[funtober]

Fall event directory and costume store launched in 2012: https://www.funtober.com

Basically a one-stop shop for fall festivals, Oktoberfest, haunted houses, pumpkin patches, etc. Still have a long way to go to make it what I would like but traffic last year was roughly 1 million in the month of October. Anticipate it will double to 2 million/October this year. Still working on the right revenue model.

[shanecleveland]

There's something to be said for seasonal niches. It seems to me there's a bit of a reset in terms of search rankings that can mitigate the authority bigger players may have. Do you find that be true?

[funtober]

I could talk about the SEO behind it for days but:

We did use the reset to our advantage to pick up rankings, but I don't think it mitigates the authority of bigger players much. The reset tends to wash out small-time players in the space and bigger players who can't niche effectively more so than it does committed players. Now that I have traffic, I don't worry too much that we are going to get bounced in the reset. I am much more worried that someone will beat us with better content for the next year. Everfest is another startup that I have seen that appears to have pretty much conquered the reset at this point.

Funtober had a very hard time displacing a couple mid-sized players in some of our seasonal niches that were established. Even with the reset, it can take years for their information to become truly out of date and people to look for alternatives. There are also a few things that they can do to keep their information current with little effort. We're just about even now with two in particular that I have in mind, but it took 5 years to get there.

Black Friday would be an obvious example of an area where the reset should be biggest if your theory is true. I think the players there have been pretty consistent and my internal estimate is that even with the reset it will take 5+ years to crack it.