Summer slowdown or outdated strategy?

[Ben]

I promote mostly jock, straight guys and occassionaly butch men type of sites. And this year I've been doing that mostly through free sites (not all niches on the same domain). The sites feature mostly static pictures but the links to a particular sponsor usually point directly to the corresponding promo video on the sponsor's site. (I haven't done video galleries too often). These type of sites have worked quite well for the past 4 years or so, especially when one takes into account how modest is the amount of work and devotion I invested in them. My traffic comes mostly from the usual gay link list sites and a little bit from SE.


Since I considered this business only as a part-time job, I didn't invest time and money in generating my own traffic (TGPs, network of several big sites, blogs etc.). "My" traffic is when I steadily make new sites, and this in turn makes visitors check them out on a more regular basis. As I said, this approach gave satisfactory results until recently - somewhere until the second week of July. Then it all kind of stopped. Now I see significantly less traffic, and signups have disappeared into thin air. Damn. Just when I was about to step up the production of such sites relying on the said model - and finally take up this as my primary job! Now I am not sure if the free sites model that relies on the LL traffic is still something one can count on? I guess I could make a blog and start with AVS sites again (though they're nowhere near the potential they had some 4 years ago IMO).

I am in a dilemma: whether present low sales can be attributed mostly to the summer slowdown, or my business model is outdated? I see there are more and more big gay free site networks (for the lack of a better name), which, I was told, generate a dizzying number of signups with major sponsors - even now during summer. Then, of course, I keep hearing that blogs are the way to go, and I am willing to start one or two. I am prepared to take this seriously but need to check once again if something really important has changed in the past 5 months. Somehow I feel something (bad ) has happened and since I haven't read the boards on a regular basis during this year I could have easily missed it. Does only blog traffic convert now? Or do only several big free site networks now attract most of the surfers that want free porn?

Any imput would be appreciated. Also I'd like to know if you are experiencing the summer slowdown.

[Lee]

I really do beleive that when sales start to drop in the Summer months is because of over saturation of sponsors content and lack of motivation on the webmasters part.

Also, the niche you are promoting weighs heavily on how well you will sell to, several years ago, when 'twink' was just gaining momentum, everyone was promoting that niche and, everyone started complaining about slow sales.

A couple of years back, when frat/jock type sites became more globally accepted in the gay market place, everyone started promoting them and subsequently started complaining about slow sales.

This year im noticing a lot of people who are promoting straight guy sites are complaining about slow sales during the summer months. I had one guy tell me last week that he made only 1 sale the entire month and that wasnt even going to cover his bandwidth.

I really do think during the summer months (mid to end of the year in essence) that a lot of these 'new' sites start to get over-exposed and that is why we see a decrease in sales, everyone flocks to these new reality/solo style sites and sends all of their traffic to them without diversifying anything, its like every surfers, gets hit with the same site, every time they surf porn, it only stands to reason that eventually sales are going to dry up.

In terms of traffic generation there is no 'right' or 'wrong' answer, for example, i have friends that make an absolute killing on blogs, but i cant connvert blog traffic for shit, likewise i have friends who cant convert free site/link list traffic but i do really well from it.

In terms of the slowdown itself, traffic appeared to be down overall for me last month however, this month it seems to be picking back up again, sales were pretty much on par as this time last year i havent run solid numbers yet but im guessing im going to see a 5% decline on the previous year sales wise, nothing to worry about on the grand scheme of things.

Regards,

Lee

[Ben]

Thank you for the analysis, Lee. I also think that jock / straight niches have become somewhat overexposed and saturated. "Oh I saw that guy today morning on 10 different sites and jacked off twice already". That surfer is not going to buy the membership if he sees the same guy on my site for the 11th time - or perhaps he's already joined the paysite.

It seems I need to diversify more, both in type of sites I promote and in sources of traffic.

I hope september will be much better though.

[A_DeAngelo]

as my dad used to say "the only thing that's slow around here is the gin!" (slo gin that is... that's a joke... )

I'd relax if I were you - we were always told that "summers are slow" and this and that - BULL SHIT! summers are great, christmas is great, tax time is great, blah, blah, blah....

"people like this kind of guy fucking that kind of guy, people don't like bareback - do like bareback - don't like black people - do like this, don't like that...."

if we really listened to everything others have to say about this and that we'd go crazy with contradictions and wouldn't know where to turn

the bottom line is this - you've got to have a good product - be it hard dvd's or a site or a service or whatever you sell or make money from - that's all there is to it

but most important, you've GOT TO LOVE what you do and LOVE your product(s) - if you don't love them and think they're good, nobody else will either...

something else my dad told me is this...

if its good, and people like it, they'll buy it and use it -

my dad was ALWAYS right

[Lee]

the bottom line is this - you've got to have a good product - be it hard dvd's or a site or a service or whatever you sell or make money from - that's all there is to it

Thats a major part of the problem, most affiliates DONT own sites, products or services, they are reselling other peoples and can only do so much based on the things they are selling.

If everyone promotes the same product, everyone will start to feel the damage of over exposure/saturation, thats one of the reason that PPS programs are constantly launching new sites, because they know, if they dont add something 'fresh' in to the mix, sales will drop because surfers will have seen everything they have to offer.

Has anyone actually watched the times of year when most large programs roll out their new sites and offerings? It is always during the 'slow' sales periods, it has been for years because the program owners know the only way to increase sales during these times if to offer the surfer a site they havent already seen plastered on every gallery, tgp, free site and link list.

They also dont just roll out one or two sites, they create 5-10 for their top selling niches that need to be freshened up traffic wise.

I guarantee when the Internext show is over, within the first week of everyone being back, at least 2 PPS programs will have new sites to launch.

Regards,

Lee

[Baghdad Bob]

signups were a little bit down for me last month