t have their own products, they should develop or acquire the rights to them. Or become more adept at affiliate marketing. Or use pay per action to monetize their site. That at least takes care of diversifying income. But what about traffic?

Here is the real crux of the problem for some webmasters. They rely too much on search engine traffic (and particularly google), to furnish their sites with visitors. I think the feedback from people to Matt’s post was excellent, and I totally agree with a lot of what is written there. But I just don’t see google taking a whole lot of notice. So, instead of rallying against the machine, as it were, why not put that energy into really developing alternative sources of traffic.

Social bookmarking, affiliate programs (as a product owner), even link exchanging (for traffic, not any PR benefit), and article marketing (again for traffic and not any PR benefit), plus of course, vital marketing and list building, are all excellent and well established alternative sources of traffic. Most of my traffic actually comes from other sources (I do a lot of article marketing, though am adding more traffic sources as time permits). Which is not to say I don’t do well for certain terms in the search engines, nor does it mean I don’t maintain an interest in ‘keeping on top of them’. But I would rather not be tied to any one source of traffic (or income).

Maybe it’s time to think outside the box!