Excelling with Online Marketing

By Richard Kraneis
Posted Thursday, October 7, 2004

Do you want to build a successful online business?

Then start using online math and use Microsoft Excel.

I’ve written an e-book this year that sells at a profit. In fact, I’ve written 2 e-books 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 e-book sale I add it to my Excel sales database. I click on an Excel macro button that automatically re-formats my email sales notification into a record in my e-book sales Excel database.

Over the past year I’ve used a powerful Excel technique called a pivot table to analyze my e-book sales database. This is what I learned about my e-book sales:
1) Tuesday was my slowest e-book sales day. I corrected the sales problem by mass mailing offers on Tuesdays. Tuesdays are better now.
2) My e-books 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 e-books. 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 e-book 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 “Excelling with Online Marketing”? 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 “Excelling” with Online Marketing and you should too.

About the Author
Richard Kraneis is a computer training consultant, e-book author, and an aspiring online marketer. Online marketing on the Internet reminds him of his favorite hobby, fishing. His website is (http://www.TheWorldsShortestExcelBook.com) . You can reach him at rich@TheWorldsShortestExcelBook.com . (He’s looking for a great, up and coming copywriter for future projects.)