Is March a bad month for sign-ups?
 

(Sorry if the question has already been asked)

My sales for March have taken a dive across the board and I was wondering if anyone else has had the same problem this month. February was great and I have changed nothing so is it just a March thing?

gotcha

Actually, February is usually the worst for me, since there's only 28 days :D

I don't think there really is a bad month for everyone - or even a majority - I had a decent Feb & I'm having a very good march. You seem to be the opposite. It's different for everyone.

March is good for me so far.

Thanks for the quick replies :) And Greenie I know what you mean about February. I wanted those extra 3 days as it was a good month for me and I wanted the signups to keep rolling in!

I wouldn't be worrying apart from the fact that my signups are down so much, a small dip would be okay but this is a huge one.

I will have to improve my galleries/listings I guess and hope for a much better April.

March and April are usually very good months for me. March started out great, but now it's sucking a bit, it'll pick up though, traffic is up so the sales will follow. Build through your slow perriods ;) Fuckit, build through your good periods too and you can't go wrong :D

Feb and March been good months for me...hope it continues til the rest the year |bananna|

March has been great for me and I'm heading for my best month so far despite not being able to work for the past few days. (A nasty chest infection has wiped me out).
When I have a bad day/week/month I just take the advice given here so often - just keep on doing what you do. Build, build, build!
:)

I find there are no good/bad other than Feb since 2-3 less days of income adds up quick. March has been very good so far for me but it has to do with a new program I tried and other sites I push rebills are kicking ass.

I think if you're not paying attention there are months that can be bad. Generally speaking though, not too bad

Sorta like sex, there can be bad sex, but it's all relative to good sex.

Thanks guys :) I will keep building galleries and make sure the end of this month goes better.

SheepGuy - I thought the only bad sex was no sex! At least I don't have to worry about my sex stats going down, my wife is sex-mad :)

gotcha

This may be a dumb question, but are you sure that you're not doing anything differently then last month?

New sponsor(s)? New niche(s)? Different TGP's? Not getting listed at the places you did get listed at in Feb?

Hey Greenie. I took in to account a couple of changes (some free sites I lost due to change in TOS where I did get signups & some adverts I didn't renew with AVN ads) but even with these changes I thought I should be still getting the same-ish numbers off my own site and submitted galleries.

The AVN ads were great at the start of the month but dropped off with a bang mid-month to end of month as surfers got used to seeing the advert. I use adbrite for quite a few adverts but I am pissed off with them lately as it seems your own adverts drive up the price the site charges. I am not 100% sure of this but the price one site charged changed 200% from the start of when I placed my first one with them to what they are charging now after I have run 6 adverts with them. Since my adverts made up 90% of their advertising I figure I drove their asking price up. Not good for me but as I said I am not sure how they work out their charges so just a guess.

The free sites got good traffic but there was a change in TOS via email that arrived while I was away and my sites got deleted. That of course is the problem with free sites, no control over the site and you can't submit galleries from them to many sites. They do pick up decent SE traffic though.

I am going to look for a couple of partner accounts I can afford and see how that changes things. Luckily this is not my full time job!

Cheers
gotcha

March slowdown
 

Year after year I have lower traffic and sales in March despite working the same or more. Last year my sales dropped by 50% in March, in April everything was back to usual. This year I worked much more in March so the sales are not so much lower in absolute terms but in comparison to the amount of work I invested they are quite lower.

Do you notice the same? I know it's weird in this biz that what happens to one player must not necessarily happen to other people.

I have noticed the same pattern, year after year (see my post above). I am a gallery submitter who is trying to diversify to other stuff like free sites. It may be that gallery traffic is more prone to this phenomenon than other sources of traffic.

This month started off well above average for me, then went to total hell the last week or 2. If I have an alright last week, I oughta be close to my monthly average, but my traffic has gone up some thing like 30-40% this month so I would like to think my income would follow too, but it hasnt thus far. But then I know exactly what the problem is though, a sponsor that I have used for years now I decided to start pushing some of their others sites I havent tried before, which has resulted in 1:11,000 conversion ratio. So I guess if I end the month even close to average and the sponsor I pushed the hardest ends up 1:11,000 or worse I guess I can take that.

ivo68 - I have exactly the same problem. In March I have created more galleries, submitted more and I think made higher quality galleries as well but although my effort and click throughs are up the sales are down. Picking up a bit now though. Free sites cam be good for additional SE traffic and as the surfer is looking for specific content then they should at least check out the sponsor and hopefully join.

Mr Exotic - My traffic is up too but the ratios are way down. I am thinking of dropping a couple of non performing sponsors and getting in to something new in addition to the sponsors that do perform for me already. Your 1:11,000 conversion ratio seems very low unless you have huge traffic? I have one sponsor where I have stats like that and they are going going gone. If I get 1:500-1000 I am happy.

Those ratio's I see people juggle around all the time, are those first page uniques ? And isn't source of traffic a major factor in this ? I suppose we're talking about free and paid linksite traffic...

For my tgp traffic (own and third party) I'm getting 1:1,000 - 1:2,000 fpu on average (good - bad months). Single sponsors doing less than 1:1,200 are ok in my book (I'll promote them) and < 1:800 is excellent (I'll cherish them).

Had one well respected sponsor drop all the way to 1:40,000 last month. Never happened before and for no apparent reason (they couldn't figure out why either). Feb was my worst month in a long time (ratio-wise) but March is looking much better.

Jab - The ratios I am using are signup/no: of people who went to sign-up page. I keep an eye on the ratios because it can tell you something is off, like if you were getting 1:500 last month but this month you are getting 1:2000. Then I would look at what had changed especially on the sponsor site and it's sign up page. If they make changes it can affect sales, or it could be that the text/links I made on my gallery were not specific enough about what the surfer could expect on the site so they went, saw and weren't interested.

I am not anal about it as things change that I have no control over (like the weather, hot weather = low sign-ups for me as everyone is at the beach not online) and then you get those weird 1:1 sign-ups from SE traffic on pages you forgot you even made.

I'll keep on building like the advice above and I am trying to use better meta and alt tags that will attract SE traffic that is specific to the type of site I am promoting.

Now I am going to go pack my bags and go away for my first w/end in ages. The weather here sucks (NZ) so I will get rain for 3 days when I should be at home getting sign-ups while everyone is stuck inside.

:)

Yeah, they can expose trends in your own traffic, so one can check out what's up. My point was it's difficult to compare your ratio's against other ppl's ratio's without more info. E.g. 1:5,000 could be horrible in your book but great in mine.

About first-page/join-page, well if you send your traffic directly to the join page of a site, that would be first page hits. And if you - or your sponsor - counts only unique ip's as being 'a hit', that'd make it "first page uniques". At least that's my understanding.

This pay peroid has really sucked ass.

FAT NASTY ASS :(

March has sucked big time for me.. 2nd or 3rd worst month in the last year or so...

Weird, this has been my best month ever, but I've been working extra since my new years resolution so perhaps it's just the extra effort.

March was very good for me :)

Here it's ok, in fact pretty good