My title is meant to be light-hearted, but three days ago on the shopping channel QVC in the UK they were selling stuff for Christmas.

It’s still July!

Every year it seems that sales of Christmas products start earlier. Some of you may not even celebrate Christmas, but even so it seems a little early – doesn’t it?

But then I got to thinking: QVC must have very good market researchers and years’ worth of data to study. So they must know something about what sells and when. And that made me think of something else.

In internet marketing one of the pieces of advice given to beginners is to research a market before you bring out a product, or buy one in for sale. It’s good advice because if you know there’s a demand for a product you have a better chance of making sales just from that fact alone. it also stops the “I’ve got a great idea for a product” disappointment. Sometimes, even the greatest ideas just don’t sell.

So how far ahead are you planning for your sales this year? Are you already thinking about Christmas? If not, why not?

QVC sell hard goods – physical products. And a lot of what they were selling a couple of days ago was crafting supplies that the buyers would need time to make into a finished article – hand-made cards and that kind of thing. So getting the supplies early is probably a good ideal. After all, it takes a while to make a beautiful hand-made card and if you have a lot of people to make them for you need time.

But what about info products that most marketers are selling? You don’t really need a lot of time to download them and read them, do you?

Proabably not. Then again, if the content will take some time to put into place, perhaps giving people enough time to succeed before Christmas is a very good idea. Think of a 90 day to success type product. That’s going to take a customer 3 months to work through, assuming they have no delays along the way.

There must be many people who would like to close the year with a new income stream, or a new job even. How much time do they need to achieve that?

So it’s certainly worth considering what’s coming up because your customers will. Right now, for example, here in the UK parents all over the country have much less time than usual because kids are out of school for the summer. And kids take up a lot of time! So if you’re selling something that requires a big investment of time right now you may have a bigger sales job on your hands than you expected.

I’m not suggesting that you rush out and start selling Christmas recipes on the web, or even crafting supplies.

But it would certainly be worth thinking ahead to the end of the year and working out where your offerings fit – and when.

And just to put it into perspective, a chocolate company here in the UK start advertising mini Easter eggs – on January 1st! And they sell countless millions.

Sometimes, you have to be ahead of the game to control the game!

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