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I’ve only been successful in this part of my online endeavors for a year, so when a couple of people brought this question up to me in early fall, my answer was that I’d probably make enough money in October not to have to worry about November and December at all. It just made sense to me at the time, but it also doesn’t mean that I’ve resigned myself to slow sales during the holidays.

On the contrary, I think that most people who have businesses that are fully online can make more money during that time period than in the entire rest of the year by changing tactics slightly.

So after you’ve sprinkled a little prevention on the problem, and made sure to keep yourself much more than afloat between Thanksgiving and Christmas, the next thing you should do is think differently. There’s a number of ways that subtle changes in your thinking can bring you into a solution-oriented perspective.

We Americans in particular tend to forget that we aren’t the only nation on the planet, or the only people in the world for that matter.

So the first way of thinking differently, therefore, is thinking globally.

We really ought to do this year-round, but what’s especially smart to do is to focus on this at holiday season. It’s because a lot of people, this time of year, don’t focus in on the more cost-effective or free types of traffic attraction, and end up throwing money at the problem, either because they’re afraid they won’t meet the required amount of money they’ve set themselves to earn at the holiday season, because they’ve given up on making money until January, or because their online work is part-time any way, and they are busy doing family-related things.

All that amounts to this - there’s fewer people using methods that take a couple of days or weeks to show results, and English-speaking non-Americans are getting a lot less attention than before.

So pay more attention to your outreach to the rest of the world if you’re not an American. Even if you are, remember that some Americans celebrate Hannakuh or Ramadan instead. On my old poetry site, during the week of Christmas, I saw more of this group online than at any other time.

The second way you might want to think differently is to think of one step in the process instead of the entire sale.

For example, maybe if you sell an ebook abut painting easter eggs, Christmas season sales are a foregone conclusion.

But you can isolate one step in the sales process and just say hello. You’ll probably have to communicate with that prospect up to seven times before you actually make a sale. So make those seven times occur as quickly as possible.

One way you can do that is to touch base during the holiday season. Send some well wishes out to your list or to people at your site. Just say hello, or send them a coupon. A lawyer I used to work for sends Thanksgiving cards. He doesn’t ask for any business, he just updated us on how his family was. As a result, he is hard-coded into my brain every Thanksgiving.

And now that I need to upgrade my business status, that’s who I’ll hire- staying in touch often pays off in ways you never realize.

A third way would be to think demographics. If you’re not studying who your audience is from afar through surveys, or even better, getting up close and personal with them, and talking to them directly, you should be. If you have been, find a parallel product that has an affiliate program and put more focus on it for the holidays.

An example: If you mostly cater to women who are small business owners, with a little more investigating, you might find that they have a common need.

For example, if many of them are newly successful, they might be thinking about buying a house. Join an affiliate program of a mortgage loan company and bring the two groups together. You’ve done your audience a favor, the loan company is happy with the feedback, they pay you per lead, everyone is happy

This fourth way is pretty simple, and I’ll stop after this one because I have a few people I need to get in touch with.

If you sell mostly informational products, and you have a product line that you’re constantly adding to, this will be pretty helpful.

Count how many products you created this year, and figure their average cost. If you authored three ebooks and one service, add them together, add them together and divide by three. Most people who put together three products this year, probably have plans for three more, or even four products next year. Regardless of how they will be priced, if you have a loyal audience who trusts you, you would be able to pre-sell them next years products even if they aren’t created yet.

If it were me, I’d cut the average cost in half and mulitply it by the number of products I had in development for next year. Then I’d offer a one year subscription to my entire product line, including ones I’d already created, to my current customer list, reminding them that things they buy to improve their business may be tax deductible and that this is the time of year to do this.

They’d be getting two years worth of products for a quarter of the price.

You might be thinking that people will not buy a product that doesn’t exist yet. That’s not true. Twice I’ve turned my own personal notes into a product because I got the demand before the supply came in. Go to your audience and find out what their demand is. Or get a new audience.

If I can sell books of poetry that way, you can do the same with your business, whatever it is.

Got to go now. See you on Google Tuesdays.

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