Is weblit going through a recession?

Yeah, I think possibly. A LOT of my readership is college-age, and there was a dip last summer and the summer before as well.

I agree with @MeiLinMiranda, I am thinking it's a summer slump as well.

Seems to be the best-fit scenario that I've been talking to others who've seen a similar dip in their visitors. Heh, I almost want to use something like Alexa or Google Analytics across multiple weblit web pages to see if the trend has a correlative affect. (Ugh, statistics, hate; but it can be so awesome.)

If we do see a regular dip in traffic for most weblit works during the summer, that might be a good thing to know. Writers could plan certain changes to occur during the "off-season," so to speak, or plan bonus content to appear during traffic peaks, where it would have the most benefit.

For me at least, the "Weblit recession" came and went. For whatever reason, stats dropped in February and stayed more or less flat through April. Since then, they've started going up.

Partly, they've gone up through advertising during this last week (for the first time), but they'd been going up for a month previous anyway.

Not sure what's up with that.

In the two years I've been at this, oddly enough, I've had stats dip during the summer and go up in the fall during the second year, but in the first I had them go down in the Feb-April period and then go up again come summer.

This year seems to be going the same way as the first year.

I'm not sure what that indicates about my readers.

My stats have fallen a little, but around the same time a bidding war started on a couple of the webcomics where my ads were bringing in lots of traffic (and sticky traffic at that) and pushed the advertising out of my range. So I don't know if its summer or that.

My return numbers seem to be a little down on update days (when they usually spike) but a touch up on other days - which suggests that readers are just hopping on line when they can.

If it is because of summer then perhaps this is a good time to target PW advertising at the Elsewhere region (especially on sites with a lot of antipodean hits - as their long break is in December/January for obvious reasons).

I shall try this and report back...

Becky

I was going to answer no to this, but my stats sucked yesterday and seem to be heading towards total suckitude today also. I had a drop during the hiatus (but also a record day, go figure) and also on Memorial Day, but now this. Maybe it's just a glitch. I've generally enjoyed steady growth throughout. Last summer was a jump instead of a dip (due to a mention on MeiLin's forum) and the summer before that I wasn't posting.

My PW ads have totally tanked in the last couple of weeks, though. So badly I'm thinking of zotting two of the ad boxes. It does not correlate with the traffic, because I've had a record or a tied record day every week for four or five weeks (there's your success story, Gabriel). I asked Lyn about this and she mentioned she had an empty slot for the first time in a long time the other day. (Obviously I should go grab it ) Have others found summer dips in ad interest?

To an extent. Not so much empty spots, but I have seen a lot of $0 ads; but then, I don't put a minimum on my ad spaces.

My square ads are selling well enough, but not my button ads (except in the US zone). I'm thinking of swapping them out for a skyscraper lower down the page or possibly a half-banner or two under the squares (I think my sidebar is wide-enough).

My ads have gone up and down. My penny button ads at the bottom frequently go unfilled, my top banner is often empty (only 2 cents, geez) but my sidebar is usually occupied as are the 3 squares on the DN sites. But PW is my ad budget, not my grocery budget (groceries are courtesy Blogads).

From my own stats they've actually seen a jump in May, but have settled out in June (so far). There's been the increase since I started, for probably two reasons; first the overwhelmingly popular 31 Days of Ghosts co-blogger Zodiac and I did for October (which we'll do again next October), and second it's been almost six months since I joined this community and started to really try and get my stuff out there. There's more I could do to generate more traffic, but sometimes find there's just not enough hours in the day.

However, even though there has been a jump in views, I'm expecting that to settle out once summer hits. Last year, the average dipped down a bit during the summer months (two weeks of which I went driving to Bloomington, Indiana, so there was no posts on the blog, and the serial series was suspended during that time).

It's pretty tricky to tell from my stats, because this time last year Likely's site redesign was starting to get noticed on design sites and stuff, bringing in a lot of curious viewers. But I think it's more or less the same for the core readership, although I've been terrible at updating, much to my great shame.

I totally take it back. Another record day yesterday.