Five Thousand Times Two Translates Into Goodness

This is a "first time author post" from a first time author who is quite obsessed with all things "the book" and honestly enjoying every minute of the ride (ok Willem you were right and all those sleepless nights and 18 hour weekend days might, just might, have been worth it!).

One of my mantras is to stay fanatically focused on putting value added content on this blog so I hope you'll excuse my detour to write about the book.

I just want to share this happiness with you all. A short post, a quick read, and no comments necessary from you.

The reason I am happy is that after two months of being on the market, the little book that could, Web Analytics: An Hour A Day has sold enough copies to earn $10,000 and hence allow me to donate $5,000 to each of my charities!

In mid April Willem (my wonderful Wiley Acquisition Editor) had called to say that the book release date would be pushed out. That was a bummer. But I remember telling him that my goal was that by the end of 2007 I want the book to sell enough copies so that I could donate $10,000 ($5k to each).

That was both a reflection of the fact that Web Analytics is no Harry Potter and the fact that first time authors make very very little money from the book. Even with 100% of my proceeds going to charity $10k seemed like a stretch goal for seven months.

But thanks to you all we are there already and we have met that goal.

I am both happy (did I say that already?) and deeply grateful to all of you for buying the book and supporting it in so many ways!!

I have had help from a amazing bunch of people for this.

Wonderful folks who have written reviews of the book:

• Dave Chaffey: Best Internet Marketing Book of the Year / Decade?!
  Dave's written a whole bunch of books himself (and he is a great speaker, I saw him speak a few years back in London).

• Mike Grehan: Analyze This, That, and the Other
  Mike is famous for everything Search (also a great speaker, saw him at eMetrics).

• Seth Godin: In the mail today
  Seth is a unique marketer, author and blogger. I am a huge huge fan of his blog. He wrote a one line observation on his blog about my book and the impact was instantaneous.

• Andreas Ramos: Web Analytics an Hour a Day, by Avinash Kaushik
  Andreas is the author of a very nice book on SEO & PPC.

• Luke Szkudlarek: Avinash Kaushik Web Analytics: Book Review
  Luke lives in beautiful Poland. Lest you think I have been tooting my horn a bit much, his review provides seven things I could have done better in the book! I am grateful to Luke for sharing his thoughts and feedback with me.

Thanks Dave, Mike, Seth, Andreas, Luke and many others who have written reviews and helped spread the word.

Of course thanks to the 21 of you who have written reviews for the book on Amazon.Com!! My goal is to have 75 reviews of the book on amazon.com – with the hope that simply the presence of the reviews will drive sales in all channels! :)

Others have done very interesting things to help support the book.

Will Critchlow and the folks at Distilled are handing out a free copy of the book to their customers who sign up for their Reputation Monitor service. Check it out. Their clients get something of value and the charities get funds from sales. Win-win.

Others are doing similar things, a common feature seems to be companies buying a small number of copies and giving it to all their employees or clients.

I feel lucky to have their support helping the book find a audience. This is especially helpful because I am not a very good sales person and have had few ideas about how to promote the book (other than asking for amazon reviews!).

There is one more important person to thank in the area of raising money for charities. My friend, Ms. Left Brain, Gradiva Couzin. Her advice was "Avinash you have to set up a amazon.com affiliate program, you are going to be surprised." This tip was super valuable (and something I would not otherwise have done).

Thanks to Gradiva the link that you see on the right nav (and included in this url www.snipurl.com/wahour) had generated $1,600 in affiliate dollars (on top of the $10k above). Amazon will pay that out in a quarter, so that money will be on its way to the charities as well.

Lots of you have used the vanity to as a link in your blogs and articles. Your kind efforts are in that $1,600!

I feel that it is a privilege to get to write a book and have it be published. I think I'll never get tired of seeing my book in a bookstore (here's daddy pride, my son Chirag at Borders bookstore: "Daddy your book is in the library!").

I am so grateful that this little book on a niche subject has helped raise a small amount of money. 100% of my proceeds go to The Smile Train and Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders), to assist in their efforts to make our world a better place. You all are contributing to that. Thank you.

Every post I write requests comments, not this one. No comments necessary.

And to end on a high note, cute overload, little kids and babies with the book!

Gócza: Daddy I am not sure I agree with Avinash's choice of Page Tagging over Log Files. (The making of a future Judah Phillips!)

Noah's Dad is a great Web Analyst, looks like Noah's taken up after Dad! PS: That's the best smile ever!

Do you see a pattern here? Jake's Mom is also a great Web Analyst! I bet he is going to write a great Amazon.Com review of the book. :)

Sara Botum: Mom this one, this one, I really do want this one! :)

Beautiful English countryside. Check. Wonderful cottage in the background. Check. Pretty little Leah. Check. Obligatory Web Analytics book. Check!

Dylan is going to be the next baseball home run king, just look at the picture. Two fingers holding up a 450 page book! He is super strong!!

Corbin: Ha! I knew it! Yells: Dad, you were wrong. It is three standard deviations from the mean and not two for creating control limits on your conversion rate trends!