Hi.

I run a number of e-commerce sites.

Based on monthly revenues I typically bill about $550 per day on average.

However, monthly, without fail, I will have a day or two that sales
are almost non existant.

This almost always occurs around the middle of the month with today,
June 13, being a primary example with sales of about 67 bucks.

Any ideas why this is occuring?

Being a home based internet business I don't get a lot of time away
from the PC. If I could determine when sales were going to go into a
lull I could just close up shop and head to the mountains for the
weekend.

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Request for Question Clarification by larre-ga on 13 Jun 2004 18:47 PDT

In order to provide an educated guess, we'll need more information. 

What sort of metrics do you use (WebTrends, ClickTracks, counters, etc.) ?

Does the number of visitors to the site also decline, or amount of sales only? 

How do visitors find your site (referrers)? 

Thanks, ---larre

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Clarification of Question by creative1234-ga on 13 Jun 2004 18:54 PDT

This is one of the main revenue generating sites and you can view
monthly traffic by - ta-da - selecting a month :-)
http://logs.daviesinc.com/woodstock.tis/stats/feelthepleasure.com/pages_per_day/0/

My traffic is both a mix of search engine traffic and traffic from a
reseller program I have in place.

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Clarification of Question by creative1234-ga on 13 Jun 2004 18:57 PDT

oh - the log for June 13 has not been crunched yet so the traffic
indicated is up to 6am on June 13th.

The stats will update tomorrow morning at 6am.

On past months you'll see a day or two with no traffic - that is a log
problem - there actually was traffic those days.

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Request for Question Clarification by larre-ga on 13 Jun 2004 19:38 PDT

Thanks for the prompt response. 

Do you remember the low sales dates for the past three months or so?

---l

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Clarification of Question by creative1234-ga on 14 Jun 2004 04:37 PDT

They are typically within a 1 week time frame.

Anywhere from the 12th to the 18th.

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Request for Question Clarification by larre-ga on 14 Jun 2004 10:59 PDT

I'm afraid that without specifics it's impossible to guess the cause
or predict future phenomena.

I suggest you examine your logs vs. buyer profiles to see if you can
find a correlation.. It might simply be a confluence of factors that
result in slower sales on a periodic basis.

---l

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Clarification of Question by creative1234-ga on 14 Jun 2004 12:17 PDT

It could be something as simple as when peoples credit card payments
come due or their payroll comes in.

I was not really expecting an analysis of my specific trends - I was
hoping you could find some study on the web that indicated this was an
internet wide occurrence and an explanation as to why it may be
occurring.

I don't think I'm being singled out for this treatment :-)

Thanks though.

Does it seem to be just before the 15th of the month and the last day
of the month?  Maybe people are waiting for their paychecks to get
into their bank account.

I have several affiliate sites and I see the same kind of thing - I
think it is due to:

1) Paychecks coming out on 1st and 15th of the month - I always have
slow periods then

2) News Events - I've noticed that sales have dried up during times
when there is a major news story that will keep people in front of the
TV

3) Changes in site traffic - for example when a worm hits the net big time

4) Fraud/Cheating by affiliate program owners or payment processors (I
actually asked a question to Google Answers about this - no answer
yet)

5) Increased CC declines by payment processors for one reason or
another (they have to keep an eye on their chargeback ratios, if
chargebacks are high for a given month, they may increase their
"scrub" for fraud)