National Hot Dog Day, Free Shipping Day, International Coffee Day – sound familiar? Some folks may think these fake holidays are cooked up by people with two much time on their hands. Bloggers on the other hand, should think of these fake holidays as way to boost their marketing. What are fake or faux holidays you may ask? And how can you make money blogging with faux holidays? That’s the focus of the Boost Your Marketing with Faux Holidays and Special Events session at Affiliate Summit with panelists Tricia Meyer, Joe Sousa and Nathan Smith. Here are my takeaways from that session. I hope you get as much out of it as I did.
What are Faux Holidays?
What is a faux holiday? The simple answer is, it’s a holiday celebrated by enough people to call it a special day. Sounds kind of crazy. There really is no legal process or requirement to create a day. However, if you want to put a “national” or “international” in front of it, it requires 100,000 signature and a governmental endorsement. Click here for details.
Most Faux or fake holidays are broken into 4 categories.
- Food/Drink Holidays (National Chocolate Day, National Vodka Day and National Popcorn Day)
- Shopping Days (Black Friday, Cyber Monday, Free Shipping Day and Singles Day)
- Charitable Days (Giving Tuesday)
- Sporting Events (Championships, drafts, product launches, trades, team logos)
How Do You Find Faux Holidays?
How do you go about finding faux holidays? Well, there are a number of websites dedicated to these bizarre, wacky and obscure days of the year. One of my favorites is Daysoftheyear.com. There are others including:
- The Ultimate Holiday Calendar from Trackmaven.com
- Calendar at a Glance at Nationaldaycalendar.com
- American Food Holidays at thenibble.com
- You can also create your own holiday calendar like wineclubgroup’s annual wine calendar
Make Money Blogging with Fake Holidays
So we know what fake holidays are and where to find them. The next step is to put it all together to make money blogging with fake holidays. It comes down to content.
Round up posts would also work really well here. For example National Margarita Day, you could list the 5 top margarita recipes or where to get $2 dollar margaritas. You could even tie it in with best the top 5 guacamole recipes because you must have chips and guac with your margarita, right! You get the picture.
Social Media Tips
As I mentioned in my post How to Make Money online – Tips from the Experts at Affiliate Summit, writing is only 40% of the process. 60% of your time should be promotion.
One of the easiest things you can do is to promote your content is to use hashtags.
Hashtags allow you to connect with people and participate in a more global conversation. Read more about the who, what, when, where, how, and why of hashtags here.
Let’s take #nationaldogday for example.
You could ask people to post photos or videos of their dog. People are more likely to share if you are interacting with them. Same goes for #nationalcoffeday or whatever is trending. Tie the occasion to your niche. You could use hashtags, write a round-up post, list everyone who has coffee deals or find coupon codes to share.
Use Newsletters and Email to Promote Your Holiday
Newsletters and email are another great way to make money with fake holidays. You can:
- Create emails specifically around the holiday
- Link to old content in your newsletters
- Add a “Holiday section” to your template and feature new ones each day as additional newsletter content.
Monetize and Track Faux Holidays
As the panelists said, what good is any of this if you don’t make money from it.
- Tricia Meyer uses SubID’s for tracking. If you’re not sure what a SubID is you can click here. Tricia has put together a SubID Cheat Sheet that I will be taking advantage of and hopefully you can too.
- Use Google campaign URL builder to add UTM Parameters.
- Find Affiliate Channel Deals – Look for free shipping offers
Wrapping It Up
I love attending Affiliate Summit. It’s one of my favorite conferences. I’ve learned so much and have met so many interesting people from around the world. Affiliate Summit is a few times a year. Tickets are on sale now for the next Summit.
If you have any question let me know, I’d love to hear your feedback.
First of all, your title made me laugh out loud! Faux holidays are great but I always seem to post reactionary items. This year I want to do some preparatory posts.
This is great info! I have found the more crazy the holiday the more people love it!
I have an international calendar that supposedly lists every imaginable holiday around the world. It is a busy calendar 😉