Obviously, there's plenty of bias here given the source, but I think on balance it either hinted at or laid out a lot of the issues we know about the state of 9-5 employment, most notably in the U.S, fairly well:
-Lack of control over schedule/location
-Lack of growth paths at many companies
-Lack of leverage/Inputs match outputs almost 1:1 (sell time, make a dollar)
-Not getting rewarded for the value you bring to a job; instead that value accruing mostly to people above you
-That feeling of being merely a line on a spreadsheet
Over time, I've learned that for some people, articles like this will really resonate and shake them to their core. (I happen to be in that category but I've experienced enough in previous entrepreneurial ventures for this enthusiasm to be tempered a little bit with reality every time I read things like this).
Others will recoil seeing this, their first instinct going to the (very real) risks in leaving that system and conclude they're far more comfortable optimizing for the familiar.
Both reactions are perfectly OK. There's no wrong or right answer. It's just what connects with you, as a person.
The key is to understand that, either way, you're in charge of your career, regardless of what kind of professional setup suits you best and makes you happiest.
As others have said, this strikes me as a multi-faceted problem.
It's possible Google devalues those sharing (even inadvertently!) GA tags in the rankings, although I don't think there's been any public proclamations from Google on that. But if that were the sole culprit, only your GA instance would reflect that. The fact that you're losing real traffic (as reflected in what the 3rd party tools are telling you) makes me think that's probably not the case/or at least the only thing that's happening.
Not implementing re-directs would also definitely be a culprit. But if it's just images you failed to re-direct, that's likely not the main thing either unless you were getting a majority of your traffic from Google Images.
Since this happened post-Core Update, I would want to know two things:
1. What keywords dropped and what replaced you
2. Whether the drop was site-wide or isolated to individual categories or groups of pages.
Regarding #1: Was what replaced you a big, high authority publisher? Or was the content simply more comprehensive or otherwise a better match for the user's intent? Very likely could be E-E-A-T-related, in terms of the algos determining that you don't have the authority/expertise to rank for what you were ranking for previously.
Investigate those possibilities first and you should be able to better map out a plan for re-gaining that traffic.
Good comment! I’d add in one more question so we can put the GA tag issue to rest.
Does the writer have access to Google Search Central? They rename this product every six minutes. It used to be Google Webmaster Tools and it’s likely called something new now. Are there any manual actions or security alerts in there??
If Google performs a manual action or picks up certain types of security problems, they will tank traffic. But they usually report to give webmasters the chance to fix it.
I’d avoid ahrefs and the like and start right with google tools.
Right. Same goes for VentureBeat, TechCrunch and every other major web publication out there that solicits guest posts. And not all of them are of great quality, either. Many come across as nothing more than thinly veiled advertisements that wouldn't look out of place on Ezinearticles or somewhere similar.
I understand what Matt's getting it with this decree but it's very hard to selectively enforce this in a way that doesn't come off as favoritism towards big brands.
Because its not a freely competitive market. They didn't acquire the infrastructure and access -- particularly the last mile access -- by freely negotiating with property owners, nor, even if they had, is there unlimited capacity for new competitors to do so. Incumbent major broadband providers all got the basic access essential to provide infrastructure as CATV and telephone providers, as locally or regionally regulated monopolies, and there is pretty much no way for direct competition with fixed broadband providers on equal footing.
Exactly this. To me, it ceases being a property rights issue when the rights given to the carriers were not granted under market conditions to begin with.
Does that give the government the ability to impose on the carriers whatever it wants in an arbitrary fashion? No. But it does mean that there should be some elasticity in terms of regulatory structure.
Imagine a search engine that simply removed the top 1 million most popular web sites from its index. What would you discover?
A mix of affiliate-driven content sites, abandoned blogs & spam sites, based on some of the searches I did. The broader the category, the more likely I think you are to stumble on something relevant and helpful.
(Also, .gov sites don't seem to have been removed from the index. A search for "type 2 diabetes" still brings a number of results from NIH.gov, mimicking what Google serves up.)
I believe "removes the top 1 million most popular websites" means that they nix search results from the million most trafficked domains on the web as a whole rather than simply the top million results for a specific search. I doubt there are very many .gov domains that fall into that group.
That was my initial thought on what you'd end up with. Aren't the top 1 million most popular sites popular for a reason? Of course there's some garbage in there... but what's the value in removing Wikipedia?
Maybe writers are staying away because the efficacy of the business model at scale is in question. I think some observers are still (justifiably or not) self-aware of how they think the story ends with these kinds of companies.
On Twitter, Primack brought up Fab as an example of this kind of company generating news. But the only news I've heard about Fab lately is bad news.
Unfortunately, the modern day tech incubator model serves a very narrow audience with a very limiting set of criteria (e.g. billion dollar markets). There are lots of other people like the gentlemen referenced in the article that simply want to build a self-sustaining income stream. Crowdsourcing is helping to fill that vacuum at least partially; but I think more can be done in this arena to help people escape the awful "Office Space"-like dronework that, unfortunately, is still the norm today.
The time investment is key and the OP is dead on. I can speak to trying to learn Objective-C last year on nights/weekends and not really learning the fundamentals behind I was doing, despite being able to follow along with the books I was reading and the rudimentary apps I was building. It requires a full-time commitment, which is why so many of the development "intensive" programs and workshops are time intensive (at least 8 hours per day) over anything else.
Unfortunately, the time commitment becomes prohibitive to those that have to keep running the job/consulting treadmill and can't fall back on an investment banker salary (or similar) to fund their creative ambitions for a year or more. That unfortunately is the real answer to the post's title.
Submitted this mostly because I think it's an idiotic way of thinking. As an example, I'm contemplating moving to Austin to springboard what I hope to turn into an industry leading content/media business for several reasons:
-I don't have a developer's, investment banker or lawyer's salary to fall back on while I learn to code and/or fiddle around. Any consulting I do, I'd have to do more of living in SF or NYC, which takes time from building the business. Any savings I have gets eaten up faster in SF or NYC and lessens my runway. That's reality.
-I don't need to look for a developer/technical co-founder in order to get started. My Wordpress instance is up and I just write.
-I don't have a trust fund or a rich uncle to mooch off of to help subsidize a lifestyle in either SF or NYC. My parents live on social security and aren't coming to my rescue.
I can understand the point of it not making sense for an already growing (read: revenue producing) startup to move to a cheaper locale. That I get. But I fail to see how you're not aiming high enough by starting out somewhere cheaper. Once you're making enough to where you aren't worried about where your next meal is coming from, then sure, move to SF or NYC. But the argument for not starting it in a cheaper place is flimsy at best and outright bullshit at worst IMO.
"My personal opinion is that if you're starting off from a position of weakness (i.e. you're poor and not famous), and especially if you're not in a startup hub like Silicon Valley, it makes a lot more sense to go down the entrepreneurial route than to go via the startup route."
I think this is particularly good advice if you're not a developer or aren't able to make the time available to really dig into learning how to code. Odds are you aren't Steve Jobs and won't be able to recruit the technical partner you want to work with to build your uber brilliant idea for reasons articulated here many times before.
There's nothing defeatist about building a viable, cash-generating business in lieu of standing around waiting for the magical technical co-founder of your dreams to fall into your lap. Plus, if you create something of value (be it content or otherwise) in the field you're looking to get involved in, you're much more likely to put yourself in a position to be able to recruit the kind of person you want to work with anyway.
Totally with you on ::just get something going instead of waiting for a technical co-founder::, but honestly if you're passionate w/o all the skills to make your business, it's not hard to find someone who can be passionate about it too.
I remember some quote about a guy who asked a VC, "How do I find engineers to help build my product?", and they said, "I don't know, but the best entrepreneurs always do".
There are technical people everywhere - plenty of them are bad at raising money, making money, etc., but would jump at the chance to work on an idea they love. Help liberate a great technical person.
At my company, I focus on the mech. eng./ business side, while my co-founder does all the software. It's been great so far, and we both get to work on something we love.
If you have an idea you love, don't sacrifice it because you don't have all the skills - you rarely will. Try to do some small version of it as fast as possible. This will show your co-founders-in-waiting that you've got the chops to run this business so they feel confident in having your back technically while you have theirs on the business end.
I actually hate that quote. What's to stop a poor developer who's not in SV from making an awesome, scalable tech startup?
Startup founders are, quite simply, people who found startups. They register a business (maybe) and create something that might turn into a business at some point, or even do turn it into a business successfully.
What's stopping me from trying to change the world from Alabama? What's stopping me from making some really cool stuff that I want to see across the whole world, or at least this country, from the deep south? I can spin up a Heroku instance in 5 minutes, and get an app going in under a day. Another day to make a MVP iOS app (then a week to the App Store), and effectively I have infinite reach. There's a very serious, debilitating mindset a lot of people have on this board about necessary VC funding, and a necessary Silicon Valley geographic base. None of those things are true anymore. And likely, weren't necessarily true in the past. It's grotesque that people think funding is what you should strive for. It's horrifying that people are motivated by a TechCrunch article and an exit. Maybe I'm in the minority here, but that's not WHY I'm an entrepreneur. An exit isn't even a motivation of mine. I want a lot of people to use my creations, and to love them. If I can get paid well to achieve that goal - that would be great. If I can get other people paid well for helping me achieve that goal (ie hiring a team), then that's even better.
Sorry for the rant, but I think that quote is entirely off-base and absolutely repulsive.
I think you may want to re-read the article and the quote, and the comment you're responding to, and get a bit of context. You sound like a knee-jerk reaction that's actually agreeing with half the article, but in a really needlessly aggressive way.
Nothing's stopping you. But you'll find certain paths easier than others, depending on what you want. That's what the article is about.
Reading my article, you might notice that I'm arguing, precisely, that you don't need VC funding or SV or any of those things to start a successful business.
That said, if you approach it with the "build it up and worry about the money later" that is often present in typical startups, you will probably (not certainly) fail hard.
As for the comment you're replying to, he's also stating the point that in some parts of the world (most parts), you're better off getting on with starting a business that works anywhere, rather than waiting for the "magical tech cofounder" who's going to start a tech startup with you and take it to infinity and beyond. You might notice he's addressing that specifically to people who can't "spin up a Heroku instance in 5 minutes".
-Lack of control over schedule/location
-Lack of growth paths at many companies
-Lack of leverage/Inputs match outputs almost 1:1 (sell time, make a dollar)
-Not getting rewarded for the value you bring to a job; instead that value accruing mostly to people above you
-That feeling of being merely a line on a spreadsheet
Over time, I've learned that for some people, articles like this will really resonate and shake them to their core. (I happen to be in that category but I've experienced enough in previous entrepreneurial ventures for this enthusiasm to be tempered a little bit with reality every time I read things like this).
Others will recoil seeing this, their first instinct going to the (very real) risks in leaving that system and conclude they're far more comfortable optimizing for the familiar.
Both reactions are perfectly OK. There's no wrong or right answer. It's just what connects with you, as a person.
The key is to understand that, either way, you're in charge of your career, regardless of what kind of professional setup suits you best and makes you happiest.