I only want actual people earning full time through Affiliate marketing to answer. Newbies and Impostors please stay away from advising me. What's a typical day like. I just read an affiliate marketer on another thread saying that he works 15 hours a day on affiliate marketing. That's huge. What all do you do in a day to keep your business growing. Thanks
I usually wake up, have some corn flakes and watch some cartoons. Then I go to the bathroom and get rid of the corn flakes. Then I generally go for a bike ride through the woods where I try to capture a rabbit or two for my lunch... What exactly do you want to know? I work about 1 hour a day, go to school full time and make $4000+ a month. Am I professional enough for you?
The advice we can give is don't sit down, grin, pat yourself on the back and then go on vacation for 2 weeks. Work must be constant. Go on vacation once per year. This is about retiring young, at least, that's why we work so hard. Our day is usually like this. 1/2 hr per day discussing what needs to be done. 1 hr per day answering emails 1 hr per day brainstorming 2 hrs per day on research (surfing to see what sites are becoming popular on the net, and how we can get traffic out of it) 6 hrs per day updating content, blogs, and submitting new articles. 1 hr per day spying on what the competition is doing (where they are advertising and how) 1/2 hr Progress Discussion 1 hr per day on webmaster forums. 1 hr per day on directory submissions 1 hr per day checking traffic stats & affiliate commissions. Notice the last thing we do is to check earnings. This is important to give a good boost at the end of a long day.
I'd kill myself if I worked 15 hours a day. Life's just too short...(and I guess it would be even shorter if I killed myself )
I think you do have to work hard (I have...) but you can also work smart... And that's probably more important in the end. I have been a full time IM for almost 3 years now... and I don't really have a typical day. I'm very much all over the place. I've never been able to set myself on much of a schedule. But I have found I end up spending a lot of my day working/thinking about IM. I'd actually like to not do this. I think FOCUS would cause me to have greater success with less work actually done. So that's what I'm trying to do now... TRYING... Spend a certain amount of time (less than 8 hours per day) working towards one goal rather than being all over the place trying to do 72 things at once is I am wont to do. So uh... you are looking for advice? I would say learn from my mistakes and try to be more focused on a few projects rather than trying to do 72 projects at once. I've been successful... but I really feel I could be at a better place now and have worked less to get there with better focus.
I'm NOT an affiliate marketer, I run an e-commerce website that generates about $20K per month in sales. However, I do work at least 8 hours per day, but at least they're 8 hours for my own business. In the beginning of '08, i'm hoping to open up my first brick-and-mortar store. I don't care what ANYONE says.....retiring young takes HARD work, done smartly.
@vanquishdesign - why do you want to retire young? I doubt I'll ever retire, as that's basically saying "I give up", I'd much rather work less hours, travel more, but work throughout my whole life - I could never just stop, even if I had billions of dollars.
Actually, we could already retire. But it is a case of deciding how much money is enough. Glad you are working for yourself ´dturnbull´. It is the hardest thing in the world. Unfortunately we live in a society where being an entrepreneur is scorned at, even laughed at. You will find many people who you think are your friends will WANT you to fail. Just so they can say "well, I did try to warn you, you had a great job too, but threw it away. What you gunna do now?". I know, it happened to me a few years ago. Glad I stuck with it We both wish you all the luck in the world.
vanquish design. Great point about entrepreneur's being scored at. Especially ones who work online. Most people really find it comfortable to "work for the man" I guess. I don't really think most people have the mentality to succeed with affiliate marketing. I have a great distaste for working for a corporation. I wouldn't work for Google if they offered me a million dollars a year.
Totally true. You know, one thing that makes someone fail in an affiliate program is inconsistency (and laziness too) Inconsistency is the curse of affiliate marketing. What we do is find one program we are winning with, then we hit it with everything we've got. We will change our signatures, sites, blogs and newsletters to promote that program and that program only. So often we see people swapping and changing programs, that's what kills them. Not only is it all harder to track, but the field of view of the visitor is not concentrated. It is true that a person likes to see an ad for something 3 or 4 times before they buy. When people keep changing their ads, they are robbing themselves. Of course, there is some risk in this strategy of 1 program only. Your traffic might not be compatible with the product. It is a risk, but when you find you WINNING product that works well with your traffic. $$$$$$$$JACKPOT$$$$$$$$
I dont really consider what I do work, so pulling 15 hour days is just like having a really long day doing what I love to do. Most days I only want to work 8-10 hours though depending on if I want to sleep in a bit longer or not.