Seasonal Articles

At Suite 101, I contribute mostly holiday and special occasion crafts for kids and am one of the top three contributors for Holiday Kids Crafts. The most popular holidays include Halloween, Thanksgiving and Christmas. I have mostly crafts and kid friendly recipes for these particular holidays. Why would I focus on a specific topic with specific time frames, knowing that the rest of the year those articles might not get read at all?

Believe it or not, I planned it this way purposely. Let me give you a little insight to why I would make this decision:

• Halloween, Christmas & Thanksgiving kids crafts gain more than a million search inquiries per day from September to the end of December.
• In my experience, my holiday crafting articles receive more views and revenue at Suite 101 than any other place I have published them.

But why would I continuously publish these types of crafting articles, knowing I won't see the monetary pay off until September-December? This is simple.

Because I have three children under the age of 9. This means Halloween costumes, Santa presents, stuffed stockings, classroom parties to fund, two birthdays in December, etc. Since I already know I need to increase my income for these months to afford the added expenses, I publish articles that I know will be profitable during the same months. In other words, I write throughout the year so I can see the benefits during the more expensive months. And I chose to write passive income articles instead of increasing my direct pay articles so I could continue to make the extra income each year, without having to slam out many low-pay articles during the holiday months EVERY year. My revenue crafting articles will continue to pay, whether I actively contribute more or not.

Here's an example of my income increase from Suite 101.

August 2011:  $99.56

November 2010: $301.22

That's a $200 jump. And believe me, that $200 increase goes a long way toward funding the holidays for my girls. When I caught on to how profitable these holiday articles would be, I made a plan to continue contributing them, even though I knew I would only see the pay off for the last four months of the year.

But what about Panda? Will this effect my passive income that I have become dependent upon for these higher cost months? Only time will tell!