Success On Halloween
It is officially Halloween today. OoooOOoo. Scary no? As you can see I made a delightful little banner up there to wish you all a happy Halloween - it’s not as good as Adams’ Creadiv pumpkin or SuiteJ’s self-portrait (very good), but I thought a little ‘festive’ cheer might brighten (probably the wrong word) up the page. Only problem is now I’ve done it, I’ve gotta stick with it, so have to think a Christmas themed one now as that’s just around the corner! lol
So what does Halloween mean in the world on online blogging, entrepreneurship and money making? Well, for one it means decorating your blog to show its Halloween (for some, not for others), and two - anyone who has a fancy dress shop should be laughing, although sadly this isn’t always the case (sorry Clog).
Now I’m quite tempted to get in on this whole Halloween thing, I think the possibility of starting up a website to sell Halloween goods (or something else that I haven’t thought of) could prove to be a money maker (and quite fun to design). Now I can hear a sudden uprising of people shouting “um, your too late, its Halloween NOW” to which I reply that yes, its Halloween, but no, I’m not late, I’m here at just the right time.
See, I beleive the best time to start something for a holiday period is actually just before (or just after) it has happened. The reasoning behind this is two-fold: one, you can get a lot of ideas from websites that have information about the holiday season, and build up some knowledge. Two, it gives you a whole year to advertise and get yourself to a ‘natural rank’ etc. through legitimate means. Now this doesn’t sound very exciting, as you would have to design and advertise the site for a year before you make any profit from it potentially. However, think of the positives of doing this - you have a lot of time to build up ‘natural’ search rankings, saving you having to pay for click-through links; you can visit many other sites over the year and tweak your site to work ‘just like the big players’; and more importantly you can take your time over it, its not a rush to get it done - I mean, you have a whole year!
As I said previously, I’m thinking of taking on this mentality and starting up a Halloween website…not exactly sure what I would sell / advertise on it yet though, but I like the idea of taking a ‘long term’ project. Hell, I might even try doing one for Christmas as well! Although, that is a much bigger, more competitive market and relies a lot of ‘niche products’ of the year to get your advertising right. I mean, this year the top Christmas toy might be a stuffed lion (now complete with opposable thumbs!) but next year it could be an army issued grenade launcher (courtesy of McCain industries). A market that volatile is hard to plan for a year in advance, unless you stick with the ‘core’ values of it, and do a kind of ‘all-rounder’ site, which might offer Christmas food, a selection of goods etc. Once you’ve built your position, and once you know the years Christmas niches, you can advertise accordingly, keeping your position (or even increasing it) in the holiday.
Altogether I think that the idea is very sound, and could enable you to become a force in some very big markets! It does have its problems; the fact that you can’t make any ‘real’ profit from the site until a year later, and even then your site could flop (it shouldn’t, I mean, you had a whole year to make it!) and make little money. Yet think, that if you put the little work in bit by bit over the course of the year, and the site was a big success, not only would you have the profits to show from it, but you would also have to do very little to the website to make it profitable again for next year - the site might almost be self-sustainable!
Let me know your opinions guys, I appreciate them all and would like to know what you think about this.
On a side note, I realised I made a political joke in my post…blimey!
Dan
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