Start Working...Stop Checking Your Stats

Written by The Shops at 24Seven on Thursday, July 31, 2008

This post was inspired by Zac Johnson who wrote a great post today on a similiar topic. To often we spend to much of our time logging into CJ, ShareASale and LinkShare seeing if we got any sales. Then you see that your balance went up and you check out where the sale came from. Now, off to see what other merchants generated a click yesterday. And we do this for all the affiliate networks we promote. Whew! An hour has gone by...

Now, don't get me wrong, reporting and analysis is critical in affiliate marketing, but...

too often we are wasting too much of our time logged into the network and not enough time working on projects.

Now, these next set of rules may seem a little hardcore for some, but I guarantee you, that if followed, you will get more work done and more commissions earned.

1. No TV watching. The biggest no-no in affiliate marketing. You will get distracted.
2. Turn off your IM. When your focused on a project, this is nothing but a distraction.
3. In line with #2, no replying to emails, especially that one from mom. Get to work, this isn't social hour!
4. No Facebook, Twitter, MySpace or other social time-waster. No matter how much you've convinced yourself that your "networking", they are called social tools for a reason. If you must be social go Digg, Stumble, Reddit, Mixx and Propel your money pages.
5. Close iTunes or at least start your play list and minimize it for the next few hours. I'll admit, I can throw on some tunes and get into a great work groove.
6. No Googling...unless it's essential to your project. Googling only leads to surfing unrelated to your project.
7. No phone calls. You have an answering machine right? You'll be OK, they can wait.

Don't get me wrong, some of the above activities are business related. But when your focused on getting a project done, they ARE distractions. You'll be amazed by how much you can get done in a few hours by minimizing distractions and focusing completely on your goal.