Summer? Are You Kidding?
  Written By Titmowse

It’s that time of year again. Tax time? No. Tax time just passed and hopefully we all came through it valiantly. It’s what comes after tax time. It’s what comes after spring. It’s almost time for summer and the “summer slowdown”.

Does it exist? Hell if I know for sure. We’re talking about the online porn business. Nobody is conducting any studies on us. We may be individually informed of our own performance and know about the performance of our competitors/peers by word of mouth, message board and email. But hard statistics? I don’t know of any. Wish I did.

What I do know is a lot of adult webmasters talk about the summer slowdown as if it were a real occurrence. I do know that a good bit of online porn income comes from the US. I know that here in summer most of the college students go home. I know that college students (especially the males ones) get free Internet connections while in school and subscribe to a whole bunch of paysites. I know the weather will be warmer and the days longer. I know that there are scientific studies that state sexual activity increases in warmer environments. I know people in America go outside more in summer and they usually don’t take their computers with them. Having worked in nightclubs for almost two decades I know summer is a consistently busy season for bars in America. If more people are out spending money in summer then they’re probably not buying memberships to paysites as well. Adult webmasters have told me they suffer in summer. I know some that just take the whole season off.

Then again, there are adult online businesses that do fine in summer. Some do better in summer. Do they work harder? Do they concentrate their promotional efforts on audiences in other countries or those unaffected by the call of a warm June night? After all, there are plenty of adults in America who already graduated from college. Their jobs and responsibilities bind so many of them. They don’t get to go out and play like the school kids do in summer. Could it be that some adult webmasters celebrate the season and market its glories such as bikinis and short skirts? Do they find those surfers who want the experience of summer but can’t partake in their real lives? Are some webmasters just smart enough to deal in content that doesn’t depend on seasons or college students?

I believe there is a certain drop in adult online sales during the summer months. I also know that summer has been around for all eternity and that adult webmasters have been ‘dealing’ with it from the beginning of the whole net porn thing. So far, no one has come out and claimed that summer killed their business. We’ll soon begin to see those post topics about the ‘slowdown” pop up on the message boards. I’m pretty sure I’ll spend less time on my computer because the nights will be cool and sun will energize me. I may do what hundreds and hundreds of thousands of Americans do every summer. I may go on vacation.

You are the one who has to decide how you will approach the encroaching lazy hazy days. In about two months a good chunk of the porn buying marketplace will have three months of tanned bodies and bored coeds out on the streets. Will you join them or will you stay home in front of your monitor screaming at your stats? Will you work harder at getting those surfers to buy? Will you try some new project that might even be non-adult? Can you afford three slow months or will the decline put you behind?

Look. The summer slow down is real for some webmasters. It’s a time some take a break from this hermetic existence. Some go about their business unaffected by the weather. Yes, my message is early. After all, we just finished tax season. But the tax ritual is pretty humbling to most folks. It’s a time we take inventory of our actual worth. Right now we’re all in a thinking mood. Why not think a little more? Why not think about the future?