There is structural growth and then there is seasonal (cyclical) growth to traffic. Structural growth happens when you are doing things to affect growth e.g. you create a new product, more content, host a giveaway etc. Seasonal growth is the natural ebb and flow of online traffic throughout the year.
Based on analysis of millions of pageviews a year of data for the past couple year I’ve come up with the following high and low season layout. The data pertains to not only personal finance blogs. The traffic differential between low season to high season usually varies between 10%-25% all else being equal. Of course, nothing is always equal with the constant changes in search algorithms, competition, news, and promotional activities.
High Season
January: All those new year’s resolution folks.
March-May: People looking for tax help.
September – November: Catching up with all the things people should have done while on summer vacation.
Low Season
June – August: Summer vacation.
December: Winter vacation, but gearing up towards the new year again.
SUMMER: THE MOST DANGEROUS SEASON OF ALL
Summer to the year is like Saturday to the week. Traffic levels fade and so does the motivation to work hard as a result. Saturday traffic can easily be 50% of Monday’s traffic for those take count on search to bring the majority of traffic. Summer compared to other peak months is generally 10-20% lower for steady state blogs.
Because I found myself slacking off over the weekend, I decided to regularly post on Saturdays or Sundays to keep myself engaged. It’s not like the post disappears if published on a weekend. In fact, many of my weekend posts help provide an extra boost to the week once everybody comes back on Monday.
The herd mentality is very strong in almost every aspect of our lives: stock market panic and frenzy, housing market panic and frenzy, eating at 12noon, leaving work at 5pm, and not posting on the weekends. The goal is to try and zig while others are zagging. In blogging, posting on a weekend where you get tremendous more attention due to the lack of other posts is one way to act differently.
Summer is also a dangerous season due to its length. It’s OK to not do anything over the weekend and come out swinging on a Monday. But if you lower your effort levels for three months in a row you may very well kill your entire year’s momentum. Not only that, you may kill your entire goal of creating a revenue significant blog. I’ve seen this happen time and time again over the years where everything was going so well and then *BAM* summer malaise hits.
The good times won’t last forever online no matter how much you think they will!
DO AT LEAST ONE THING EXTRA OVER THE SUMMER
One great recommendation I read was having a 30, 60, and 90 day action plan during the summer. I personally think that’s a little too ambitious when the sun is always shining, especially for folks who live in areas that freeze for six months of the year. They go all out during the summer because they know that short days and long nights are just around the corner. There’s not as much to worry about with friends who live in more temperate climates. Studying content production and productivity throughout the year between those who live in moderate vs. difficult temperature locations would be a great study!
Instead of doing three things over three months, just do one thing while keeping everything else status quo. The one thing I chose to do this summer was launch the Financial Samurai Forum (FS) that focuses exclusively on personal finance and not blogging. I’ve been thinking about starting a forum for a year, but sort of dreaded it because of how much time it takes to moderate the Yakezie Forum.
I’m pleasantly surprised with how much easier it is to manage a forum focused on building wealth instead of blogging. Now that the forum is launched, all I’ve got to do is make sure things are running and check the applications once a day for the month to slowly build a user base. In effect, I’m using the summer time frame to pace out a project in order to slingshot into the Fall.
SMALL THINGS ADD UP OVER TIME
Don’t let the low season get you down. Traffic will inevitably rebound during the high months if you continue to produce new content.
I truly think many of us fail when we decide to do too much, too quickly. Even thinking about launching one new thing a quarter sounds too daunting to me. I never want to get to the point where blogging feels like work. At the same time, it’s important to take your platform seriously if you want to earn a viable income stream online.
Use the summer months not as a time to unwind, but as a great time period to stay the course and launch one thing. Although less people might not notice your efforts, they will eventually because search engines are blind to seasons. The internet thrives on new content and new product offerings.
START A MONEY MAKING BLOG
It’s been around six years since I started Financial Samurai and Yakezie and I’m actually earning a good passive and active income stream online now. The online income stream has allowed me to pursue other more interesting things, such as consulting for various financial tech startups, traveling around the world, and spending more time with family.
I never thought I’d be able to quit my job in 2012 just three years after starting Financial Samurai. But by starting one financial crisis day in 2009, Financial Samurai actually makes more than my entire passive income total that took 15 years to build. If you enjoy writing, creating, connecting with people online, and enjoying more freedom, see how you can set up a WordPress blog in 15 minutes just like this one. You never know where the journey will take you in 2017 and beyond!
Regards,
Sam
Sam, Very informative data. Many of us try to do too much, lose focus and are less productive. Creating fewer goals can sometimes lead to greater results and productivity. It’s similar in investing, a simpler strategy of diversified index fund investing with annual rebalancing usually beats those who are constantly trading in and out of the markets.
I should add a nice chart on seasonal traffic for the year to illustrate the point. It’s just hard to separate seasonal and structural growth. Let’s hope the markets keep it together!
Thanks for the motivation Sam. I haven’t noticed a decrease in my traffic yet, but it does seem like my traffic has plateaued a bit. This is a good reminder that the work I put in now will be paying dividends later on, even if it doesn’t seem like it will. That is an important concept for me to remember since the Millennial in me wants results now!
Enjoy the structural growth phase of your site. We all plateau at different levels. That’s when we will be tested to keep on going.
I started noticing the summer “drop off” a few weeks ago. I feel like it’s not even worth posting on a Friday until fall. I think I may limit posting to twice a week but maintain my writing schedule so that I have a backlog of posts for when things get more hectic.
Ah, but that’s the point of the article. It’s worth posting during the drop offs of the week and the year because of the slingshot affect once the high season returns.
I always morn the drop off after tax time since I have so many tax related posts, my traffic cranks during the Feb-April season. However, I always find there is a lag time from when new content comes out to when it really starts doing well in search. I’ve ramped up my schedule to 7 days, and it has done wonders for traffic on my site.
I’m impressed you can do 7 days a week in addition to all your other sites Robert! Keep it going! I’ll look to you when I start to tire as added motivation.
7 days a week is impressive. When do you sleep??? Do you employ an army of staff writers?
Things have slowed down for me this month. Seems like a lot of people are traveling, especially those with kids who are out of school. A lot of people are taking vacation at work too. I think many people also get the mid year blahs and blues around this time of year.
I’ll be gone for almost a month myself so my commenting and social activity will be down as well. If you can’t beat em, join em! :) Posts will be scheduled as usual though.
Really terrific advice here. I was recently wondering and a bit worried about the sudden drop off after school ended, but this gives a lot of hope for the coming months.
Thanks Sam!
Sometimes you just have to focus and plan ahead. If you know that organic traffic drops in the summer do some posts that people will be searching for when some time comes. Like best vacation spots and spin it in the niche you are in. Post it out a few weeks in advice so when people are looking hopefully you’ve written well enough and done things to help get ranked to get some organic traffic. Traffic drops but people are searching just for different things.
As a new blogger this is so encouraging to me, things I hadn’t considered. We started in May so it might feel like we’re really gearing up in the fall (if I understand this correctly) because the summer travelers will be home and more dedicated to their blog addictions. However it may just mean we should’ve launched at a different time of year… can’t change it now! Thanks for this information, super helpful.
No problem. Try to mentally think in 6 or 12 month increments to keep on going and push yourself through the down times. Good luck!
My weekend traffic started to dive at the end of May but the weekdays were still building. My blog is only 6 months old and I want to build readership not endure 2 or 3 months of decline until the first cold day drives people back inside.
I am glad to see someone commenting on a seasonal decline. I was wondering if it was just me.
My traffic has slowed
This week my server endured a massive DDOS attack that damaged the hard drives. I was without access to my blog for 2 days and it has been slow and spotty for another day. Traffic grinds to a halt when you are under attack.
Damn, that stinks! How were you ultimately able to get the situation resolved? Any plugins or shields to use?
It is gotten much worse. The attack was defeated and my host had to get new hard drives. Just when everything came up and was working the DDOS attack has started again and it appears to be unstoppable.
My first email this morning was from my host who has decided to close their business and I have had to sign up with another host. Of course it is a beautiful summer Sunday so nothing is happening with my migration.
I cannot access my own blog and I think all of my posts are gone. I can still rescue my name but this seems like a lot of work for no reward.
Great points here Sam. I have noticed a minimal drop myself, but was expecting it with the summer here now. The nice thing is that I saw a pretty significant bump in April/May so it has not impacted me a whole lot. I think you’re point to try something new this summer is a great one. I have been bouncing some ideas around of something I want to start this summer and think it’s vital to look at those possibilities as a way to stay fresh and not give in to the desire to take the foot off the gas.
John, hopefully you will see some continued structural growth at this stage of your blogging life with a nice whip back in the Fall!
I’m still experiencing growth, but it has slowed considerably compared to earlier in the year. The food blog has tanked over the course of the last 5 months, but other than that, seasonal trends always seem to have been a couple months ahead there. If fall and spring are usually up for web traffic and winter and summer are down, that site was the opposite.
For me, it is tough to stay as active in the summer because May through September are for the road construction industry what March and April are for the tax industry. My supervisor last year was averaging 90 hour weeks by this time last year!
Interesting perspective on the road construction industry busy time. 90 hours a week is unsustainable!
Timely advice, so true. You cannot get to the top by following the herd, doing what everyone else is doing.
I have been trying to figure out what to do about my blog this summer, seeing I have gained so much momentum. I think I have the answer. Thanks so much Sam. I need to get back to the drawing board – maybe sneak upstairs when the family is sleeping :)
This is going on my blog round up. Awesome post. Something I’m exactly going through.
Nice encouragement!
Not only have I observed this, but I am also completely guilty of it. My traffic seems to slow, and so does my posting schedule. In some ways I don’t think there is anything necessarily wrong with this. If I was the manager of a restaurant and I knew that despite my promotions or deals to get customers that certain days of the week were slow, I’d schedule my staff accordingly (i.e. not release as many posts).
There is one huge benefit to this that I don’t think anyone else has brought up yet: The slow down gives me time to work on other website development activities such as creating my new niche site (which just went live last week). This way I’m not actually putting in any less effort. I’m just diversifying it.
[…] who are the most tired. They don’t want to write more content to keep things going. They let the summer months of slower traffic get them down. They see other bloggers create products and call them a sell-out. Other […]
[…] some time off, and business slows down some more. We discussed pushing through the online hump and surviving a seasonal online traffic downturn earlier on Yakezie.com. Despite a slowdown, there is still business to be had! I like contacting […]
My experience is with a FB page called ParadiseAintEasy which has had incredible growth to over 11,000 fans in 2 months, and had record level engagement ratios for 1) post views as a % of users; 2) LIKEs as a % of users and 3) LIKEs as a % of views well beyond FB norms. However, I recently have seen a dip in those ratios starting last wk as kids get out of school and vacations start. People are less likely to check it while on vaca (as same goes for me) and while you may scroll through, less likely to “engage” with a post. So I agree completely. At first I thought maybe it was a decline in my content quality, but being objective, all is as good as before so it has to be the reduced attention. Time for family and friends, but doesn’t mean I can slack as people expect it to be there when they do look!
[…] been thinking about going down to a two times a week publishing schedule for the summer. Seasonal online traffic trends are pretty evident once you get to a certain amount. If people are away, why bother writing as […]
Great post!
I was wondering why my websites are getting below the normal amount of traffic, especially on sunny days so it’s good (or bad) to see that this is an actual trend. Thanks for the tips too.
Happy New Year 2015…. Really this a very nice post. I also found drops in my website visitors in the month of November and December and worried why this happens. This post has cleared my misconception that not only bad backlink, website design and other website related issues and drop visitors but Seasons also plays a vital role in visitor statistics.
[…] understand seasonal online traffic patterns and what readers look for in every single month of the year because I’ve been producing […]
I have no idea why it was so hard for me to find this information online by searching but I’m glad you posted this as it’s made me feel a lot more comfortable. It’s hard to know what seasonal online traffic looks like throughout the year when you’re first starting, as it can be difficult to know what’s just slow because you haven’t pushed growth enough that much and what’s slow because the season is a particularly slow one. So yup, this post really helped. Thanks!
Same question arised in my mind that why the hell traffic is going low in August. I was worried. Well I am working harder than ever this month and never worked that hard in the past few months. I am sure the traffic gonna rise up fast. Well I am a real karate black belt :)
Sounds good! August is always slow, and then there’s a slingshot towards the New Year, and a definite boost in the New Year for most sites. Just got to build the product/content now!
[…] some time off, and business slows down some more. We discussed pushing through the online hump and surviving a seasonal online traffic downturn earlier on Yakezie.com. Despite a slowdown, there is still business to be had! I like contacting […]
[…] who are the most tired. They don’t want to write more content to keep things going. They let the summer months of slower traffic get them down. They see other bloggers create products and call them a sell-out. It’s much […]