Could the Euro Crisis Affect Online Marketers?

Regular readers of this blog know that I write for a number of blogs, including The Personal Finance Help Center, which I own and the Daily Forex blog where I am merely a contributor. Given that my two areas of blogging expertise happen to be on SEO and finance (yes, I admit, it’s a strange combination, but there it is all the same), I thought it might be interesting to examine how the currently unfolding Euro crisis may affect online marketers.

What Is the Euro Crisis Anyway?

For those who don’t follow international news very much or who simply don’t understand what’s been going on, a brief refresher course is in order. The Euro crisis began when it turned out that Greece and a few other countries had borrowed very heavily, much more than they could afford to borrow and we in a position of going bankrupt. Ordinarily, this wouldn’t be a problem because the nation in question could simply print more money and devalue their currency.
However, since the Greeks don’t control their currency anymore, they were threatening to bring down the rest of Europe. The crisis quickly spread, with Italy being threatened along with Spain and even the bulwarks of the Euro zone, France and Germany feeling the pain.

The Crisis May Not Be Over

As I write this, a new agreement seems to be taking shape which will help to alleviate the crisis, but details are still quite sketchy. If it fails, the possibility that the Euro zone could break apart, causing massive economic shocks to the world economy are quite real.
I won’t go into more detail about it here because this blog is primarily about SEO and Internet marketing. Those interested in learning more are welcome to check out some of my other work where I discuss this in greater detail.

Why This Matters for Internet Marketers

The obvious reason why Internet marketers need to be worried is that we live in a global world and most of us make at least some of our sales in Europe. If the European economy really starts to teeter (currently the core European countries, including Germany and France are okay, though not great), sales of all kinds of products sold online could suffer.

The Dollar Could Be Affected as Well

However, even for those whose primary markets are here in the United States (or Canada), the chances that you could see reverberations from a disaster in Europe are quite real. The fact is that we live today in a global village and what happens in one part of the world affects every other part of the world.
If the worst possible case scenario were to happen and the Euro zone broke apart, it would send severe shocks through an already shaky American economy, which would mean mass unemployment (which would make today’s unemployment numbers look tame by comparison) and possibly severe inflation as well. This would in turn affect even Internet marketers whose primary market is here in America, causing pain all around.

The Good News

Now the good news is that the Europeans know what kind of a disaster lurks if they don’t fix their problems. This means that they are trying to find solutions and that the worst case scenario (a breakup of the Euro zone) is unlikely to happen. However, given that the chance for such an occurrence still exists, it’s useful to keep it in mind going forward as you plan your business’ plans for making money online.