Productivity

Storebuilder Blog - Productivity

There is the easy way of doing things and the hard way of doing things.

If you are working the hard way and you are not smart enough to find out if there is an easier way then you are going to struggle as an affiliate.

Many affiliates work very hard and get nowhere.

Is that you? It was certainly me years ago. I used to equate putting the hours in as the measure by which I would be judged by. Now I have come to realise how foolish that outlook is and why it means that the worker who has their nose close to the grindstone has their vision full and can't see past the immediate work at hand.

Whilst the worker who takes time to survey the surrounding area can spot new opportunities to make money.

As a starting affiliate you need a couple of things to fall into place for you to be able to make a living.

First of all you need to get lucky.

Whatever you build as your first site needs to start generating some income for you to be sufficiently motivated to carry on building your sites.

Secondly you need to pick the right product to promote so that you earn enough money to be able to quit your job.

So wouldn't it be great if you knew beforehand which were the markets and products that were guaranteed to make you money before you even start building a website!

Working smarter means exactly that - finding the markets and products that will guarantee you the most return for the least amount of effort. Not that we lack for effort around here!

I mean once you get the bug for building sites and see the money start to flow it's unusual for an affiliate NOT to work less than a 12 hour day.

But that is simply their choice. It's not because they have to work like a dog. The smarter they get and the easier the tasks become to do then the easier it becomes to make money.

So how can we get a feel for a market before writing a single line of code?

Contact the affiliate manager!

Affiliate managers are a hub of information. They see the process from both sides of the story. They see the affiliate sites that are put together to drive the traffic to the offer and they see the conversion story from the other side. So they know what works!

Finding good affiliate managers to talk to should be your first priority before you even register a domain name.

The problem with affiliate managers is that - like affiliates - there are just too few good ones to go around and so the good ones get snowed under with requests for help and support.

How to find a good affiliate manager to help you:

Use google!

Find the promoting company and call them up. Ask to speak to the affiliate manager. A few minutes time with one of these guys or girls can save you weeks and weeks of work heading in the wrong direction.

Often they will be cagey about disclosing information but once you do get a little out of them - act on it!

Then show them what you've done with their advice.

They will then be more inclined to help you achieve your goal.

The fact is that lot's of affiliates say they will do this or that and then never even get started, which is why affiliate managers tend to stick to working with the cream.

 

 

Storebuilder Blog - Productivity

It’s pretty miserable out there. The last of the Woolworths stores is closing down and the staff are facing up to redundancy, in fact businesses are closing down left right and centre and there can be few people who are comfortable knowing that whatever happens they will have a job come January 2010.

In “Rich dad poor dad” the emphasis is always on “paying yourself first”, you always pay your investment vehicles first before paying the bills. But without a job or income this is no mean feat!

There can be no better time to start your own internet business and free yourself from the daily drudgery of working for someone else. And if it’s not the daily grind that you want to get away from then the financial uncertainty should be a good reason enough.

Working for someone else or being employed for a long period of time doing the same job is old school. My Grandad fought his way across Dunkirk then through Africa and on up through Italy before emerging physically unscathed from the second world war.

Upon returning to normal life he worked for the post office for a further 20 years or so before retiring.

Not being financially savvy he rented his house in Putney, London for the whole of his life and never had any investments to speak of .

Just ask all those long serving employees of Woolworths what they got out of devoting 20 years or so to standing behind a till? In fact in Jersey because of a law loophole the ex employees are not even entitled to redundancy pay and of course the administrators are not going to make lowly employees a priority anytime soon.

Working for someone else for a living has to be the absolute worst way of making a living. When the financial big wigs make big mistakes and send the company spiralling out of control the poor unfortunate employee is the one that bears the biggest burden and not through any fault of their own.

Commuting is going to get worse, a lot worse. If you think it’s bad now it’s going to get doubly bad.

Oil prices may be coming down now but the long term fact is that eventually oil will run out and that means rising costs for virtually everything in the developed world.

Building an internet business does not mean that you have to have stock or inventory. Or even have to call it a “business”. Affiliate marketing is one of the greatest creative outlets for anyone that is prepared to put themselves out to a little bit of creative thinking and investing some time into learning how to build a website.

If you want to take the first steps to ridding yourself of a job and everything that goes with it get yourself a copy of Sitesell which is simply the easiest way to get yourself off to a flying start.

Don't procrastinate - get doing it!

Storebuilder Blog - Productivity

A couple of weeks ago I bought a bingo site for the company from someone that didn't have the time to develop it further.

Bingo is really the poker of the moment. There is a frantic scramble to gain players and it's a very lucrative market.

I hooked it up with analytics and it's getting a small amount of traffic, but enough to produce several good conversions a month so it's worth working at.

In the past if you tried contacting affiliate managers you were wasting your time. They were pretty much affiliate managers in name only and didn't really have a clue how to get the most out of a site or show any interest in working with struggling affiliates.

That's all changing rapidly now though and the new breed of affiliate managers are rushing to form relationships with webmasters and try to claim good display spots for their products.

So it was that I came in this morning and got immediately involved with several affiliate managers trying to get me to place their products in the best display spots.

Msn and  IM tools are great for some things but as a time killer they come tops. There is nothing that can drain an affiliates time hour glass as fast as wasteful IM conversations. If it's important it's usually much quicker and more efficient to pick up the phone.

So from now on the IM is going off whilst I get my productive stuff done.

It's nice to feel wanted and working on your own day after day is not much fun I grant you, but the sooner we get to our goal the sooner we can go out and enjoy life.