Recognizing the Value of Christmas for Internet Marketing

Being still quite new to this internet marketing stuff, the significance of Christmas in a business sense has never really struck me before. After all, it feels a bit cynical to think of this time of year as a time to make money. Surely it should be about the Christmas story, being with family, tradition, cheesy music, too much food and drink.... Shouldn't it?........

Well, however you think of it, Christmas is a time when consumers are consuming at their most voracious. People are buying lots of stuff for their nearest and dearest, and in large quantities. Even in these tough economic times, overall spending at Christmas time is huge. As each year passes, more and more money is spent online rather than at traditional bricks and mortar stores. It makes sense, therefore, that those of us trying to make some money through internet marketing should try and capitalize on this.

There are a couple of points that I have learned about this over the past few weeks. Firstly, Christmas spending is on actual physical things - not on informational products, digital products and health products which tend to be what many internet marketers tend to focus on due to the high commissions. There is a huge range of items to focus your efforts on, some with very little competition. Amazon is the obvious affiliate program to choose for this strategy, but there are plenty of others to consider.

Secondly, you need to start early. Unlike other campaigns, you are focusing primarily on a fixed point in time, so if you are not prepared you will miss out on a time when you could see the greatest volume of sales. Christmas always seems to creep up on you quicker than you think.

I have to admit that I have not put sufficient effort into capturing the Christmas market this year. I did put together a few Squidoo lenses promoting some products through Amazon, and I have even made a couple of sales. But that was it. And now as we enter the last few shopping days before the big day itself I realize that there was so much more that I could have done.

I intend to move into putting together some niche sites early next year and my intention is that some of these will focus on physical products (probably through Amazon), so that when next year's Christmas shopping period reaches its height, I will be ready!!!