Back at the start of August, I wrote an article explaining why it is completely natural for a website to lose revenue during the summer season. Both budget cycles from advertising campaigns starting/finishing, coupled with seasonal changes generally cause the EPMV (earnings per thousand visitors) to drop temporarily. This is generally why most bloggers and website owners hate the summer months of June-August. Yes, the suns out and we tend to go on holiday during this time. But, it is the worst time of the year for websites using PPC to generate revenue!

However, as stated above, this is a temporary thing. The EPMV tends to bounce back towards the start of September. In actual fact, it tends to keep climbing all the way up to Christmas. Although June-August is the worst time for websites, the best time is September-December.

With this, it is extremely important to make sure the website is set up and prepared as best as possible to make the most of the traffic that it will receive in this busy time. For this reason, here are some tips to achieve just that.

Don’t Test Themes During This Time

Testing of themes should not be done at the prime time of year when websites generate the most revenue. Would you think Usain Bolt will try a new type of diet just before a very important 100m race?

Most of PPC for websites tend to use machine learning to automatically analyse and experiment with different types of adverts and locations to maximize the revenue produced.

If you choose to change or adapt your theme in anyway during the build up to the holiday season, then the machine learning will effectively have to start from scratch to re-learn what ad placements work best for the new theme. When this happens, it is very normal for EPMV to be negatively impacted. This is why it is much better to wait for the traffic to die down after December to test new themes (such as January/February time or, even better, during the summer season when traffic and EPMV is at its lowest).

Add More Adverts

Machine learning works by experimenting with as many combinations of adverts, locations, sizes, types, colours and more to find the right combination to produce the most revenue through PPC for a website. The more options that a machine learning tool, such as with Adsense or Ezoic, can experiment with, the higher the likelihood that it will find a combination to work at its best.

This is why it is a great idea to add more adverts, advert sizes, colour combinations and more during the holiday season. Although this means the machine learning will have to re-learn the new options, the pay off of a higher EPMV will mean it is a risk worth taking.