I started working in March, working from home. Mondays were always in demand, Fridays less so, Saturdays and Sundays very rarely (which surprised me). Business was great up until May with 1-3 clients a day. When I first burst onto the scene, my phone was going crazy. For the first week I'd wake up to 10 text messages and a bunch of missed calls and the phone would start ringing and never stop. I had a slight dip in calls and texts the week after, and so on and so on as the weeks passed because I was no longer the new girl. And I knew it wasn't negative word of mouth because I'd only made bookings with a small percentage of those enquiring and there were no feedback on the review sites. But still, by the time I stopped in May I was getting 1-3 customers every day of the week so all was good and I was glad not to be answering calls all the time.
In May I had to put on hold until July. I didn't get many enquiries as I hadn't renewed my adverts so I didn't think anything was wrong. But then I started up again in July and all I got was tumbleweeds. I didn't know what was going on but knew it couldn't be me as there were no negative reviews of me and I had a number of regulars so I must be doing something right.
It was the height of summer, the heatwave was in full bloom and so too was the World Cup so I assumed this was the reason for the sudden downturn. And to add to this, there was an influx of service providers in my area. I found this thread and took heart in the knowledge that it wasn't just me and that my hypothesis seemed to be true.
At this point, I started touring and turbo-charged my earning. Then the last week of August picked up a bit but now it's died again. Tuesday evening I had 7 calls (all time wasters) and that was the most in a long time. At the mo, unless I am on tour, I'm getting just 1 or 2 calls a day at the most.
It's now the end of summer and the kids are back at school so I am officially nervous. There is no reason why business isn't picking up (other than the over-saturation of girls in my area in which case it's game over).