The COVID-19 pandemic has badly affected the world economy and has slowed down the economic growth of many countries. But how will it affect you as a publisher?

While everything might seem like halted a bit, the current situation of a pandemic might actually help you grow your audience and generate more revenue in the long term. Moreover, it might even help you get to the top of your website’s niche.

But to be successful in that, you need to understand the current global trend and take appropriate measures. In this article, we’re going to discuss how the COVID-19 pandemic is affecting website owners or publishers and what you should do next.

Let’s dive in.

The Current Trends Around The Globe While COVID-19 Pandemic

Due to the current social distancing and several governmental restrictions, billions of people all around the world are sitting in their homes right now. Before this worldwide pandemic appeared, people generally used the internet during the morning, after the end of their working days, and at the weekends.

However, due to the current situation, people are spending more and more of their time on the internet. As a result, many websites are experiencing tremendous growth in website traffic in the last few weeks.

Although the medical and governmental websites are getting most of the web traffics for now, as people are browsing the internet for longer periods, the daily traffic of many niche websites will still stay the same or see an increase.

For example, news websites have been getting 34% more daily traffic than usual during this pandemic. Meanwhile, websites of other industries are also experiencing some boost in daily traffic.

According to recent stats, movie and streaming websites have experienced a 65% of boost in daily traffic. While the content on-demand and anime websites have experienced an average of 26% daily traffic.

On the other hand, tourism and fashion websites lost a big portion of their daily traffic.

Important Forecasts Publishers Need To Know

Below, we have discussed how this COVID-19 pandemic might affect the publishers in the upcoming months:

• Many publishers or website owners expressed their concerns about the significant decrease in CPM rates. And it’s understandable. However, the CPM has already reached its previous mark before the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. So, most of the publishers won’t see any decrease in their final payout from their website traffic.
• The pandemic started at the start of the year 2020. So, most people and advertisers have gotten used to the current situation. Plus, thanks to the slowdown in the global spread of coronavirus, many countries are looking to restart their economic activities. This is encouraging the advertisers to kick-start their new ad campaigns so publishers will be largely unaffected.

What Should Publishers Do Right Now During COVID-19 Pandemic?

As people are spending more time surfing the web and consuming new content, publishers should add new content more frequently. People are consuming more and more content at a faster rate. So, by adding new content more frequently, you can keep your audience updated or entertained.

Moreover, make sure you work on increasing your website’s technical capacity to hold a surge of a sudden increase in overall web traffic. Your site going down for the sudden surge of traffic is the last thing you would want. So, make sure you prepare for it in advance.

In The End…

The COVID-19 pandemic surely affecting every aspect starting with online advertising to website traffic. But the good news for the publishers is that people are spending more time online. And if publishers keep updating their websites with new content, then they will surely see a boost in web traffic. Or at least, they won’t be seeing any decline in traffic.

So, keep your website updated and work to increase its technical capacity. This way, you’ll not only retain your current audience but you can also gain new subscribers and increase your website revenue.