Nielsen/NetRatings have produced a report (PDF) that shows that this year’s online Holiday spending is up as much as 33% on this time last year. Clikz reports:
‘Books, music, and video combined are the fastest growing category, with a 238 percent increase over last year. Dougherty attributes the growth to a vast selection of titles released during the holidays.
Toys and video games make the combined fastest-growing online retail category for the current holiday season, beginning October 30. Toy and video game buys online account for 149 percent growth from week one to week six. Flowers and gifts grew 117 percent; and consumer electronics grew 90 percent.’
Source: 2005 Holiday E-Shopping Exceeds Last Year’s
Of course this is good news for bloggers developing blogs in these fields with contextual ads and affiliate programs.
I’ve just taken a look back at my Adsense figures from the first 12 days of December 2004 and compared them to the same period this year and there has been a marked improvement of around 60%.
Of course it’s not really a fair comparison because my traffic levels have also increased significantly in this time. The other factor to consider is that a year ago Adsense was by far my largest earner but these days it’s running second and is probably running a little lower as a result of the competing ads.
A better comparison between this year and last year would be to look at total earnings across all of my blog income streams. This is a little tricky as figures are unaudited and there are quite a few of them to consider, but if I were to take a stab at it I’d guess that the overall increase in earnings so far this holiday season in comparison to last year would be around a 400% increase. Not bad for a year – if I could do that again over the next year I think I could almost retire (although it gets harder each year to sustain the high levels of growth – the year before the increase was closer to 5000%).
Anyway – all that to say that December’s shaping up to be a decent month here. How’s the holiday season going for you?
It’s been cold and it’s been snowing quite a bit. We got 14 inches the other day, and should be getting a bit more in the near future. Or was that not what you meant, heheh?
[…] From my own Adsense account and personal shopping habits, I knew online shopping would be up this year over last. An article over at ProBlogger confirmed my hunch. […]
Not only has the revenue from online advertising increased, Australian online revenue has also shot up with sites like ebay, etc. The other day I came across a great new concept – http://www.myhiresite.com.au – another ebay like site but the difference here was that it was hiring stuff instead of buying. I was amazed to see moms hiring out baby prams, capsules, toys to other moms & art collectors hiring out their collections for parties & many such others doing the same thing, through this site which gets such people within a neighborhood in touch. Great new concept…shows how the internet has had an impact on the life and revenues of Australians…now anyone can earn just sitting at home!