Is the niche market your website sells to seasonal? Do you make lots of sales in summer (or winter, fall or spring), around Christmas, or some other time, but can't give stuff away at other times of the year? You're caught in the seasonal sales cycle'and the good news is, there is a way around it.

Here's how'

Our friends at Google have supplied us with the perfect tool for beating the seasonality right out of our online businessesand best of all, it's absolutely free! The tool is called Google Trends (just do a Google search for it and you'll find it right at the top).

So what's so good about Google Trends?

Let's use an example to see the power of this cool research tool in action. Say you sell golf equipment, golf videos and other golf information products online.

A quick look at Google Trends reveals that golf is a very seasonal market. Huge search interest around Christmas, which drops off significantly in the middle of the year. This is the 'seasonal bias' of the golf market online and you probably never even knew exactly why your sales were so great at Christmas and really bad at other times of the year. Now you can see it graphically displayed and actually DO something about it.

The solution?

Find related products and services that have either no seasonal bias or one that is opposite to the one your main market exhibits. For example, "golf holidays" has a very small seasonal bias, so you could build content and do PPC campaigns targeting golf holidays in popular regions (through affiliate programs) all year round to smooth out your income stream.
Another way to use Google Trends would be if you are looking for the hottest markets for your product or service. below the trends graph you can choose to sort results by city, region or language. This can be very helpful in targeting your Google Adwords campaigns to the most targeted audience online.
You may find that you are wasting your time by targeting markets that aren't interested in your product, when you can see at a glance where your market really lies. Also, you can check to see what language most of your searchers are searching init may be possible to use Adwords in say Spanish and other languages as well as English to maximize the use of your paid search marketing.

Another strategy is to look to see if there are other countries outside North America where the seasonal bias is not related and heavily target those markets when the North American market goes to sleep. Or you could even diversify away from the golfing market slightly and find different niches that golfers are also active in and either create additional sites or add new resources to your current golf site to even out your income flow.

Google trends will prove to be an invaluable research tool for everyone building a business on the Internet and used wisely will help you earn a much more consistent income from your online businesses. You owe it to yourself to check out this powerful tool and put it through its paces.