Time Management Tips

In affiliate marketing as in most businesses, time is or at least should be money. If time isn't money in your business, it may be time to find another business! Nobody is in business to not make money but unfortunately that is exactly what many business owners spend time doing.

In the affiliate marketing industry, a lack of income may be attributable to a problem with the business structure itself, such as choosing the wrong affiliate programs, neglecting to do proper search engine optimization, or paying too much for web hosting and design.

Another serious problem, though, for affiliates who are not making much money or want to be making more, is the inability to manage your time and maximize its potential.

Dedicate Specific Times to Specific Tasks

Habits are powerful things and you must seek to use that to your advantage. One way affiliates can use the power of habits is to dedicate specific times to specific tasks--and be consistent.

These don't have to be huge gaps of time, either. You may set aside 30 minutes in the morning to work on your PPC campaigns, 15 minutes at lunch time to brainstorm new content ideas, and 30 minutes at night to write a blog post based on your keyword research.

If you can follow that kind of simple routine on a daily basis, sooner or later you're going to have a pretty powerful website.

A big part of being successful with this strategy is stopping what you're doing at the appointed time; if you say 15 minutes, stick to 15 minutes. Far too many affiliate marketers allow themselves to get sucked into the ever-expanding black hole of the Internet and work for 5 hours at a time on something when 20 minutes per day would be a more productive habit.

Outsource or Eliminate Time Wasters

One thing we've discovered through engaging in affiliate marketing is that some things are just not worth our time--but may be worth the time of someone else.

If building websites takes you way too long, outsource web design! If writing takes you way too long, outsource the writing! In this economy, there are people out there who will do nice work for cheap. Let them do that! There is no reason to be ashamed.

And then there is the actual dead wood that must be cut out. For example, affiliate networks that generate no commissions, but still manage to spam your inbox every day with new offers (we're looking at you, Linkshare).

Eliminate useless affiliate marketing newsletters and free up time for actual work.

Make Time to Think About Your Time

Take the time to sit down and look at what parts of your affiliate marketing business are taking up the most time, and then see if those parts of your business are making you the most money. If not, if there is not a strong correlation between time and money, a change should be in order.

Making such changes is one of the best uses of your time, and, if done consistently, will lead to more money for you and your affiliate marketing business.