Productivity Boosters | Finch Sells

My Split Personality On A Monday Morning

Aug 26 2011

A true affiliate marketing badass knows how to prioritise the importance of his work above the droves of distractions that are guaranteed to come his way.

We work in an incredibly intrusive environment. Some affiliates manage it better than others. I can’t for the life of me understand how any of you achieve more than a sustained migraine by logging in to AIM, or by relaying your every thought to Twitter.

For all the productivity tips in the world, I have three simple commandments that cut straight to the chase. Oh and a split personality, to hold myself accountable.

Don’t… log on to a computer out of boredom.

Don’t… open your emails if you don’t plan on replying to them.

Don’t… sit down to work without a tangible target of what you plan to achieve.

When I look back at my failed projects – and I’d need 20/20 eyesight to see to the bottom of the list – there’s a recurring trend that sets the losers apart. That trait is a lack of vision. The sheer indifference towards thinking about them every day.

So after flicking through my Analytics account yesterday, I guess you could say the skies parted and a lightbulb flashed above my head. One of my dearest old websites, and very first affiliate project in fact, was about to get the chop.

The website receives a small trickle of hits. On a good week, it’ll even turnover a few sales. But the site is about learning French (among other languages), and as most people who know me can confirm… mon francais est a petite bit shit, merci beaucoup.

To invest any more energy in to establishing a website where I have no reputable knowledge, and no vision for how I could make it work, would be like Wayne Rooney sitting down and attempting a crossword. There’s just no point.

This takes me back to ‘Don’t Number Three’ from my commandments above.

I can guarantee that if I sit down at my desk without a clear vision for what I hope to achieve, I’ll end up sodding off for an early lunch having achieved what I started with – absolutely nothing.

Why bother to enter your office if you don’t have an objective? This is the type of mistake that I would compare to jumping in the middle of the ocean on a raft without an oar. You’re never going to control where you end up, and you’ll probably just exert a lot of energy to end up where you started.

How many affiliates have felt that at the end of the day before?

A useful exercise, which I believe every affiliate should swear by, involves a month of keeping accurate records.

I know it’s not cool to keep a journal. But for the purpose of evaluating your own productivity and potential, go ahead and spend a month recording exactly what you work on every day. Don’t get sloppy. Record every last meaningless task you devote your energies to.

In an additional spreadsheet, record your daily earnings and match the income to the corresponding tasks that were responsible for generating the money.

Be prepared for a reality check. I predict that 20% of your time spent working will be responsible for 80% of the income produced.

That’s probably not surprising to many of you. But where the reality check becomes necessary is in justifying the merits of the other 80% of work that occupies our schedules during the month.

Look closely at the tasks that swallow 80% of your time. Which of these projects do you have a clear vision for, and which are simply helping you to stay busy?

Scrap whichever projects are making slow progress, little money, and perhaps even more importantly – the projects that you don’t see yourself being involved with 3 years from now. The “do I truly give a shit about this niche?” question has always been my great acid test for whether I’m going to see a project through to the bitter end.

If my answer is no, the likelihood is that I’ve spent too long logging on to my computer out of boredom, and not enough time setting goals that I’m likely to achieve.

Here’s a suggestion for you. Next Monday morning, pencil in some appraisal meetings with each of the projects in your Analytics account. Take on the split personality of an overbearing boss who cares little for sentiment and everything for results.

Now interview your project manager (Yep… that’s you again), and ask some deep searching questions.

“How do you think you’ve performed over the last six months, little affiliate site?”
“Where do you see your earnings this time next year?”
“Are you capable of reaching your targets or are you full of bullshit like Finch’s french?”

Now let the boss in you decide the fate and credibility of those answers. You wouldn’t hire a professional to do a bad job, would you? So why excuse your own poor performance?

Cut the crap and optimise your business like you would with any lucrative affiliate campaign. There’s money to be made, and time to be saved!

Recommended This Week

If you’re not a regular reader of FinchBlogs, check out my latest post over there: The 10 Best Countries To Live In For An Online Professional. The site has been rebranded and I’m very excited for the plans ahead.
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10 Tips For Better Time Management

Aug 16 2011

This is a guest post by James Wilson. James is an internet marketer with six years of experience in the business.

If you work primarily online, you’re likely all too familiar with the dangers of distraction. Internet distractions abound – social media, games, news, YouTube – but work and family issues can also throw you off your game. It can be difficult to finish one project when other business matters keep stealing your attention.

However, if you can learn to minimize interruptions, organize your work, and plan effectively, you can make yourself more productive and efficient. If you’re familiar with the saying “time is money,” then you know why this is important.

Tip 1: Devote Days to Specific Tasks

While an online business naturally requires you to multitask for much of your day, trying to do too many tasks at once can kill your momentum, break your train of thought and make you less efficient in general. For instance, Robert Plank writes that he typically targets email on Monday, moving on to customer service on Tuesday and so on. A system like his can help you focus on one project and make you less susceptible to interruptions.

Finch: I devote different days to different traffic sources, and also different days to different verticals. My blog posts are usually mid-evening brainfarts when I have nothing else to do.

Tip 2: Close Your Email

Forcing yourself to refrain from constantly checking your email can be difficult, but doing so can save you from wasted time and unneeded distractions. Try setting rules for yourself that limit the number of times you can check your email everyday to two or three. Each time you check your mail, respond to only priority emails. At the end of the week, set aside a few hours to respond to all the other messages in your inbox. To make this easier, organize your emails in Gmail with labels every day, marking those that you’ll reply to on your designated email day.

Tip 3: Organize Your Computer

It’s easy for work-related files to pile up on your computer, and failing to organize them can result in a lot of wasted time as you search through them to find what you need. Use folders to keep track of different projects, labeling each folder according to its contents or using a naming system to help you more easily sort each folder. If you regularly work on more than one device, take advantage of software like Dropbox. Dropbox allows you to access your files from any machine at any location. As long as you have a mobile device or laptop with wireless internet, you can open and update any file without having to constantly send emails to yourself.

Finch: Dropbox is one of the best nomad resources of the 21st century. If you don’t have it, get on the bandwagon.

Tip 4: Stop Surfing the Internet

While this one goes without saying, sometimes you need to remind yourself just how much time surfing the web wastes when you’re trying to work. Learn to control your impulses to get on Facebook, read forums or check the news, making sure to set aside off-work hours for that. Turning off email and chat programs can help you avoid the random, distracting links that your friends send you throughout the day.

Finch: How do any of you get work done on AIM? It’s like dodging productivity bullets. LeechBlock is your best friend for avoiding the time wasting filth.

Tip 5: Set Aside Free Time

Being self-employed makes it easy to slip into a work mindset at all times, but you need to give yourself free time to maintain balance and, maybe more importantly, your sanity. If you make sure to set aside some free time for yourself every evening, you’ll have something to look forward to while you work and will be less likely to fall prey to distractions. During your free time, don’t check your email constantly or think about anything work-related. Having work creep into your leisure time can be just as inefficient as giving into distractions when you should be working.

Tip 6: Set Goals

You can work much easier by setting concrete goals for yourself to accomplish, in both the short and long term. For instance, you could aim to complete a certain project before the end of the week while setting your long term sights on increasing your job income by 100 percent in the next 3 years. Your goals should be specific, measurable and time-bound, providing you with a concrete target and a limited period of time in which to hit that target. Of course, they should be attainable. Setting unreasonable goals for yourself will only lead to further stress.

Tip 7: Create a Daily Action Plan

To help you work toward the goals you’ve set, make a list of every task you need to complete each day. As you finish each item on the list, check it off and move on to the next. This helps keep you on track and makes your work day go faster. After several weeks of making checklists, you can also become better at estimating how much you can expect to accomplish in a single work day, further improving your ability budget time.

Tip 8: Prioritize

In determining which tasks should be tackled first, it can be helpful to remember the adage that states, “80 percent of your profits are derived from 20 percent of your tasks.” The tasks that are most crucial to your profit-making potential should be given top priority. Try to spend most of your time taking care of critical tasks, saving other less important ones until you have more time.

Tip 9: Clean Up Your Work Environment

A messy workspace can promote mental clutter, making it important to keep your physical work environment just as clean and organized as your computer. For many people, simply working in clean and comfortable room can greatly boost productivity. Keeping your workplace orderly can also help you associate it with your professional life, making it easier to work without distraction.

Finch: I also find it helps to have lots of natural light in the room. Working from your mother’s basement is probably not the best way to stay chipper through the day.

Tip 10: Exercise and Eat Right

Staying in shape may seem irrelevant in regards to working online, but neglecting physical fitness can lower your drive, energy and efficiency. Try to spend at least 30 minutes walking, running, playing sports or otherwise working out every day. That may seem like a lot of time to devote to non-work activities, but the investment can pay off by giving you more energy and discipline.

Likewise, a healthy diet can make you feel less sluggish and can put you in a better mood while you work according to the American Dietetic Association.

Finch: Unfortunately, this is true. Try getting a campaign profitable after munching down a Village Pizza XL Meatfeast at 1am. Your posture is also something to pay close attention to, unless you want to follow the much travelled road of successful affiliate at 21, squared eye hunchback at 26. Priorities, affiliasphere!

Recommended This Week:

Slightly off-topic, but I see Spotify has finally landed in America. Being the long term Spotify fangirl that I am, I have a bunch of invites for those of you in the States who aren’t yet members. Email me if you want one (and trust me, you want one), or add me on Twitter and get in touch.
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Man, Laptop And World: How To Travel Efficiently

Jun 21 2011

Over the last seven months, I feel like I’ve spent more time logging in to hotel Wifi systems than I have in my own office. When you make the decision to travel, whilst working on the move, efficiency becomes a major issue. How can you get the most out of your time, while severing many of those hours in pursuit of greater thrills?

I recommend travelling to anybody who has the chance. If your business is self-managed, it makes little sense to constrain your time and freedom to a single city, especially if you already know that city inside out. Many people cite the influence of outside factors for not being able to travel.

“The wife won’t let me…”
“The kids are too much work…”
“I’m tied in to a rental contract…”

Admittedly, those with less ties than myself have more problems to solve before they can take off around the world, but none of the factors are hammer blows to the idea. They just take a greater leap of faith and/or commitment to overcome.

If you’re stuck between indecision and lack of information, here are a few pointers I’ve picked up along the way:

1. Travel as lightly as possible.

If you are a notorious hoarder of junk, traveling is an excellent excuse to throw out the crap that’s being cluttering your garage for so long. When I moved to Thailand, I completely overestimated how many clothes I would need, and indeed what type of clothes I would need. Sticky heat-trapping shirts barely cool enough for the English winter? Definitely not going to be needed in Bangkok. Did I bring them anyway? Of course I did.

It’s tempting to fit a lifetime’s accumulation of crap in to your suitcase, but ask yourself one question. Is this so important that I can’t buy a replacement while I’m away? The answer to most items will be no. Traveling light makes moving around much easier, not to mention saving you many many pesos in excess baggage charges.

2. Hotel Wifi has a recurring tendency to suck balls.

I’ve learnt that if I don’t do research beforehand, fate will typically conspire to hand me a shitty hotel Internet connection. Working from a laptop instead of a dual screen Mac took some adjusting. Working from a laptop on 56K dial-up speeds merited a full blooded sucker punch to the balls. If you’re staying in a hotel, make sure the Wifi is good and included free of charge. Or risk paying £30 for a few hours of patchy usage at somewhere like Novotel Rim Pae. Screw you, Novotel.

3. Don’t stay in flash, rich, luxurious hotels.

Wifi is worth investing in if you’re running a business from your laptop. But I’ve never understood the craze behind booking hotels for $500/night. Ultimately, a bed is a bed. Unless you plan on doing something other than sleeping in it, why pay through the nose for something that rarely gives you a true taste of the place you’re visiting? Overpaying is considered by many to be a macho display of ballin’. Invariably, traveling with set requirements of the pampered existence you need to get to sleep at night defeats the bloody purpose of traveling at all.

4. Learn the language.

My biggest regret as I move on from Thailand. It’s difficult to truly appreciate a culture if the standard conversation leaves you scratching your head and whipping up Rosetta Stone on the smartphone. Learning a few basic phrases is a must, while learning conversational basics will give you a much better understanding of what’s happening around you. Not to mention, a whole new world of local prices become accessible once you display a better grasp of the native vocab than a regular tourist.

5. Dropbox.

Dropbox is the new rage. Okay, to most people, it’s yesterday’s new rage. I was slow to jump on the bandwagon, but I’m glad that I did. By using Dropbox, you can afford to pull a Tim Ferriss. Sod off the face of the Earth completely, leave your laptop behind and restrict work to bursts of activity in an Internet Cafe just outside the Angolan Jungle. Dropbox gives you access to your important files anywhere, synchronizing them across devices and affording you the title of Digital Nomad.

6. Use time differences to your advantage.

Initially, I was concerned about the time difference when I first moved to Asia. Companies and reps based in the UK, Canada and America would still be asleep while I was busy with work. What if I needed to talk to them? It didn’t take long for me to figure that this was a great blessing in disguise. Zero distractions and zero interruptions. By the time those in America had woken up and replied to my emails, I would be happily relaxing and unwinding in the sun.

7. Have back-up support in place.

When you’re traveling, even with laptop in tow, it brings peace of mind to have somebody ready and waiting to act on any emergencies. I hired a Virtual Assistant from EasyOutsource.com, which is by far my favourite place to recruit cheap but talented labour.

You can have all your mundane tasks handled by a full-time VA for as little as $250/month, although I would recommend you invest a little more for quality’s sake. It’s also better to hire a combined workforce rather than a single employee. An individual is just as prone to “sick days” at inconvenient times as you were back in the day job. Hiring a team removes this worry.

8. Reduce any unwanted papermail before leaving.

In the UK, I use the Royal Mail’s redirection service to have my post sent to family while I’m away. If it’s important, I’ll have them send it on for me. This costs £8/month for domestic redirection and up to £30/month to have mail routed overseas. It’s a good idea to deselect paper statements from your online credit and store card accounts. Who needs to be reminded of yesterday’s vanity purchases, anyway?

For tax purposes, I have any important documents from HRMC sent to my Thai based address. This is easy to do by updating your current profile after receiving the Government Gateway ID. For everything else, I don’t stress. If it’s important, I’m sure the sender will find a better way of contacting me.

9. Tell your bank and credit card issuers where you’re traveling.

Very important and the source of much frustration while I’ve been attempting to use ATMs overseas. Fraud detectors are sent in to a frenzy if you withdraw £500 from a Cambodian street market. Your bank will routinely cancel payments and refuse to process ATM withdrawals if you don’t make it clear over the phone that you will be traveling to a particular region on a certain date.

For this reason alone, I chose to open an HSBC Advance account before moving to Asia. They have a strong presence abroad and it’s reassuring to be able to walk in to a branch that knows your name if you have any problems.

Recommended This Week:

If you’re not already registered on PPV Playbook, you are missing a beat sunshine. Easily the BEST place to learn from marketers who are actually making money. It has some awesome case studies. The catch is that you will need to pay some of your hard earned pesos to access it. I swear from the bottom of my black heart, joining is worth every penny
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