Why work for 8 – 12 hours a day when 2 will do?
For many aspiring affiliates, that phrase conjures up visions of big beautiful homes and shiny new sports cars.
Graphic images on affiliate training sites encourage visitors to imagine themselves at their desk, dressed in PJ’s and smiling the big happy smile as hundred dollar bills miraculously fly from their computer monitor.
Those images often include a picture of the loving spouse standing in admiration somewhere in the near background.
Another popular image of the “rich affiliate†shows her relaxing in a lounge chair on a long stretch of almost-deserted white sand beach, a laptop perched atop her knees and some tasty tropical drink at hand.
Cynical home-based business opportunists and experienced affiliates alike may snort, snicker or even guffaw at the idyllic portrayal, however with two exceptions, that is an accurate picture of this affiliate’s lifestyle.
The ‘hundred dollar bills’ are in fact four and five-figure checks delivered by snail mail, and I would never bring my laptop to the beach where it might be exposed to the dangers of sand and water. Actually, I’m reluctant to tote the VAIO with me on vacation as I so rarely use it.
Case in point.
I spent the month of March touring Vietnam and Malaysia. Although the resort in Sabah on the island of Borneo and each hotel in Singapore, Kuala Lumpur and Ho Chi Mihn City (Saigon) provided free or inexpensive access to high-speed Internet, I spent less than 3 hours at my computer during the entire trip.
And I was not working during that time.
I spent it uploading vacation pictures to Flickr for my personal travel blog at Roamsters.com and GoogleTalking with family and friends. The few emails and responses I sent to friends in the industry were primarily to feign sympathy for their ugly early-spring weather and to talk about enduring three-and-a-half hour spa treatments and swims in the 86 degree Fahrenheit (30C) waters of the South China Sea.
My month-long vacation wasn’t the ‘once in a lifetime’ trip about which many people dream either. It was the trip I take every fall/winter. Moreover, the winter trips represent only a small percentage of my annual vacation-time.
In 2007, I spent 4 months away from home for pleasure travel and family events — not to confuse the two. Furthermore, to make the best use of our short Canadian summer, I work only a few hours per week during June, July and August.
Do I tell you this to gloat?
Not at all!
OK, maybe a little.
But what’s really important here is for you to know that:
- the fabulous Affiliate Lifestyle is possible, and;
- you need to define your version of the Lifestyle and choose to live it before you hamstring yourself with some crazy 24/7 business that won’t allow you the time of day (or night) to enjoy what you achieve.
Take for example my friend Ray (not his real name).
Ray earns 7-figures a year as a PPC search affiliate. He works with a paid assistant in rented office space where, for eight to ten hours a day, they scramble to investigate new product offers in a vast array of markets, create static landing pages, write and place ads, and monitor their conversions to sales. His workload doubles during the ramp-up to major holidays. Simply talking to him about his frenzied business at Christmastime left me feeling frazzled and I was in the midst of a 3-week break!
Despite all that money, Ray still can’t relax with his family at the cabin for the weekend without working evenings at his laptop. He told me that it was a major effort to ready his business for a week’s absence during a family emergency, and when Ray heard about my latest foray abroad, he replied by saying “I really wish I had more time to travelâ€.
Ray would have more time to travel if he made more time to travel, something he could easily do if he adopted a few content publisher strategies.
Although we too research new offers, write product endorsements, create landing pages and place PPC ads; we dig much deeper into far fewer markets, which means less email to read and fewer offers to research. Placing ten to thirty offers that run dynamic ads on one theme site is considerably less time-consuming than placing 1000’s of individual product ads that must be constantly monitored and revised.
Rather than chasing offers, content affiliates concentrate on building relationships with potential customers through information and entertainment. Delivery is simple and cheap via blogs, email and RSS feeds.
Moreover, blogging, podcasting and making videos is way more fun than ad-writing. The biggest advantage however comes from the ability to plan our publishing schedules well in advance.
So, if I suddenly required an uninterrupted month of time to respond to a family emergency or to take advantage of a extraordinary travel opportunity, I would login to my blog, select four draft articles and queue them up for delivery – one per week.
The same articles would then be queued in the same order for delivery through my autoresponder. To keep my business humming along for four weeks would take about five minutes per site, or less time than it would take to pack my bags.
Making even a partial switch away from the search affiliate to the content publisher model should be easy for Ray.
He could start with an existing niche in which he has had success, preferably one of an evergreen nature such as dating, skin care or weight loss. In as little as a day, he could rework and load seven of his best product reviews into an autoresponder series and put an email capture form on the applicable site. He should also take a minute to install a blog on that site, and spend 20 to 50 bucks to have a designer work his existing template into the blog.
Next, Ray should reallocate just one day per week of his pay per click ad writing time and devote that instead to writing articles and product endorsements.
By producing just four short articles per week, in three months Ray will have populated his blog and autoresponder with a year’s worth of messages to be published and delivered to his subscribers every week. As the size of his subscriber lists grow, not only will Ray’s income increase, but he will also be able to lower his pay per click advertising costs substantially.
And if Ray’s perpetual pay per click ad writing has left him short on prose, he could hire a ghostwriter to write those articles. Better yet, he could hire a team of ghostwriters to write articles in a half dozen of his best niche markets and get his affiliate business to the ‘set it, forget it and go on vacation’ stage more quickly.
The last step in the process, taking a vacation, might be the most difficult for workaholic affiliate Ray, as he may be tempted to use his newfound ‘free’ time to build an even bigger empire.
If you’re like Ray – constantly chasing your tail to make your business run – listen up!
Whether you are an aspiring or a seven-figure affiliate, making time to rest and rejuvenate body, mind and soul is the best thing you will ever do for you and your family. When you are refreshed and focused, you become even more efficient and productive in your work. So, leave the laptop at home and go have fun. With practice, you’ll soon discover that living the Lifestyle and taking vacations is as easy as FTP.
Oh, and one last thing. When making your travel reservations online, remember to book through your own affiliate link!
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Cheers,
