As most of you guys and gals already know, most of the money I make online occurs during the holidays. While off season blogging typically delivers a very low level passive income, blogging during the holidays is absolutely huge for me, and I mean explosive. So for me, I have to pay attention to the various holiday events that take place throughout the year. If I don’t, then I don’t make money.

With proper planning and hard work as well as knowledge of the typical upcoming national sales events, I am able to make quite a bit of money during peek times that carry me through slower times. With that being said, I wanted to share with you my Retail Store Sales Event Calendar Cheat Sheet. This is something I use as a foundation in my business of making money online with a blog. Without it, I am blind or at a minimum much less prepared to do my job well. I hope that you find this cheat sheet as useful as I do.

January Sales Events:

• Super Bowl Sales - during this time blogging about the television commercials is absolutely huge.
• New Years Eve Sales - It is the midnight sale of madness. You can blog about just any product you want and people will find it.
• New Year’s Resolutions - Quitting smoking, lose weight, stop cheating on your husband or wife… there are hundreds of products that people buy.
• Martin Luther King - Famous for furniture, cars and appliance sales.

February Sales Events:

• Ground Hog Day - Yet another great marketing holiday for major retailers.
• Mardi Gras - Excellent time for marketing travel and vacation options. Huge for credit cards targeting college students.
• President’s Day - Huge in the automotive industry. Huge overall around. Walmart, Best Buy, Circuit City offer amazing deals.
• Valentine’s Day - Perfect time to market adult toys, clothing, candy and vacation spots… (e.g. the classic one hour hotel rates).
• Daytona 500 - Huge for promoting Nascar and auto parts. Car accessories, rims, tires, car stereos, and many automotive enhancements and upgrades.

March Sales Events:

• St. Patrick’s Day - Very popular holiday for cosmetics and accessory items. Shoes are popular items. Most all major stores offer store wide clearance sales.
• Easter - Very similar to St. Pat Day. Clearance sales, candy, gifts and baskets. Electronics and computers for some reason are hot during this time too.
• First Day of Spring - Huge… huge sales deals. All stores contribute. Every item is on sale. Automotive is hot. Car deals need to burst fire out their inventory.
• March Madness - Amazing name, but nothing amazing in these sales. Event is starting to become a dud. Most all stores participate, but doesn’t generate explosive results.

April Sales Events:

• April Fool’s Day - Pretty decent sales event. Not the best, but not the worst. Combined back to back with March Madness makes for a standard marketing campaign.
• Tax Day - Huge on marketing tax software. Very competitive. Very weak on long tail keyword marketing. Dog eat dog world on this one. Use of AdWords is effective.
• Earth Day - Big events on clothes, shoes and similar items.

May Sales Events:

• Mother’s Day - Excellent targeted and focued sales event. Takes the guess work out of product marketing. Much money can be made.
• Memorial Day - Very profitable sales event. All stores run massive sales. This is an Internet Marketer’s dream. May is a very good month for Internet Marketers.

June Sales Events:

• Father’s Day - Super huge. Better than mother’s day. Guys are higher maintence than ladies when it comes to toys. Guys love computers, gadgets and technology related items. Ladies enjoy simple gift baskets and flowers. Perfect chaser coming out of Memorial Day and one of my personal favorites.
• First Day of Summer - Kind of a lame sales event. Nothing compared to Father’s day. But still it breaks the ice and it beats passive marketing.

July Sales Events:

• Independence Day - You better hit this hard and heavy. It’s all you have for the month of July and it comes early in the month. Huge gab between 4th of July and back to school and back to school isn’t all that good. Summer is kind of a dry period. So you better make Independence Day count. A lot of money can be made but you have to be very aggressive.

August Sales Events:

• Back to School - Very decent event. School supplies don’t monetize very well because they are cheap. Target older kids, such as high school and college students. Computers are huge in this event. Same with cellphone and other tech gadgets. Student loans are very hot. Clothing is huge as well.
• Tax-Free Sales Events - Very nice sale but doesn’t perform quite as well as I would expect. However, expensive products make up for lack of volume. Computers, laptops, cellphones and expensive electronics are hot during this time.
• End of Summer - Depressing. Well not the holiday but the end of summer is depressing. Girls start wearing clothes again and the weather gets cold. I hate fall. Nothing is pretty in the fall. I could care less about orange leaves, I just want to see skimpy clothing on the ladies. At any rate, end of summer is an “all around” holiday. Most all stores participate. Targeting is some what difficult. Fall clothing is hot… but there is no excitement there.

September Sales Events:

• Labor Day - Good marketing holiday. Office supplies and very hot. Office furniture and computers is very hot. Best Buy is known for their sales event.
• First Day of Fall - Lame. Nothing too eventful. Clothing is popular. JCPenney is hot same with other stores such as Dillards and Macys. Make best use of Labor Day and prepare for a dry period.

October Sales Events:

• Columbus Day - Big event for automotive. They are really trying to push inventory and get ready for next year model vehicles. Pretty decent event on movies, dvds and various video games and electronics. Nothing too explosive.
• Halloween - Amazingly this is a pretty decent holiday. Most stores run sales just to push old inventory and make room for the next year products. October is a pretty big dry period all in all.

November Sales Events:

• Election Day - Lame. Nothing monetizes very well. Bypass and prepare for Veteran’s Day.
• Veteran’s Day - Not too shabby of a holiday. Invest some time into this but don’t miss the windows on Thanksgiving.
• Thanksgiving Day - Super huge… all in on this holiday. Everything is on sale and stores invest money into huge advertising. You are now entering into the biggest time of year.
• Black Friday (Busiest Shopping Day) - Amazing… shocking…. grab your kness and kiss your ass. You will make an amazing amount of money. Blog about everything including the kitchen sink. This is your day, this is your moment!
• Cyber Monday (Internet version of Black Friday) - Back to back.. with BlackFriday… you will NOT sleep, if you do you are stupid. This four day period should be your busiest time of year as a blogger and you should have invested all your time and energy into both these two sales events combined. You can make more money during these two periods than you can almost with any three other campaigns combined. If you don’t plan ahead than this business just isn’t for you. Plus it’s all you got until Christmas.

December Sales Events:

• First Day of Winter - Boring. Lame. Stupid. Don’t waste time with this. Use the down time to prepare for Christmas, End of Year and New Years.
• Christmas - Super mad man crazy for marketing. This is your show boat. This is a time for NO sleeping. A lot of money can be made during this time of year.
• End of Year - Very profitable and a great way to closeout the year. Get your quick “Bang” in and then quickly prepare for Super Bowl and New Years Sales.

I hope that you find this retail store sales even calendar cheat sheet helpful. If you have any questions, comments please drop me a line using the comment form below.