You Didn’t think I was just going to leave you hanging with a post about why you’ll fail? Nah, now that I’ve knocked you down I’m gonna build you up!
First off, we need to get you feeling inspired. Before you do anything else, listen to the following songs. When you’ve done that, go to itunes, download them and play every time you go near a computer – to remind you of what you’re supposed to be doing there! These are all songs I personally listen to when I’m getting motivation deficient. So I thought I’d share.
So Here It Is – Kirsty’s Inspirational Music List
*I’ve provided YouTube links after each title I could find videos for so you may revel in their wonderfulness whilst reading this post!
- What A Beautiful Day – The Levellers – listen
- The Middle – Jimmy Eat World – listen
- Minority – Green Day – listen
- Don’t Stop Me Now – Queen – listen
- Creep – Radiohead (but get the rude version if you can!) – listen
- Crazy – Gnarls Barkley – listen
- Money, Money, Money – Abba – listen
- Born Slippy – Underworld – listen
- Choose Life – PF Project – listen
- Slave to the Wage – Placebo – listen
- Think About The Way – Ice MC – listen
- Barbers Adgio for Strings – William Orbit – listen
- Hands Up – Black Eyed Peas – listen
- All The Small Things – Blink 182 – listen
- Dragostea Din Tea – O-Zone – listen (also watch the Gary Brolsma vid. hilarious!)
- Maroon – Ken Nordine – listen (and if this doesn’t show you the connection between AM and a love of manipulating words, nothing will!)
OK, now that we’ve got you all nice and fired up for some affiliate action we have to make sure you can sustain your “work vibe”.
Kirsty’s Motivation Downloads
Yep, that’s right. I’ve prepared some motivational materials. Use them wisely!
First off, open and print This Image. Put it in the wall in a place near your computer, where you can glance at it easily. It’ll remind you what you’re aiming for and keep you philosophical when things go slightly awry.
Secondly, print off this simple Task Planner. This should also go on the wall, front and centre. If you simply can’t get started or keep up the pressure, use this to designate what you should be doing every week. Don’t start off with a massive workload, it won’t be sustainable. Just designate yourself one quick task every day for the first while and get used to regularly meeting your self-imposed targets. Some examples of quick tasks you could do in a few minutes are: -
- Write a 200 word article or blog post
- Modify 20 page titles to improve SEO
- Find 5 potential link exchanges
- Put links for merchant Y up on home page
- Configure new SEO WordPress Plugin
When you complete your daily tasks, reward yourself with a tick. Or a coloured sticker. Whatever you fancy. You’d be surprised how good this can feel!
Make sure you do one thing each and every day to move towards your affiliate goal. If you can’t even do a ten minute task and get it live online – you’re wasting your time. You’ll never succeed.
Use What You Learn From This To Plan A Longer Term Strategy and Set Some Realistic Goals
Using a mini-task approach you will soon work out how long certain tasks take you. Use this information to work out how you can progress with your affiliate business on a quarterly basis. The best way to do this is to set yourself a sustainable amount of time per day / week you will spend on affiliate marketing and work out what comprises a successful “Day’s Work”. Make sure this is well within your boredom limits or you won’t be able to keep going!
Here’s an example from my own current work schedule. I’ve designated what constitutes a reasonable day of work for me this quarter and how long it will take: -
- Stats, existing PPC management, and ideas / research – 1.5 hours.
- New PPC campaigns – 2 hours.
- Creation of 6 x 250 word articles and 6 x 150 word articles for site X – 4 hours.
Using this method I have worked out I can re-vamp my main site, adding lots of new merchants, and fresh content by the first week in March, have another site I have half completed all finished by mid-march, and a completely new Mens fashion site completed at the same time. By mid March I’ll have no less than 600 new pages on the internet making me money via PPC and SEO. Not bad eh? And to think a lot of you will spend that ten weeks kidding yourself on you’re working. Oh, the other thing this method does is tell me that it is OK to stop working!
Affiliate success is as simple as getting yourself organised, setting a schedule, and sticking to it. Of course, you’ll need to be doing the right thing to make money. But above all, do SOMETHING… for the love of god!!
Anyone else like to share their organisational tips?
January 20th, 2009 at 12:39 pm
My best tip is to get something useful done before I start checking emails, forums, facebook etc etc. You’d be amazed how it eats up the day.
My only exception is if I get a chance to deal with emails on my way to work via Blackberry so I can arrive with an empty desk. That would be dead time otherwise.
Get at least one thing done that will actually generate more traffic (e.g. more links for SEO or extend your PPC), or that will monetise the traffic you already have (e.g. a new offer). If you do that every day you’ll have a very merry Xmas in 2009!
January 20th, 2009 at 12:43 pm
Dead on Stephen, that is my overriding thought all of the time. Do SOMETHING to take you forward each day and that’s what’ll happen – you’ll make progress!
January 20th, 2009 at 1:16 pm
Hey Kirsty,
I am a little surprised that you spend 2 hrs each day researching new ppc niche’s. This means that in a month you might launch close to 60 new ppc campaigns, which is a huge amount to deal with. How many hours p/day does Oz have
January 20th, 2009 at 1:21 pm
Hi Kirsty,
When you write the said article… whats your advice to do with it? Post it on your site or submit it to an article site?
Great blog by the way, really helpful and insightful.
Thanks.
Chris
January 20th, 2009 at 1:21 pm
Hey Marc, it doesn’t always mean its a brand new thing. Sometimes it’ll be looking at areas that are already doing well and creating more volume around them, or it might just be 3 or 4 new adgroups, or even some PPC to some of my own sites where pages are doing well organically.
January 20th, 2009 at 1:24 pm
Hey Chris, I don’t do the article submission thing… I’d always post it to my own site.
Others probably have different methods but as I’ve never even tried article marketing I can only comment on my own thing!
January 20th, 2009 at 1:38 pm
Super, super post.
I’ve been doing a lot of what you’ve suggested already this year and it’s already paying dividends.
It’s just so easy to kid yourself you’re working when you’re not.
Speaking of which – back to work!
January 20th, 2009 at 1:43 pm
Thanks Kirsty,
Without being too forward and assuming, it does seem like you dont really do any ppc to your own sites. It seems like almost all the ppc you do is direct to merchant. I know that direct to merchant is possible, but I really can not see how there can be ‘traffic left’ to drive in order to make enough money so its worth it.
But just my 2 cense
Anyways…clearly you know what you are doing
January 20th, 2009 at 3:36 pm
hi Kirsty,
Hope you don’t mind me asking but what would you spend on average on ppc aday on all your campagins?
January 20th, 2009 at 7:51 pm
>>Creation of 6 x 250 word articles and 6 x 150 word articles for site X – 4 hours<<
WOW! I am so useless at writing it takes me all day to do just ONE!
January 20th, 2009 at 11:09 pm
@ Marc – Actually I do spend a lot of time PPC-ing to my own sites. I’ve spent a lot of time coming up with Adwords compliant formats! Direct to merchant does work quite well for me, I’m quite good at “finding” traffic.
@ Milo – Weeel, it actually varies drastically. And no, I’m not telling, lol.
@ Jill – I’m a serial rapid fire typist and the content just sort of “comes out” without me really engaging the old brain. It never used to be like that, I think you just learn how to do it.
January 21st, 2009 at 6:08 pm
How do you do the “Direct to Merchant PPC”? I guess Google Adwords doesnt allow you to have the display url different from the destination url.
January 22nd, 2009 at 7:43 am
My advice, or at least one of the things I do in order to not waste time is to make a to do list for the day which features everything I need to do, and I mean everything! Including reading email, opening the days post, reading blogs…
I place my affiliate ‘tasks’ at the top to ensure they get done first, and email etc at the bottom (I’ve found I’ve spent hours just reading, sorting and responding to email).
After I’ve completed each item I cross it off, you’d be amazed how good it feels to have the majority of items on your to-do list crossed off at the end of the day..
The other thing I do, although not recently, is create a four part to-do list, things which HAVE to be done today, things which need to be done in the next couple of days, things which need to be done by the end of the week and things which need to be done of the next couple of weeks..
I find it helps me focus on the important things, and not waste time on the not so important.
Thanks for the post Kirsty, it’s given me a quick kick to the behind to get me moving…….keep kicking..
January 22nd, 2009 at 12:21 pm
Kirsty
Glad to see there’s an Abba track in there!! I thought of you over Christmas – my husband changed his mobile phone contract – to one which came with a free PS3 – and to make me feel better about it – also came home with this:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B001I463QC/?tag=googhydr-21&hvadid=3658112345&ref=pd_sl_1h2jna5u6a_e (no aff link!). I suddenly felt less annoyed! Not sure what the neighbours think of it though. I treat myself to half and hour at the end of the day if I think I’ve worked hard enough – what more incentive do I need!
January 22nd, 2009 at 12:30 pm
LOL, go Karen go… you sing into that hairbrush girl!!
January 23rd, 2009 at 3:06 pm
Kirsty,
As a returning newbie I am finding your blog very thought provoking reading, as I try and get my head round the things I have to do to make a go of AM this time..
Biggest worry today however is that as a aging silversurfer I could instantly only recognise 2 of the tunes you listed. What a Sad Old Git I hear you say.
It has however got me looking through ‘My Music’ folder and thinking of a suitable list from my own collection.
Which is no bad thing over a cup of tea.
Thanks for all the encouraging tips and pointers.
John
January 23rd, 2009 at 5:39 pm
All were great tips but dont you think that you have started like you are teaching 15 years old kid.
Songs which you have posted at there, many of them are not opening (You tube Copy right problem). But however I like some songs because they were with subtitles. That’s really helped me as I am not from english background.
I will give a try to whole. Saved this page on my bookmarks sub folder names – very useful pages.
Good Night.
January 26th, 2009 at 9:43 pm
This songs better
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=u6FwEJwwYcQ
January 27th, 2009 at 11:21 pm
Hi Kirsty
you missed one of my favourite “uplifting” songs off your list .. back from good ol’ 1995 2Unlimited – Jump 4 Joy
classic tune and very uplifting .. ilisten to it every morning before i start ( little ritual )
January 28th, 2009 at 12:06 am
@ “Backgammon Paypal” (I’ll be removing that text links BTW, lol). Thats the point mate, if you are trying to do AM and doing bugger all… you need talking to like a 15 year old kid, because there’s simply no excuse.
Naughty affiliates who play truant get in trouble from teacher Kirsty
February 3rd, 2009 at 3:59 pm
Nice motivational tips there K! Love the choices in music.
Steven x
February 9th, 2009 at 6:58 pm
Nice list of songs there kirsty
i think i shall download a few, may do something like that on my blog
Max
February 10th, 2009 at 12:23 pm
[...] the workplan I talked about previously I decided to ramp things up a few notches and make better use of my working hours. Each night [...]
March 13th, 2009 at 2:40 pm
You should make this into a spotify playlist, Kieron would be very pleased and you’d save me a bit of time trying to hunt them all down!