Hate The Grind

The summer months is one of two major slowdowns when it comes to making money on the internet. The other is during the Winter/Christmas season. If your website or blog relies on just PPC/CPM based ads then you will begin to see a huge slowdown in your earnings. You can try to optimize as much as you like, but the reality is that advertisers slowdown their spending during the summer months. There are numerous benefits to having a more stable revenue pattern, one of course is that the revenue is generally higher! Other side benefits include being able to forecast revenue (and therefore plan your spending), and also the creation of additional revenue streams in case one runs dry. Here are some things that I have done to help reduce the impact of the revenue cycle to help keep it more stable and predictable throughout the year.

Have Multiple (and Different) Revenue Streams
This one is a no brainer. The more revenue streams you have, the more you will make. The key is not just to add multiple types of advertising banners on your site or more affiliate offers, but instead it is to add different types of money making opportunities. If you run Google AdSense (who doesn’t these days?), consider selling links on your site, affiliate sales, direct ad sales, or offer services.

I accomplish this on my car forums website by not only running Google AdSense ads, but also IntelliTXT in-text advertising. Both of these revenue streams are affected by the summer advertising slowdown, so if I were to keep it to just these two revenue streams I would encounter a summer revenue slowdown. Fortunately, I also serve up AuctionAds banners on my forums. There are less eBay auctions closing during the summer, but the impact is not as huge as the advertising slowdown on networks like Google AdSense or Yahoo Search Marketing.

Sell Sponsorship Directly
I have two forms of direct ad sales for my car forums, one is a 468×60 banner ad, and the other is a small 100×75 thumbnail for users who wish to sell their vehicle on the site. While summer advertising slows down, direct ad sales for beyond goes up during the summer as the car show and tuning season is in full swing. This is the single biggest contributor to summer revenue for my site.

Many shops (especially local businesses) do not advertise online. If you market your site to these businesses, you’ll earn revenue you would never see had you only run Google AdSense ads. If your site gets really large and you want to manage the ads, consider using OpenAds (formerly phpAdsNew).

Diversify Your Web Properties
This may not be a viable option for too many people, but if you have the opportunity and time, consider developing and growing other sites that are not as affected by seasonal advertising changes. Perhaps doing some research with Google Trends may help uncover another business opportunity you can grow to help bring in revenue when your main money maker is slowing down.

At the very least, if you cannot completely prevent your summer revenue from slowing down, you should be able to reduce the impact of it. I hate to beat a dead horse, but don’t keep all your eggs in one basket!

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