Why I don't like Black Friday (as a publisher)

As a consumer, I like the deals available on Black Friday just like everyone else. I don't have any planned purchases but I'm sure I'll buy something. As an online publisher, I'm not a big fan of Black Friday. I know you might think I'm nuts but let me explain. After all, what's not to like about getting a sliver of the [$9 billion spent online in one day](=)? It boils down to my preference for consistent, recurring revenue streams. Black Friday is a one-off burst. --------------------------------------------------------------- -PAID AD- ¢Â€Â‹ Get 50% cashback on all Odys domain acquisitions this Black Friday. And 20% extra for content websites. [BUY NOW](. -END PAID AD- --------------------------------------------------------------- ​ Okay, it's not as if I hate it or have any hate-on for Black Friday from some anti-commercialism perspective. I should really say I don't get all that excited about Black Friday. I'm sure I'll make a few extra bucks. I probably already have thanks to higher ad rates. But as I said, it's a one-off revenue burst. A big reason I got into this publishing gig is I like the consistent, automated revenue websites earn. The thing with Black Friday is that to truly cash in you need to do hustle work... set up the emails, pepper sites with affiliate links... it requires gearing up for a one to four day cash grab. Again, I have nothing against it but I also don't get particularly excited about it. I doubt I'll do anything differently. I'm running a quick 4 day sale of my course just because there are quite a few affiliate roundups happening so I'll participate. In return, I'll pen my own round up of deals... it's a huge quid pro quo arrangement. But after many Black Fridays, I'm hoping this year my expectations area anchored in reality. Cannibalizes revenue the weeks before and after? I can't help but believe that Black Friday to Cyber Monday kills sales revenue for the 2 to 3 weeks before and after. I'm sure the net amount spent is higher with Black Friday but it chips into that consistency I prefer. I'm inevitably disappointed Maybe my grinch attitude toward Black Friday stems from my first Black Friday as a publisher. I still remember it. Black Friday was just becoming a thing online. I was excited. My sites had some traffic. I had some email lists. I thought I'd clean up. I have to admit I had totally unrealistic expectations. I spent many hours gearing up for it only to make an extra couple of hundred bucks. It certainly wasn't worth all the time I put into it. I was disappointed. I'm sure that negative first experience still sours Black Friday for me. I now assume I'm not really going to make enough to warrant spending a week gearing up for it. Expectations That first bad Black Friday result isn't the first time revenue didn't meet my expectations. On the balance I'm an optimist veering on being unrealistic and perhaps even naive. While being an optimist is good, it can set one up for let-downs. When I learned about affiliate marketing many years ago I thought it would be the easiest way to make money in the world. I barely knew how to launch a WordPress site yet thought I'd clean up with affiliate commissions in months. I sure was wrong there. It took 18 months to earn my first $9.95 commission. Email marketing was a huge disappointment for me Another big disappointment for me was email marketing in my various niches. All the other crackerjack marketers hyped how great email marketing was. Nobody ever qualified it with "in some niches" and they certainly didn't specify those niches. It was stated as if it was some universal truism. They were wrong. Actually, they didn't know any better because being in the "how to blog" business niche is great for email marketing. That's all they know. I built up a list of 65K email subs in one of my consumer-oriented niches (non-business)... a niche that's fairly commercial. As I was rapidly building up this newsletter, I failed time and again to make it pay. I tried on a smaller scale in other consumer-oriented niches and that didn't work either. That's when I realized email marketing works in only some niches. Not all. It wasn't all doom and gloom While I've probably had more failures in this business than wins, the few wins have worked out great. Display ads is probably the biggest win of my life. I had a site I built for affiliate commissions but it earned nothing. The day I put AdSense on it years ago, it became a big earner. I haven't looked back. Focusing on informational content since then has been a huge win for me. More fun too. Info content and ads serve my penchant for consistent revenue I remember back when all my online revenue was affiliate revenue. Some days I'd earn $500 followed by $0. It was a roller coaster ride. And then there was the live and die by the rankings of a few lucrative money pages. I earned the bulk of my income from a handful of pages targeting a few lucrative keywords. If a keyword took a nosedive in the SERPs, revenue followed suit. With info content (and lots of it), if a keyword goes down the tube, I don't notice it. I don't like it but I have revenue spit across so many pages that it ends up being pretty consistent. Enjoy the one to four day windfall but it might be good to have realistic expectations I hope Black Friday exceeds your expectations... but there's no doubt that it's hyped to death in online marketing circles so expectations are grand among most of us. This week is more or less business as usual for me. I'm going to do the bare minimum. I hope I can temper my expectations. I know what will happen this year. I'll put in minimal effort and have a banner year forever begrudging not putting in a bigger effort. Next year I go all out because of this year's results only to be disappointed. I can't win. I guess I'm not the optimist I thought I was. Jon Fatstacksblog.com ​ PAID ADS: Please note that this newsletter contains a PAID AD in it. It's a sponsored ad. It is marked with PAID AD above and END PAID AD at the bottom. It is NOT an endorsement by me or Fat Stacks. The advertiser paid to advertise in the spot. Get my bundle of blogging courses: => [Click here for EVERYTHING I know and do growing niche sites to $50K/mo.]() (the FAT STACKS Bundle) =>[My favorite blogging tools and software](​ ADVERTISE YOUR BUSINESS: Do you want to advertise in this "high engagement" email newsletter? [See the Media Kit here](). Great for promoting blogging services, software, websites for sale... anything to do with blogging. ​[YouTube]() | [Blog]() | [Facebook]() | [Twitter](​ ​Podcast:​ ​[iTunes]() | [Stitcher]() | [Spotify](=)​ ​ ​ ​ [Unsubscribe]( | [Update your profile]( | 2016 Hill Drive, North Vancouver, British Columbia V7H 2N5