Tracking Sales vs. Creating Sales

As a first-timer when it comes to running a product-based business (ThemeJam), I’m doing my fair share of experimenting and learning on the job.  A lot of that is in the marketing/advertising/tracking department.

I’ve got all the basics down, like running Google Analytics, setting up “Goals”, advertising with Adwords and tracking conversions.  E-Junkie (the shopping cart/downloads service that I use) offers a few more guidelines for properly tracking conversions, which I’ve implemented.  All of this tracking, analyzing, tweaking, and optimizing really takes a lot of time and focused energy to get the most the out of it.

But the truth of the matter is that I’m not all that interested in it.  I don’t particularly enjoy combing over the numbers, referring sites, keyword performance metrics, and whatnot.  It’s one of those things that once you open it up, you get sucked into and before you know it you’ve spent your entire morning on it when you could have been getting much more productive work done.

I personally believe the best tactic for increasing sales is to focus that analyzing, tweaking, optimizing, perfecting on your products and not your stats.  There are always ways to improve your product.  Maybe it’s adding a new feature or removing an unnecessary one.  Maybe it’s improving your documentation or fixing bugs.  Perhaps it’s time to design a new release for your product line.  These are ways of being truly productive, and they’re all things I really enjoy doing.  I don’t care (and often don’t even notice) the amount of time I spend on these tasks.

Now that I’m 3 months in on ThemeJam, I can look back and assess a very clear picture:  The first 1-2 months had relatively low sales, and I believe it’s because I spent too much time stressing over keyword tracking and traffic analysis.  In April I took a “set it and forget it” approach and saw a significant increase in revenue.  I also worked the hardest in April, churning out new themes, improving the others, and offering support.

I must note that I don’t completely ignore the stats or ways to improve my site’s performance.  I do check in on my analytics roughly once per week for about 30 minutes.  This amount of time commitment allows me to keep my finger on the pulse, notice any red flags, and make minor improvements over time.  It also gives me the freedom to focus my efforts on the stuff I really want to be doing:  Designing, coding, and serving customers.

It’s all about striking a balance that works for you and allows you to do your job with as much enjoyment as possible.  That’s the real recipe for a successful business.

How do you strike the balance between production work and promotion/analysis?