IncrediMail, an Israeli based a company that develops software to customize e-mails, has provided business owners an incredible lesson as to why you should not place all your eggs in one basket. This occurred last week when they discovered that their AdSense privileges had been banned. This resulted in their stock dropping over 45% to a new year low.
While IncrediMail does claim to generate revenue by selling software products, offering subscriptions to their content database, and by selling paid advertising on their Web site and e-mail client, they did admit that search revenues powered by Google’s AdSense program made a significant contribution to their results in 2006 and 2007.
The lesson to be learned here by any business is to not place all of your eggs in one basket. This not only includes revenue streams but marketing tactics as well.
I see this mostly occurring when small to medium sized businesses (SMBs) place too much dependence on Google’s search results to drive traffic to their web sites, which is a difficult thing not to do seeing that they seem to drive the most traffic to any site.
So while SMBs should be engaged in search marketing practices, what are some other things they can do to ensure that they stay afloat should search engine traffic suddenly disappear?
