A post over by Amit on Digital Inspiration where he voiced his fears about Google buying Feedburner for $100m (almost confirmed) got me thinking about whether as a blogger I should be looking forward to Google muscling its way into another blog monetisation method. Amit’s main concern is that if Google continues its acquisition spree, then bloggers will have no choice but to put all their eggs in one basket.
To be honest, most bloggers are already totally dependent on Google and even if Feedburner stayed independent or were picked up by another company, I don’t think this situation would ever change. This blog for instance receives 70% of its traffic from Google, and although I’ve managed to introduce other sources of income, this month 60% of my income will still come via Google Adsense.
As far as I’m concerned Google are the blogger’s best friend, and I really hope that they help Feedburner reach its full potential and finally deliver an effective feed monetisation method. I estimate that about 2/3 of my 1500 or so RSS subscribers don’t actually visit the site. At the moment I’m only making about $50-100 a month from my feed, whereas if those readers actually visited my site I would around $1200 a month. If anybody’s going to be able to close that gap, then it will be Google.
