Why?
I’ll give you a hint…. Yesterday I was in one of my city’s big department stores and I saw something that shocked me a little – they’d begun putting up their Christmas decorations!
Traditionally August is a bit of a downer for many publishers attempting to make money online as it’s at the peak of when many people in the northern hemisphere take a holiday. I remember this time last year traveling through parts of Europe only to find some cities almost like ghost towns as large percentages of their populations migrate to the coast for August. There are similarities in North America over the summer.
I guess web surfing isn’t quite as high on the list of things to do when the sun is shining outdoors (go figure)!
Most web-masters look to the Labor Day Long weekend in the US as a point where things begin to pick up again in the lead up to the end of the year and Christmas (just 112 days to go) and the other holidays.
I just looked at some of my own traffic stats for the same time last year and on many of my blogs I saw a stead increase over the next four months – culminating in traffic in December over 35% higher than the August figure in most cases.
Of course these traffic trends depend quite a bit on the topic you’re writing on. If you have product related blogs then Christmas can be quite good, but if you have ‘summer related’ topics you could even see a fall in your stats.
Spring Cleaning
Here in Australia September also means that Spring has arrived (a little hard for some of you northern hemisphere types to get your head around I know) and I think the symbolism of a new season with lots of life (blossom on trees, new buds on trees etc) fits well.
Of course Spring means ‘spring cleaning’ so perhaps its time to get your blog in order in preparation for the end of year. Don’t forget that sometimes the changes you make on your blog take a month or two (or longer) to take effect in search engines – so if you’re a blogger wanting to position yourself for the end of year you might want to at least start to think about how you’ll do it.
