Not many people have the discipline to work on their own. If you haven’t yet had the freedom of cracking open Facebook without looking over your shoulder, maybe it’s time you had the sensation of wanting to slap yourself every time you did.
To waste your own time is unforgivable. It’s arguably the cardinal sin of any self respecting entrepreneur. Procrastination is like masturbation, you’re only ever screwing yourself. I was taught that back in school. Okay, maybe not in such a colourful tone. But didn’t you just hate it when teachers nagged “if you don’t give 100%, the only person who suffers is yourself”. I’d grumble and kick my feet under the table. Well now in 2010…burden yourself with a business, take one look at the economy, and suddenly those slaps across the wrist seem like sensible lessons in life.
For me, the vital ingredient to a productive working day is momentum. Affiliate marketers survive and thrive by the virtue of momentum. Building steam and seeing projects through to the bitter end is paramount to success. How do you know if you suck at finding momentum? Well, take one look at your domain portfolio. Are you repping enough abandoned URLs to fill a graveyard with ideas that sounded good at the time?
Without momentum, it becomes very difficult to build long term assets in this industry. Many affiliates love pushing CPA offers. And they enjoy a lot of success. But I think it can be partially attributed to the fact that you can have a successful CPA campaign up and running in hours. You’re not building Rome in your bare feet. The same attitude and faltering attention span is a severe hindrance when it comes to working on sites and projects that demand time and perseverance to come together.
To develop long term assets, we need to train ourselves to see the bigger picture. To look beyond morning stats, weekly ROI, and actually stick with what we know we should be doing. Even when the results aren’t immediately clear. I’ve found that as a CPA marketer who thrives in achieving short term goals, maintaining the momentum and breaking down larger projects in to achievable milestones is the only way forward.
It’s nice for me to throw philosophy out there, but dealing with the reality is a different beast altogether. It’s a lot easier for me to pen a condescending blog post than it is for you to actually get your shit together and change the way you work. So what can we do to build momentum? How can you take yourself closer to the finishing line with your projects?
I don’t think it’s any coincidence that my own productivity levels improved dramatically when I slammed the axe through half my working day. I was one of those guys who spent every hour of sunlight at my desk. I’d slump there, trawling around the Internet, torn between working and scratching my balls for comfort. When I realized that time spent at my desk rarely reflected time spent putting in an actual shift, I changed my ways.
Working excessively long hours is the hardship that you wouldn’t embrace if you were doing it for anybody else, so why be such a bitch to yourself? Every night, I set myself a to-do list for the following day. It’s divided in to three sections.
1. Short term work – Maintaining campaigns, optimizing my creatives, split testing landing pages. You get the drill.
2. Long term work – Developing actual assets, planning wider web projects and working on the shit that would still feed my imaginary cat if the CPA business died tomorrow.
3. New business – Opportunity is everywhere in affiliate marketing. If you’re not dedicating just ten minutes of your day to exploring new horizons, opportunity has already passed you by. I guarantee it. Some other affiliate cowboy is laughing at you as he rides tomorrow’s gravy train all the way to the bank.
Having a to-do list is essential. You already knew this. But being realistic with what you expect to achieve is just as important.
A technique I discussed on my blog not too long ago highlighted the positives of breaking down those tasks in to smaller timed segments. I like to use this strategy. It helps to build the all important momentum that enables me to feel like I’ve achieved something by the time my dinner is in the oven.
So here’s how the first hour of my day might look:
10 minutes – View performance of campaigns, make minor adjustments.
10 minutes – Check emails, reply to anything urgent, star the rest.
10 minutes – Introduce new split tests for my Facebook campaigns.
10 minutes – Devise some new ad texts for my PPC campaigns.
10 minutes – Clear the shit from my desk, grab the post, chuck in some laundry.
10 minutes – Brainstorm a list of articles to be outsourced for one of my sites.
So you’re probably thinking, that’s one hell of a scattergun approach. How can you expect to build momentum when you’re jumping from one task to the next? I find that it works, simply because I’m never getting bogged down. I can hear the clock ticking and I’m in a hurry to achieve my objective before the ten minutes are up. But it only works if you force yourself to move on when the time is up. Even if your undies are half hanging out of the tumble dryer when that moment strikes.
After the first hour, I’ve built up enough momentum to break the early morning brain freeze. You know that feeling? You wake up, shuffle out of bed and plump yourself at your desk. You vow that you’re going to have a good day…if only you knew where to start. Sound familiar? When I follow this technique, I feel like I’m achieving something. No matter how small. It helps me to dive in to the bigger tasks. So I’ll start to ramp up the workload.
20 minutes – Research hot new product X, analyze my competitors and brainstorm ideas.
20 minutes – Work on content to feed out to my email lists.
20 minutes – Build a landing page to split test in to one of my campaigns.
20 minutes – Sign up at a new traffic source, get in touch with rep.
20 minutes – Add a couple of new products to my turnkey site, get down with the SEO.
20 minutes – Throw down some bullet points and an intro for a blog post.
I’m making up these tasks on the fly here. They don’t actually represent my working day. But you can see the idea. That’s another two hours where I’m constantly jumping between tasks that I could probably stretch out for hours at a time if I didn’t discipline myself with a time constraint.
The third and final part of my day is divided in to six 30 minute bursts. That gives me a six hour working day. It doesn’t sound like a lot but the momentum of constantly ticking off tasks keeps me motivated to the very end.
You can give 16 hours a day to affiliate marketing, but guess what? Affiliate marketing doesn’t owe you shit in return. If you’re not working efficiently, well, you might as well be whacking out articles for $5 per piece.
By having the freedom to work from home, we have to sacrifice the occasional boot up our arses that would normally keep us in line. Some marketers are born with the ability to sit down and work like troopers until the inbox is empty and the light outside has faded. Personally, I still need that boot up my arse. So I still rely on techniques like this to keep me pushing forward.
This post was contributed by Finch of FinchSells.com – when I asked him for a quick bio to put on here he suggested “Hi, this is Finch, affiliate marketer and blogger. Jesus, doesn’t he ramble a lot?”
I think I like Finch’s style 
It’s been a while since I mentioned a creepy crawly experience. To be honest I’m getting used to all the critters here in the sub tropics.
