Excelling with Online Marketing

Excelling with Online Marketing

by: Richard Kraneis

Do you want to build a successful online business?

Then start using online math and use Microsoft Excel.

I’ve written an ebook this year that sells at a profit. In fact, I’ve written 2 ebooks that sell at a profit (I’m thankful to all my Internet friends who have helped me.). I can’t imagine anyone selling anything on the Internet without using Excel to keep score on profits and performance.

Are you making a profit or running at a loss? A plain old Excel spreadsheet (or Lotus) will get the job done for you. Are their any trends in profits (or losses) for your online venture? Excel graphs make it easy to see (and sometimes predict) trends.

When you started your venture, how did you estimate the demand for your product on the Internet? I did research on Overture to predict the volume of my Google paid click impressions. Using Excel was a key part of that process.

Whenever I make an ebook sale I add it to my Excel sales database. I click on an Excel macro button that automatically reformats my email sales notification into a record in my ebook sales Excel database.

Over the past year I’ve used a powerful Excel technique called a pivot table to analyze my ebook sales database. This is what I learned about my ebook sales:

1) Tuesday was my slowest ebook sales day. I corrected the sales problem by mass mailing offers on Tuesdays. Tuesdays are better now.

2) My ebooks have sold in over 37 countries. But 90% of my sales came from just 5 countries. Solution? I adjusted my advertising mix to better spend my advertising dollars.

3) Finally, men purchase about 70% of my ebooks. Women purchase 20% and 10% of purchases are from unknown genders (people that use initials only). Solution? None yet. Women just aren’t buying my ebook as much as I’d like. But if I find a great copywriter who needs to learn more about Excel I’m in business. We can trade.

Would you like to find an unexpected ally for ขExcelling with Online Marketingข? Just check your personal computer. If you have Excel (or Lotus) than you already have a great tool for tracking not only online marketing profits but all kinds of online marketing performance. Build a simple spreadsheet for tracking your weekly profits and then advance to other techniques for measuring online marketing performance.

So, that’s it for today. I know that I’m just a first year online marketer and have much to learn. But, I’m ขExcellingข with Online Marketing and you should too.

Copyright 2004 Richard Kraneis

About The Author

Richard Kraneis is a computer training consultant, ebook author, and an aspiring online marketer. Online marketing on the Internet reminds him of his favorite hobby, fishing. His website is www.TheWorldsShortestExcelBook.com. You can reach him at [email protected]. (He’s looking for a great, up and coming copywriter for future projects.)

This article was posted on September 19, 2004

by Richard Kraneis