question about subscription site trends

[Slutty Jasmine]

Hi guys. I've had my site open about 5 months now, and I'm wondering is there any (reasonably) accurate rule of thumb about what times of the year are the most busy as far as joins and such? I see certain days where it's a bit of traffic and many joins, some days lots of traffic and less joins, and smae with the different months. So i was wondering if those of you whove been doing this a lot longer than me might have some wisdom about when is the best to focus your marketing efforts and what times of year just suck. So far for me, it's gone :

sept = extremely good
oct = mediocre
nov = insanely good
dec = early dec bad, xmas season super busy
jan = some days super busy, others dead

im curious to hear other peoples thoughts about this....

[GTP Dave]

I am curious...whats the url of your site? You have something special?

[Head Boy]

I guess it's this site - Slutty Jasmine!

Do you mean marketing or selling? Sometimes marketing doesn't show results for a month or two, and it's really a continuous effort.

[Slutty Jasmine]

I'm talking strictly joins. the scenario up above refers to number of people signing up for monthly recurring. I know from business school it's never going to be smooth and perfectly consistent, but i didn't expect this kind of volatility. I tried to correlate it to paydays (guy gets paid, buys some porn), days of the week (weekends = more), even stuff like what the weather's like... nothing cut and dry I can tag as the big AHA! item. The weirdness is some weeks I have no marketing going at all, not many hits, and sales are through the roof, and other weeks tons of hits to the site and relatively few joins. The closest to a possible explanation i heard was in this thread someone said that marketing efforts might not show up right away. It is marginally possible that it's a delayed reaction - good marketing doesn't show up for several days, same with bad marketing - but that still wouldn't explain the big disconnect between the number of hits and number of joins. maybe some of that extra traffic is crappy quality, and therefore no better than no traffic at all.... I'm hoping someone might know from experience, ie "february's are great, march sucks, week after xmas is the best" kind of anecdotal stuff.....

[Lipshtich Lady]

Jasmine

there is much more than disposable income availability to ups/downs - much of this could be traffic related too.

But for US traffic there is some correlation to paydays and number of days in the month.

Just some numbers -

67% of the US population gets paid on a bi-weekly schedule.
18% of the US population is paid monthly

though this monthly number is no longer valid as 1st of the month bump - it is spread through out the month

if you focus on the larger number - realizing the calendar -some months there are 3 pay periods and some months 2 pay periods - most larger bills (mortgages, utilities, car) are due once a month - so in the months were there are 3 pay periods there is more disposable income.

The fluctuation by by pay period will diminish as the income levels increase. This is also true about percentage of disposable income. So if you are targeting guys making $40k a year - this is more important... $100k less important.


Personally - I think your variations are probably less due to income patterns and more due to traffic patterns - look at what you did or did not do, study you traffic stats

[Georgie]

I have seen this kind of variability in both my sites and other people's sites when they have posted their stats. Sometimes there's just no rhyme or reason, and a lot of the changes will be due to the unique demographics of your site. Not all porn surfers are the same - same age, same sex, same income bracket, etc. I wouldn't worry about it unless the trend stays low for a couple of months. Just continue to add content and do the marketing thang best you can.

[Head Boy]

There are a load of variables these days, and some are out of your control. For example, someone might be buying your surfers through Zango, and that could be losing you traffic. Maybe a review site has got a high ranking for your terms, and is deflecting surfers to one of your competitors. You could get a boost because one of your feeder sites has been promoted to the number 1 spot on Google. or some of your galleries or freesites are being listed in good positions.

If you have high traffic and few joins, try to see where the surfers are leaving your site. If you can discover the reason, then you can try to improve things. If you have got good sales ratios, then try to discover why they are good. Don't just accept that they are good because they are coming from a specific type of site, but consider whether they are picking up qualified sales from other sources. If that's the case, then you may lose the "other sources" who are the ones actually finding the surfers with the money.

[Head Boy]

Another couple of things to check are the thieves and leeches. Make sure your passwords aren't being listed on an exchange site, and check that your members' content isn't being sunmitted to the free porn sites.

Another trick is to pinch your content, and then watermark it with another more general site. That can divert your potential customers.