Sales, Traffic, Affiliates

Sales

The sales report for the month of September so far:

0 copies of Crafting Beer with (512) Brewing Company

2 copies of Conquering Your Engineering Internship: Planning, Getting, And Making The Most Of An Internship Or Co-Op

So at least two people out in the world have been searching for information on engineering internships or co-ops. I have done nothing to promote that book recently, so thanks to organic search for a few extra dollars of revenue this month.

At some point I should probably review CYEI and come up with some new ideas for promoting it a little. I still think it is a valuable book since many engineering schools do little to prepare their students for getting the job they want or for how to survive in the "real" world.

Traffic

According to analytics, Hop Safari had 12 unique visitors yesterday. Two of those are probably my visits. Ten visitors isn't bad for the first day, right?

Affiliate Program

In the "squeeze every dime out of each sale" department, I just blew the dust off of Moving Average's Amazon Affiliate program account. It has been a little while since any affiliate links generated revenue. If you would like to promote one of my books, get a small cut of the action, and earn my gratitude, Amazon's program is a fine way to do it. Kevin Kelly has a nice brief description of how this works in this article about which tools Cool Tools uses.

I'm off to fix my book links to use the affiliate system right now...

Measuring Reach with Search

Part of my new plan for Moving Average is measuring and collecting feedback. One way to measure my progress and to discover feedback is to search google for the company name, book names, and so on.

Instead of going to search, you can have search delivered to you using Google Alerts. Google Alerts delivers an email summary of new search hits daily. I just configured alerts for "Moving Average Inc.", "Crafting Beer with (512) Brewing Company", and "Hop Safari".

Rebirth

Moving Average Inc. (the corporation that publishes this website, my books, etc.) has struggled for a few years now without great success. At our best we have sold a few books per month. At our worst, we have sold zero books per month.

Clearly a sustainable business this does not make. To fix this, I've come up with the following somewhat vague plan:

1. Buy out my co-founder. I want to change the focus of the business to topics more dear to my heart, and among other motivations, it didn't make sense to drag a co-founder into my personal passions.
2. Trim the fat. I have a few projects that just didn't do well, like Take Cover. Was lack of marketing part of the problem? Probably. I need to prune dead projects and focus on successes.
3. Focus on the intersection of my interests and my expertise. No more projects of purely intellectual interest. I want projects that I'm passionate about and that I have something to contribute to.
4. Put my money time where my mouth is. Spend time on my interests. Put my interests where my business is. I'm no longer going to work on a project just because it is a "good idea".
5. Start with small projects and expand based on demand. I can't afford multi-month projects that don't cover their own costs.
6. Measure and get feedback. In projects before Crafting Beer with (512), I was shy about getting lots of feedback before publication. I need to address this weakness. See item 5.
7. Document what I learn publicly. Since I no longer have a co-founder to discuss the business with, I'll document my thought process here.