My life has been slow-moving these past couple of months. It feels like nothing is happening. I suppose nothing happening is just fine. No news is good news, as they say.

But in terms of business, things are even slower.

It’s funny. I’ve been doing this for four years now, so you’d think I should be used to slow summers.

Around June – August, business crawls. Views drop. Sales stagger. Every. Single. Year!

Last year I had a blog anniversary sale for my course — Side Income with Canva Templates — in July. Performance was worse than what I’d typically expect from a flash sale. Ran another sale a few months later, and boom! Made up for the slow summer a few times over!

So this year, no anniversary-special discounts here smack in the middle of summer’s hottest days, absolutely not! Marketing these flash promos is exhausting during peak season. But during summer? It’s outright frustrating.

Even so, I can’t help but take it personally every single year. When I track my performance and sales, I know it’s just one of those summer trends, and yet, I start to wonder… is something wrong with me? LOL.

No anniversary discounts on the course, but this year I do have to promote my fall blog writing workshop. And the sales are, yeah… as you’d expect from summer (it’s all summer’s fault, I’m telling you!) Spring workshop was a full-house, so I figured, well, even though it’s hot as hell out, 12 people will surely get on board, right?

Nope.

The workshops are a LOT of work. Live classes over Zoom + office hours + the time it takes to prepare for the classes + checking assignments and preparing feedback for each cohort is A LOT!

This means, if I can’t sell at least 10 spots, the workshops are not sustainable.

But the way it’s going, I think I might have to refund the couple of folks who’ve signed up so far and cancel the fall workshop altogether.

I guess I should have seen this coming, but oh well. You learn from experiences.

But it’s not just me, of course. It happens to most content creators. Unless you’re in the millionaire club, you’re bound to feel the slow seasons. If you’re a content creator/blogger, maybe you feel it too. If you don’t, congrats! But if you do, hang tight! Things will start looking up in a month-ish.

In the meantime, here’s what I’m doing to get my mind off the (low) numbers. Maybe consider some of these for your content business too?

Working on my existing content

Summers are slow, so it’s a great time to take stock of my overall content; see if I can make things better, update some old posts to bring fresh traffic to them, make changes to the website, etc.

So, I gave my homepage a fresh look, added a new blog feed that will have biweekly-ish Canva tutorials, and behind the scenes, I’m making even more changes to the site and content structure that I’ll be revealing in the coming months.

Doubling down on Medium

I’ve been on Medium longer than I’ve had this blog. And yet, I only ever treat that platform as an occasional hobby. I decided to change that and started writing a ton more.

In June, I wrote 12 pieces there. In July, I’ve already published 22 pieces. Not a good time to start a new content venture (because you know, summer!) but at least it allows me to get in the habit of posting consistently. I’m hoping the momentum will continue throughout fall and perhaps even winter. And who knows, maybe Medium could become another significant source of my overall online income?

I’m experimenting with content, titles, length, publications, and trying to figure out how the platform works.

(If you’re curious, Zulie Rane—one of the top Medium writers—shared a beginner’s guide on Medium right here on TSB last year; feel free to check it out.)

Here’s where the efforts stand as of now:

I made $29 on Medium in June (hahaha, I know, 29 bucks for 12 stories… like, I make on average well over 5k every month from this blog and I write like 4 blog posts… *sigh*)

In July, I already made $57. So, well, there’s progress. That’s half my monthly Starbucks expenses!

And also, per Zulie and some other top earners on Medium, as long as you write well and stick to it, Medium earnings will improve.

I’ve been able to stick to a regular publishing schedule on Medium these past couple of months because well, summer! Slow! Turtle!

Maybe I have to cut it down a bit in fall, but we’ll see.

Reminding myself constantly that this is temporary 🙂

Well, at least that’s how it’s been with me—things usually start to look up by late August/September—so no need to despair, right?

Even if I end up canceling the fall workshop, it’s not a big deal. I started teaching the workshop as a way to get out of my comfort zone and challenge myself to do new things.

I’ve already done it once, and it was, judging from the feedback, a success. I guess I can feel better knowing that, at least.

In case your numbers are down too, don’t worry and hang tight. It’s only temporary. Use the time to assess your content and business structure. No better time than slow summers to really prepare for the next year, implement new strategies, and put your ideas into motion.

Good luck!