Balancing Life and Affiliate Marketing

Most of us don’t have the luxury of working in our PJ’s on our affiliate marketing efforts. Usually, it is a side business that provides some nice supplemental income. Or in many cases, your working hard for very little. Whatever the case, it can be a challenge balancing your everyday life with affiliate marketing.

Though I am an Affiliate Manager by day, I dabble as an affiliate marketer by night. Here is what I do. I have a huge white board in my office with all of my current projects and tasks listed. I try to create one new site per month. For you, it may be one new site per quarter. My whiteboard currently has this written on it:

GetFootballHelmets.com – May Project

The entire month of May I am focused only on getting this site finished. Would I love to get more done? YES! But I’m married with 3 kids. At the end of the day it’s more important that I remain a good husband and father than it is getting one more website done. So, I set a reasonable goal I know I can accomplish.

Some months, my project will be to tweak all of my completed sites. By tweaking I mean making the sites better. Over time your site collects data that you need to be looking at. Does it convert well? If not, then tweak the design, layout, products offered, logo, etc…I also spending this time working on the SEO for each site. This is extremely important. If you not doing SEO, then you probably have no traffic. This is why every 3 or 4 months I just focus on “tweaking”. For more on this check out this post.

A few suggestions to keep the balance:

• Dedicate one hour per night to your site(s). Give it your full attention. Turn off the television, radio and iTunes.
  
• Dedicate one hour per week to educating yourself. Expand your knowledge, this industry is always changing. Read blogs, articles, books, etc…
  
• Keep to your time limits. It’s easy to get into a groove and lose track of time. I’m all for staying in a groove, just remember…balance. Sometimes staying in a groove too long will put you in the doghouse.
  
• Work smarter. An hour goes by fast. Don’t waste your time doing things that have no impact on finishing your project.
  
• Tunnel vision. Whatever your objective is for this month, work only on that. This is very hard to do. I always get caught up reading my e-mail or a blog too long.
  
• Keep your computer running fast. If your having to constantly wait for things to load, then you’re really only getting 45 minutes worth of work done in your hour.
  
• Plan a boot camp. These are weeks or nights when you commit your entire time to finishing up that project. Warn the family, stay up till 3am, whatever it takes! Then do the following.
  
• Take a break. Sometimes you just need to step away and refuel and unwind.

Balance is important. Affiliate marketing will always be there for you, your time with friends & family will not.

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