I'm not in the halloween niche, but I have worked in arts and crafts retailing for 20 yrs. Merchandise started arriving in the stores right after July 4. What sold out first were the halloween village collectibles, by far.

Thank you Felice.

I'm not in the halloween niche yet but I have many seasonal niche sites. I see preparing this kind of seasonal niche sites 2-3 months ahead of time is a safe bet as you'll start ranking and get decent traffic after 1 month, and then the 2nd month you work hard to push the ranking, and the 3rd month (the season), you're enjoying the sales. Every year you work 2 months on it and it will accumulate backlinks over time.

Cheers Dabk much appreciated.

How long does it take you to find something to promote, do the keyword research, get a site ready and ranking at least #3 in Google?

Then look at the Google keywords tool for a Halloween keyword trends. You'll notice that October gets most of the traffic, but, for most keywords, there's traffic in September and in August. For a few, there's traffic even in July. So, if you're to have a full chance, you should be ready at the beginning of July.

My advice with holiday related sites, start working on them 4 months before the holiday. In the worst case scenario, 3 months before.