First of all, apologies for the lack of posts over the summer months. During July and August I tend to be here, there and everywhere and so don’t have regular access to the internet. That in turn means websites like entrepreneur.co.uk have to take a back seat.

But that doesn’t mean I haven’t been busy!

I spent most of last week finalising my plans for my websites and Christmas.

It’s no secret that Christmas is boom time for internet retailers just as it is on the High Street and if you want to claim your share of the spoils you need to be ahead of the game. And with 105 days to go, work on my key Christmas sites started today.

I hope to have all of the groundwork done for the end of this month and then it’s just a case of keeping on top of things right through to December (I expect sales to peak around the 3rd of December this year).

Come October I’ll be working on sites that need to be ready for the New Year (to make the most of all those resolutions people will be making) and so it goes on throughout the year. Always trying to keep ahead of the game.

Of course I’m talking about established sites here that already have traffic and it’s that traffic I’ll be looking to monetise.

I generally allow 18 to 24 months lead time to establish a site in the search engines before expecting it to make a big impact money-wise. It can be done almost overnight if you are willing to throw advertising pounds or dollars at it, but I prefer the slow burn approach.

So if you’re waiting until December to get your own sites ready for Christmas, I’ll assume you’re planning ahead for 2008