Wednesday, June 21, 2006
Can Small Business on the Web Benefit From an "Internet Tax?"
I've talked a couple of times lately about the so-called future "Internet Tax." This "Internet tax" involves future charges by major ISPs to individual websites for "premium connectivity."
Although such fees would be unpleasant, I don't believe they'll not necessarily mean "the end of small business on the Internet" as many have claimed. But I haven't even touched on the possible benefit of such an "Internet tax."
Benefit? How could there be any possible benefit from paying for the free traffic we now receive online?
It's simply this. Right now, the Internet is glutted with get-rich-quick schemers. These schemers are attracted to the Internet as a medium for business because it offers extremely low overhead compared to starting a brick-and-mortar store or a direct mail business.
They can easily start hundreds—or even thousands—of totally worthless parasite businesses online and have it cost them only a couple of bucks each. "So what," you might think. "How does it hurt me if someone wants to set up junk businesses?"
How do these businesses hurt you? These "businesses" are sometimes coming up in the search results ahead of you and stealing your traffic. If you have a website of any size or reputation, they are wasting your time with a deluge of link exchange requests that you have to sort through every day. If you're paying for Google AdWords or Yahoo! Search Marketing, you're paying money out of your pockets every day to fund their deceptive misuses of Google AdSense.
Now imagine if these parasites had to pay not just $10 a year each for their 1,000 sites, but a couple hundred dollars each for each site? They suddenly have to plan for some actual expenses instead of being able to count on making back the pittance they're putting out. They might have to actually—gasp—provide a useful service or product for people instead of making money by schemes that take money and traffic away from hard-working business owners.
It would be nice to clear all this deadwood out of the Internet, wouldn't it? And that's just what the kind of Internet tax that looms down the road would do. If you run your business like a business and not like a scam, you should be able to absorb some connectivity fees. But if you rely on low overhead to create an army of automated, no-value sites, you'll have to pay more than they're worth just to keep them running.
And that, my friends, would be a good thing.
Jeff
I've talked a couple of times lately about the so-called future "Internet Tax." This "Internet tax" involves future charges by major ISPs to individual websites for "premium connectivity."
Although such fees would be unpleasant, I don't believe they'll not necessarily mean "the end of small business on the Internet" as many have claimed. But I haven't even touched on the possible benefit of such an "Internet tax."
Benefit? How could there be any possible benefit from paying for the free traffic we now receive online?
It's simply this. Right now, the Internet is glutted with get-rich-quick schemers. These schemers are attracted to the Internet as a medium for business because it offers extremely low overhead compared to starting a brick-and-mortar store or a direct mail business.
They can easily start hundreds—or even thousands—of totally worthless parasite businesses online and have it cost them only a couple of bucks each. "So what," you might think. "How does it hurt me if someone wants to set up junk businesses?"
How do these businesses hurt you? These "businesses" are sometimes coming up in the search results ahead of you and stealing your traffic. If you have a website of any size or reputation, they are wasting your time with a deluge of link exchange requests that you have to sort through every day. If you're paying for Google AdWords or Yahoo! Search Marketing, you're paying money out of your pockets every day to fund their deceptive misuses of Google AdSense.
Now imagine if these parasites had to pay not just $10 a year each for their 1,000 sites, but a couple hundred dollars each for each site? They suddenly have to plan for some actual expenses instead of being able to count on making back the pittance they're putting out. They might have to actually—gasp—provide a useful service or product for people instead of making money by schemes that take money and traffic away from hard-working business owners.
It would be nice to clear all this deadwood out of the Internet, wouldn't it? And that's just what the kind of Internet tax that looms down the road would do. If you run your business like a business and not like a scam, you should be able to absorb some connectivity fees. But if you rely on low overhead to create an army of automated, no-value sites, you'll have to pay more than they're worth just to keep them running.
And that, my friends, would be a good thing.
Jeff
Comments:
An interesting thought Jeff. Who would we business owners pay the tax to? Uncle Sam?
I wouldnt mind paying a tax to an entity who helps clean up the internet from spammers and scammers, but I would be a little miffed about paying a tax to any entity that does absolutly nothing but take my money. I think that the idea of taxing has its merits, but also opens up a whole case of canned worms.
Troy
http://dropshippers-directory.com
I wouldnt mind paying a tax to an entity who helps clean up the internet from spammers and scammers, but I would be a little miffed about paying a tax to any entity that does absolutly nothing but take my money. I think that the idea of taxing has its merits, but also opens up a whole case of canned worms.
Troy
http://dropshippers-directory.com
# posted by 
: 10:55 PM
: 10:55 PM
It probably wouldn't be so much a tax to government as a fee to the ISPs. Whether it will eventually take the form of separate fees paid to each major ISP (NOT a pleasant thought!) or a single, larger fee to a consortium of ISPs is not clear yet. But the idea behind it is one of paying to ensure that the ISPs give your site faster connections and greater visibility. The "Internet tax" phrase is more of a nickname than an actual description.
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