Spring and Summer is the time to keep working hard
Well its finally Spring-like weather in the NorthEast and soon you’ll be hearing adultwebmasters complain about the “summer-slowdown” in the adult business. The adult industry term Summer Slowdown refers to the supposed decrease in sales adultwebmasters notice because less guys are cooped up at home surfing for porn and more guys are out being active because of the warm weather.
Now some adultwebmasters dispel the notion that there is a summer slowdown and insist they see stable sales throughout the year. I believe its only natural that sales may decrease over the summer time as dad’s take their familes on vacation, guys go out to ballgames and patios and outdoor activity increases. But my point today is regardless if you believe in summer slowdown or not, you should continue to keep working hard on your business and dont get discouraged by seemingly decreased sales.
Now is the time to build more sites and pages so that when traffic increases again in the Fall you are in line to reap the benefits. The sales in the adult industry may be somewhat cyclical based on the season but the rate at which you build your assets doesnt have to be.
Of course if you live in an area that has a frigid winter now may also be a good time for you to take a break from sitting in front of the computer and go enjoy the warm weather too, my point is to not get discouraged by the lower sales you may experience in the summer as long as you continue to build something everyday.
May 21st, 2005 at 12:00 am
Porn-Myth:
DO NOT believe that there is a slow time of the year. Do NOT make excuses for why your sales/traffic is down. There are no slow times of the year.. i repeat there are no slow times of the year. (in the adult online industry)
It is ok if you think there are. Just about everyone thinks there are slow times and they make sure to teach others this. You need to unteach yourselves. This way of thinking teachs people how to make excuses and put blame on something else other then themselves, and honestly it is not true anyway. But it is definetly a negative way of thinking regardless what you believe, and you should always be thinking positive. When sales are down think how can i do better not, oh well its not my fault kids just went back in school, etc..
Let me get the excuses out of way… you will hear:
Nov/Dec… it’s the holidays people are saving for Christmas, so not spending on porn.
Jan - people not spending their credit cards are maxed out because of christmas.
April - taxes, people too concerned about pay taxes
June - Aug - summer sucks, everyone on vaction or spending more time outside.
Aug/Sept - kids are back in school. just had to spend a lot on tuition or school supplies.
etc…
My personal favorite the weather… The myth is that when the weather is nice sales are down because more people go out and when the weather is bad people stay in and spend money.
Having so many excuses causes problems from time to time. The winter is believed to be good by many because the northern US gets a lot of snow, it is cold, and people stay in and search porn. But the holidays (christmas in particular) is a bad time of the year… so i guess when you have a good day it is because there was a lot of snow and a bad day was caused by too many people going shopping that day. lol
Sporting events… another personal favorite of mine. When you have a bad day and it happens to be a sunday from august - jan, don’t fear you have the NFL to blame it on. (this works well for Monday nights too and if you are a college fan then you know no one is online during college football saturday). Superbowl!!! Are you crazy! no one makes money during the superbowl why even waste your bandwidth, just shut your servers down.
Politics… If you noticed your sales have dropped over the last couple years, blame it on IRAQ. And when you are having a bad day if it wasn’t a holiday and the weather was bad and there was no sporting event, you can always find something political that happened to blame it on… Tentions increase with China… hey the pope died today,, sales tanked..
OHH the economy.. almost forget that one.. Easy to blame it on the economy, just blame Bush… damn gas is up who can afford porn whn it is 2.50 at the pumps.
There are so many excuses I could go on and on but the only legit excuse is -YOU!
You can see i covered just about every day of the year above with excuses. so if all of these excuses were true then no one would ever make money, every day would suck. What happens is people don’t think about the excuses (slow downs) till they see their sales are down, then they think “why are my sales down” at this point there are two ways you can go.. positive or negative. A negative person will start trying to justify why his sales are down and he will find like people so they can console each other. A positive person will double check all of his stuff, server, links all work, nothing been changed, traffic sources still sending traffic, etc.. and then he will start working harder to make more money. A negative person will make excuses faster and more often and will eventually create his own slow times. ” I’m taking off this sunday, not going to make any money with all the football games on, etc…” A positive person will work harder on the “supposed’ slow time to ensure he makes more money then usual during these times.
The point of this post isn’t purely motivational, there really is no such thing as a slow down. But if you don’t believe me thats fine, just tell yourself you will work harder on those days to make money and try keep a positive point of view. At least take away from this the importance of being positive. It is hard for people to be untaught. all of us were taught to make excuses. all of us myself included. It is only natural, we want to make ourselves feel better for why we are not doing as good as we like. Everyone does it to some extent.
A little bit of what I have noticed over the last 6 years.
Slow downs affect all mainstream industries and are even greater when over a smaller location. BUT Adult online (world wide) is not affected by “slow downs”.
I had an average day on 9-11 with sales. This past tax day, i had an above average day. My sales are consistant every week through out the year. I am not the only person. the only time my stats differ is when i do something to affect them (neglect my stuff for a few days they go down, work double time they go up, never fails). If you post on a messageboard or network with a lot of people you will see this is common, for every 1 person that says they are having a bad day there is another person saying he is having a great day.
Also, there are the “scrubs and shaves” people. I am not sure if they are the same people who believe slow downs and when they can’t blame it on a football game or time of the year the blame the sponsor for shaving… ive seen them all get blammed by the way.
Your sales will be up some days and down some days it is 100% fact, You can’t keep doing better and better every single day. And don’t micro analyze. If you ride the roller coster of watching your stats day to day or even worse hour to hour and comparing previous days or hours to the current sales, you will go insaine.. not too mention spend too much time not working. Use sales as an indicator.. when you see them low double check everything.. and then turn it up a notch.. put more effort in.. when you see them high don’t be dissapointed when they go back to averge. it happens. Try to look at your stats week to week to compare how well you are doing.
It’s funny i’ve never heard someone say ” i’m having a bad day today and it’s my fault” LOL ANYONE ever hear that?
I don’t mean to sound like i am on soap box. Just trying to help some of you guys who have never heard a different view point on this. Being successful has a lot to do with having the right attitude. If one person reads this and takes something good from it then it was worth the long post
BTW exercise caution when debating this with a firm believer of “slow downs” to some people excuses are their crutch and they dont want to face reality and will not believe what you are saying no matter how convincing you are.
May 21st, 2005 at 12:07 am
Someone made comment to me that porn is like smoking and it is 100% true:
Porn is in the same class as smoking or drinking.. i believe that is an accurate statement. When you want a cig you dont care if it is tax day or you are broke or if it is 4am, you go to the store and buy them. Same with alchol and i would bet online gambling sites never see slow downs either.
Do people stop smoking because of the war in IRAQ or because it is summer? If a restaurant bans smoking do they smoke less? If they can’t smoke at work do they smoke less? If they lose their job do they smoke less ? NO!! they just smoke more when they can fit it in. Same thing during the summer. If more people spend time outside during the day, they will catch up on porn at night. Spending time “doing things” does not stop you from porn, just dicates when you can do it not how much you can do it. So what a guy goes to the ball park during the evening. His kids are still in bed by 12 and he is free like any other time of the year to surf porn.
Now department stores, resturants see slow downs, LOL food and cloths is less a necessity then sex cigs and beer
Mix in the fact that your website is world wide and open 24 /7 and you futher delute any regional factors that would affect most main stream businesses.
May 21st, 2005 at 12:08 am
A company with affiliates said they noticed a slow down over the summer. And said their sales overall dropped and they had many affiliates so it was diversified traffic.
I am not doubting that his sales do drop over the summer. What happens over the summer ?
Many of us take more vacations during the summer and our kids are home and out of school and hard to work if you do so out of the house. Also spend more time with family, some people take off more simply because they think there is a summer slow down. So, there is infact a ” webmaster slow down”. Our work out put decreases so naturally our sales decreases. This explains why a big affiliate company can see a decrease during the summer. The drop in sales does not hapen because of a customer slow down. The customers are there we just have less for sale for them to buy. On a side note i work the same year round, I have no kids and work addict lol. if i take a vacation it is a random time of year and for 2 days often not during the summer. I see no slow down, stats pretty consistant year round.
July 3rd, 2005 at 3:02 am
I don’t believe there is a significant change in sales. How long does it take to jerk off? Does that change over summer? Yeah a person may go on vacation but he just has to sign up 1 day out of 30!So he can go on vacation for the othr 29 days for all i care!