I have been meaning to blog on this subject for a while now but have always found myself being side-tracked.

Fortunately Chris over at the iMod blog indirectly hit on the subject and I’ve decided it is now time to sit down and write it. Chris was talking about the different ways that he uses advertising channels AdGator, AD:Dynamo and Google AdSense and amidst all of the back and forth comments we both agreed that we’d far rather support the local entrepreneurs – Justin and Sean – than see our money being shipped overseas to support the Google monolith.

Obviously as publishers we need to weigh up the economic sense of it but in principle our preference is to support SA entrepreneurs, technology and business.

I’m not arguing the pro’s and cons of support Google AdWords but I’d love to know how much money goes off South African credit cards each month and flows to the US or Ireland to land up in Google’s accounts. Even if it is 1000 advertisers spending R500 a month, that’s half a million bucks going offshore and not being ploughed back into local business.

Remind me again what our unemployment rate is in South Africa and why people have given up looking for jobs?

It is the same when you hear that the World Cup mascot figurines are being manufactured in China. Yes there are economic realities around manufacturing which need to be taken into account but bigger picture is that the country has missed out on developing skills and keeping money in the country.

I had coffee with Pavlo Phitidis from Aurik last night and he raised a really good point – the Americans are not taking this recession and collapse in their employment rate lying down. It’s a big machine to turn but every American is being urged to buy locally manufactured products and services. Suddenly you see companies like Ford returning to profitability – they innovate, they grow and the jobs will follow either directly or downstream.

It’s a generalisation but in general as South African consumers we just sit back and assume that whatever comes from overseas is better than what we can produce locally.

You cannot turn around and say that there are no opportunities for local entrepreneurs if you are not prepared to support those that are standing right in front of you and have taken all the risk to get their product there.

Do me a favour when you’ve finished reading this post: Go out and buy a book by a South African author or a bottle of South African wine. If you are spending money every month with Google then go and divert some of that to AD:Dynamo or send Justin an e-mail and say you’re keen to advertise with AdGator.

You want a video game? Stop sending money to people at EA and Nintendo and take some time to find out what local guys are doing.

There are plenty of ideas and opportunities to support local entrepreneurs but you have to see them and understand why it is important to support them. Feel free to post other really obvious places where people are sending money to non South African businesses while we flounder and have no clue where our next jobs are going to come from.

Just remember – one day it might be you or your child twiddling your thumbs in an office wondering where your next client might come from while potential customers are busy creating jobs overseas… just a thought use it, don’t use it.