Quick Tip For *New* Seasonal Websites
One of my websites is highly seasonal. Working with a seasonal website can be tough, but it can still make money.
The worst part of having a seasonal niche is that there are some serious downtimes with traffic and sales. If you have a website about surfing, then you'll see a drop in traffic during the winter.
The good news is that because it's "harder", all you have to do is be consistent and you'll see most other markters drop off, while you remain the most successful! There's always a way to make seasonal websites work.
For example, with the surfing website, it's always summer somewhere, right? Winter in the USA is summer in Australia, so you can research and write about surfing all year long!
What if your website is about summer fishing? I'll bet those avid fishermen would be up for some tips about how to go fishing in the winter too!
One Big Tip For NEW Seasonal Websites
The biggest thing I've learned about having a seasonal website is that if it's NEW, you need to give yourself a long runway to gain traction and get traffic. That means if your webiste is targeting the summer months, you need to start writing in the winter.
Keep writing about summer all through the Summer, but then you need to start writing about Winter at about the beginning of the fall season. That way you give yourself about 3-4 months of time to establish rank and authority.
The summer of the next year, you'll need less time to ramp up to the season. You can start writing about summer during late spring, and have articles prepped. Your stuff from last year will rank easily, and your stuff from this year will be able to leverage your websites current authority to rank faster and higher than before.
My Experience
With my seasonal website, I started writing winter content during the late fall, but it was too late. Nothing ranked. I switched to Summer stuff during early Spring, but again, nothing performed well. I wrote about Summer topics all season long, into early Fall, but I still performed poorly.
One year later, everything has "congealed" nicely and is ramping up. You can see from my Dec 2017 blog post, income is up! And now that warm weather is on everyone's mind, traffic is up too.
It's still early Spring, so I'm hoping that I get even more action than just a couple blips above what I'm used to, but things are looking good so far!
Final Thoughts
If you have a seasonal website, either have a second website on the opposite season or think of a Winter topic you can "double up" your webiste for, so that your traffic and income doesn't slump in the off season.
If you have a brand new seasonal website, write content for the future, e.g. 3-4 months in advance or further (5-8 months if you really have patience!).
Seasonal websites can make just as much money as any "evergreen" style website, you just have to have a plan in place so you can take appropriate action.
Is your niche seasonal? How do you deal with the variance in traffic and income?
Recent Comments
21
I don't have a seasonal website, but I enjoyed your perspective on how to reach an audience throughout the year.
Make it a great day!
Thanks, Nathaniel, for the information. I don't have a seasonal site but it is interesting to learn what the problems are and how to balance them.
All my sites are seasonal. But it is not so bad if you just keep adding new content. The result is: instead of oscillations you can get something like a staircase profile in the traffic and sales. In other words, it goes up in the season and gets to a plateau off-season, or to a moderate decrease. Then it grows again.
I did start one new in November (about outdoor stuff for the next summer) and it is as you describe it. Terribly slow start but from February I am seeing an incredible growth in everything, roughly 4 times bigger traffic and sales as compared with the previous month.
I love your style of teaching and writing, Nathaniell. My niche is a household item. So, I’d say no in answering your question and that it’s not a seasonal item.
Have an awesome day.
My niche is patio furniture, I write about heaters and fire pits in the cooler months.
John
See more comments
Good post, thanks