Eye on the Prize

June 30, 2009 in Business

The title of this post says it all. Keeping focused on your goals will make the difference between making money and wasting money in the marketing business. Now, that’s not to say they you won’t waste money on a project that never gets off the ground, or on a website that will never make money. I’m mainly talking about focusing on the wrong things.

In any business, it is important to keep your goals and projects in site at all time. I’m always trying to help new affiliate break into the business as we all face the same challenges. Time management, being spread too thin, and having TOO many big ideas. The last one is huge for marketers! Once we start to see the earning potential in this industry we start to think of a million ways to make money. Like my buy Jeremy Enke says “there is a million ways to make a million dollars, you just have to find one” -

My friend Nick Haslem has started a blog that touched on this subject, please go give it a read and you can thank me later. Successful Affiliate -

Here is a list of the biggest time wasters:

Focusing on unimportant things: Now obviously this is very broad, but I know several affiliates which are struggling because they spend far too much time doing things like – Spending too much time on checking stats (Big time waster), Reading Forums, checking links, social bookmarking, looking at other affiliates sites. Now, all of these things are great to do in moderation, but if you are spending hours a day looking at what other affiliates are doing,t hen you are failing at being original. As with any business if you do what everyone else is doing, what value are you bringing to your customer, and how will you ever exceed your competition?

Spreading yourself too thin: I think as marketers, we all are guilty of this one too. We get sooo many ideas and each time we get this excited feeling because we think we may have just come up with the “million dollar” idea. The truth is, you need one successful website before you can effectively move onto the next. Of course there is exceptions, but more times than not, I see affiliates with 20 half finished websites that will never reach potential. So do yourself a favor and FINISH something, even if its a mini site with 20 pages or so. This will eliminate excuses of “well if I ever finish xxx.com then it will be a money maker”. The truth is, you are holding yourself back from succeeding.

Accept Your Shortcomings: When I finally realized I hated writing content, and I sucked at CSS and coding in general. I finally committed to keeping my programmer “Eric” on the payroll. This has pushed me to justify the cost, and so far I could not be happier. I helped Eric set up his new Custom Coding websites, and he is now super busy and loves it! If you or anyone else you know needs a REAL kickass coder, Eric is the man!

Ask For Help: 2009 has been a great year for me and I owe it all to my wife. Hell, I owe everything in my life to my wife. I’m sure I don’t tell her enough, but she truly saved me from having a mediocre life. She has always motivated me to be better; better father, better husband, and a better person. The great thing is that she would love me even if I was some factory worker making minimum wage. She has always deserved better, so it drives me to give her the best life I Can give her.

This year we had a long talk and she made the decision to quit her job with the State Park and work at home helping me with our websites which is now about 50 total. We have Poker sites like – Poker Bonuses and Poker Rakeback – Casino sites like Best Casino Bonus – We also have several non-gaming sites like her new site – Cheap Text Books and Twilight Gear.

Since she has been home we have doubled our monthly income, kept projects on a timeline, expanded our focus into other verticals, and best of all she is doing something she really enjoys now. This also gives her time to stay home with all 6 of our kids which are ages 11 to 15 We have a house full, but we are really blessed parents.

Ok, so I’ve rambled on and on, and I hope you get the point. There are so many silly distrations in this industry that you sometimes have to take a step back, update your white board, and make sure you are focusing on the right things. I am by no means a professional “balla” affiliate yet, but I have done this for over three years now and I’ve made every possible mistake. So, if you managed to read this long post, then I hope you got something out of it.

Also, all comments on here are do follow, so feel free to leave a comment with yoru best advice for this business! Also, if you would like to make a guest post, contact me. It’s a great way to get a free link for your next big project!

Tags: Distractions, Marketing, Poker MArketing, Time Wasting