Yes, I know it’s March, and it pisses me off when stores are putting up Christmas stuff as early as September. But our business is different. Our business takes time.
According to Kantar Retail, 63.7% of online gift shoppers shopped Amazon.com during the 2010 holiday season. 33.4% shopped at Walmart.com. While there was probably some overlap, an overwhelming majority of shoppers checked out from Amazon. How did they get there? Did they get there through your site? If not, why not?
Yes, it is only March, but you need to start thinking about what sites you want ranking well 8 months from now. Are you going to create new ones and start linking to them? Are you going to boost up the links to your sites that did decent last Christmas season? If you wait until summer or fall to start sending links, you may feel a sense of desperation, send too many links, and get your site sandboxed for the entire holiday shopping season. (Trust me, it sucks.) Start on those projects now… send a link or two (or ten) a day to these sites, so that you are well positioned to reap the rewards come Christmas time.
Very timely post!
I have one Halloween website that I started at the end of September. Despite jumping into the game so late, it managed to make some money and it still continues to bring in money even today since it covered over 100+ pages/keywords of original content…and costumes that can be worn past Halloween.
Since the beginning of 2011, I’ve been building links to it because I want to make sure it crushes last year’s figures.
I’m thinking ahead instead of waiting until the last minue like I did last year.
Yah, I have had instant success like that too, but I have had sites that got boxed right before the holiday season because I pushed it too hard. That is why I definitely make sure that I start it well enough ahead of time now.