1
Are You Pretending To Work At Home?
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Growing A Business vs. Living Your Dream
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Classic Mistakes Of A Former Affiliate

Are You Pretending To Work At Home?

I think we’d all agree that it’s a great luxury to be able to work from home. As much as I enjoyed the social side of being in an office and having a laugh, there’s no place I’d rather be at 9am than tangled in my own bedsheets. Living in your comfort zone can provide the acid test for how committed you are to what you do.

Staying productive is something I talk about a lot because I believe self-discipline to be the single greatest asset to any entrepreneur, or anybody who controls their own working environment. Without it, we could spunk entire afternoons on YouTube or away from the office altogether.

I think we all know that it’s important to stay productive, but not many of us have reached the stage where we feel like we’re in total control of our environment.

So here are four tips for improving your productivity if you work from home:

1. Separate your work space from your living arrangements.

This is pretty much critical to your sanity. For over two years, I worked in a claustrophobic bedroom where I also drank, ate, slept and let the magic happen. The problem with having your office in your bedroom is that as affiliate marketers, we’re chained to a 24/7 industry that never sleeps. There’s always one more email to answer, some stats to refresh or a brainfart to research.

One of my priorities when I moved to Bangkok was to find a three bedroom apartment that had plenty of space. My girlfriend also works from home, so we opted for a 350 sq/m sprawling mass of rooms. We both have a home office, our puppies have their own bedroom and there’s more than enough space to be able to differentiate between “This is where I work”, “This is where I sleep”, and “This is where I shit”.

2. Have a schedule.

Many people consider the 9-5 to be a mental prison. The same hours, on the same days of the week for the rest of their working lives. But what can’t be argued is that routine adds order and momentum to your working day.

Nobody can tell you the best routine. Some people work better in the morning, while others can only think straight at night. Your location in the world also makes a difference.

When I have breakfast, America is going to bed and the UK is already fast asleep. This gives me a perfect opportunity to fire off my emails and work out. I can go for a swim, eat some lunch and really think about what I want to achieve before the morning has already passed me by.

If you’re going to have a schedule, you need to stick to it. So you need to plan ahead and leave time for that familiar experience of life screwing you over, or people having other ideas about how you should spend your time. It’s easy for those working at home to fall in to the trap of becoming everybody else’s bitch. Maybe your housemates want you to run errands because you have “all that time on your hands”. Or your neighbour wants you to watch out for a parcel delivery because it was too convenient to expect you to do them a favour than organize to pick the damn thing up themselves.

These are all familiar stories of how working from home can turn you in to a Samaritan at the beck and call of everybody else. So take back control and get some self-discipline. Even if it’s a flimsy whiteboard with your working hours scrawled in the kitchen for your wife to see.

You can always bust out my favourite tetchy complaint: “I didn’t get where I am today by taking care of other people’s shit.” You might be seen as unreasonable, but you’re in the right. Many of us have worked 16 hour days for months on end to be in the position that we are, so having a schedule that other people respect isn’t too much to ask.

3. Understand the difference between staying busy and getting work done.

Sometimes I have days where I only work for a few hours but what I achieve is significant because it’s a step towards a long term goal. Other days, I work for 12 hours and cross off dozens of tasks only to find that I haven’t actually achieved much because I’ve been “keeping busy” rather than making any measurable progress.

What is “keeping busy”?

– Optimizing campaigns without analyzing the data.

God, I hate myself when I do this. I’ll mark down a task for the day to optimize campaign X, and then I’ll go in and introduce some new ads or tweak my landing pages – but I won’t look at the data and make any logical assessments. If you’re forever split testing and never coming to conclusions that affect your future campaigns, you’re the perfect example of somebody who keeps busy for the sake of being busy rather than achieving goals.

– Managing people.

I’m not a project manager. So whenever I add a task like “communicate with Freelancer X and ensure project is running fine”, I know that I’m being lazy. These are things that you should either be doing automatically or handing to a dedicated project manager. It’s not a step forward for your business if you’re spending the day waiting for emails and feeling satisfied that you’ve got everything under control.

– Research tasks.

I find that if I include any item resembling “Research this…” on my to-do list, I will revert to my lazy high school trait of promoting the easiest task to the one most worthy of my time. I never add research tasks to my to-do list for one reason. They’re not measurable. I can’t hold myself accountable at the end of the day. It’s easy to flick through a couple of forum posts in the space of five hours and then by the end of the day miraculously forget that those hours were actually wasted.

To put it simply, if you’re going to set yourself tasks, you should know exactly what you’re looking to achieve. Otherwise the goalposts will move as fatigue sets in at the end of the day.

4. Cancel out the noise.

Yes literally, check out SimplyNoise. White noise is a brilliant way of canceling out the distractions all around you. I like to listen to music every now and then, but having a TV blaring in the background makes it damn near impossible for me to work productively.

My girlfriend manages to stay focused on her tasks while watching America’s Next Top Model with a laptop balanced on the sofa. She’s obviously a freak. I couldn’t bring myself to remember my CPCs from my CPVs if I had such calamity unfolding before my eyes on-screen. Whether you think it affects you or not, your brain is tuned in to what is going on around you. I find white noise to be the best way of weeding out those distractions and keeping my focus where it needs to be. Scamming the nation needs mind meditation, right?

If you’re falling in to patterns of laziness, maybe it’s time to start adjusting your home environment. You know… divorce the wife, move in to the attic, ask the cat to start feeding himself. Small tweaks. I’m not advocating Josef Fritzl measures, but discipline and clarity can be a good thing for all parties concerned. Show the world that you don’t mess with a man and his berries.

Recommended This Week:

  • Ironically, given the nature of this post, I would like to recommend you join a forum. 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

  • If you’re working in the dating market, check out Adsimilis. Definitely one of the better networks with a wide range of dating offers, all on high payouts, including lots of stuff in Europe and South America. I think you’ll like them.

  • If you’re a new reader, please add me to your RSS. Feel free to add Finch to your Facebook. Yes, this is the right link. My real name is not actually Finch. Also follow me on Twitter Love you long time. Thanks for reading.

Growing A Business vs. Living Your Dream

It’s hot and it’s sweaty. Everybody else is at work and the swimming pool is empty. Three months ago, before I moved to Thailand, I didn’t have to deal with this predicament. The only empty swimming pool was nextdoor’s Argos inflatable, and even that was ice-ravaged by winter. These days, it’s the question I have to answer every morning.

“Do I dedicate today to my business? Or do I just enjoy this crazy life?”

I was whinging at my girlfriend a few nights ago, frustrated over how wasteful I thought we’d been with money. I managed to spend close to £10,000 in January (That’s about $15,000 for you Yankiepops) which is quite a feat considering Thailand has this misguided reputation as the place for living on a shoestring budget. I’m sure it is, by the way. But if you don’t learn Thai – or at least date one – you’re going to find yourself existing in a different economy to the natives.

My ambition has always been to live a nomad lifestyle. To roam between countries, plant a laptop on a beach, get some work done, then jump on the next plane. I guess this is what we call “living the dream”. And for the last few months, I’ve been privileged enough to enjoy that luxury.

Understand though, this variety of “living the dream” makes it very difficult to grow a business. Nobody puts as many hours of thought in to their work on the beach as they do at their desk. Unless you’re Nick Throlson.

I’ve found myself wrestling between two states of mind. Firstly, the desire to knuckle down and spend every penny and every hour investing in my business, taking it as far as it can go and only then enjoying the fruits of my labour. After all, this is the very same drive and work ethic that got me this far. Why stop now?

Or I can listen to the other voice in my head. The voice saying, “Hey Finch, It’s 35 degrees out, why aren’t you in the pool? You’ve earnt this much”

Inevitably, after laying down ten grand in a month, the conservative side of me rose to the surface and argued with my girlfriend that as much as I can afford to live this life, it’s just not going to let me grow my business as fast as I want to.

But she raised a good point. Why even have this lifestyle, location independent albeit paying the premium, if I wasn’t going to enjoy it fully?

I think the reality is that I do enjoy it. And I do realize how lucky I am to be in a position at 23, that many people will work a whole lifetime to never have a hope of sharing. But after spending every hour of my life that came before preparing for this luxury, I’m not quite sure how to react now that I have it. Do I stand still and cherish the moment? Or do I put my foot down and stick to the same working patterns that have served me well?

Affiliate marketing is a fast-paced industry where the voices around you will constantly be telling you to push for the next dollar. If you’re not putting in the extra hour to attack a new offer, it’ll be money left on the table for somebody else. We all remember how it felt to not be making money, so we don’t want to fall back in to those trenches. Money left on the table is what we hate most.

When I look at my finances, I realize I don’t have to bite this bullshit and react to every movement in the industry. I don’t have to jump on every niche, split test every offer or open every email. But there’s so little substance to the work that we do, you could be forgiven for thinking it would all disappear in a heartbeat. Reacting becomes a natural instinct.

As much as I’d love to grow my business Zuckerberg-style and bypass millions to aim for billions, I’m slowly accepting that it doesn’t have to happen today or tomorrow. Most of us are very young and have the time on our hands to let our businesses grow naturally.

If you buy in to the affiliate marketing dream, you become convinced that scaling from hundreds to thousands of dollars per day has to happen overnight or it’ll never happen at all. This was the attitude I had back in my London bedroom, where everything about my life was focused on taking that next step.

Recently, I stumbled across a website called Kiva which I remember Bryn posted about last year. If you’re ever feeling that you’re not progressing with your goals, or that your riches aren’t accumulating fast enough, this is the website to visit for a shot of reality up the arse.

Entrepreneurs from poverty-stricken countries can use Kiva to ask for loans to launch businesses that would change their lives, and those of their families, for the better. Anybody can register to donate to their businesses and over time you will get the money back. It’s hard to read through some of the loan requests without your conversion rates fading in to insignificance.

While many of us would love to pitch a tower in Silicon Valley and claim the dominance of an industry, we shouldn’t dismiss simply providing a living for ourselves as anything less than amazing in the current economical climate. I’m trying to remind myself that Growing A Business vs Living My Dream doesn’t have to be an endless power struggle between two negative forces. They’re both great privileges and they should both be enjoyed.

I highly recommend you check out Kiva. It’s a great concept. What better way to give back as an entrepreneur than to help other entrepreneurs who have much greater challenges than ourselves? If you’re reading this and not making any money, it’s certainly not for a lack of opportunity. A lot of the entrepreneurs on Kiva have only one opportunity in life. It helps to keep that in perspective no matter how shitty you think your daily stats have been.

Recommended This Week:

  • My dashboard tells me this is the 100th post on Finch Sells. It’s taken me two years to notch them up, but I’d like to think it’s a fairly fluffless collection of posts. If you’re a new reader, please add me to your RSS. Love you long time. Thanks for reading.
  • If you’re working in the dating market, check out Adsimilis. Definitely one of the better networks with a wide range of dating offers, all on high payouts, including lots of stuff in Europe and South America. I think you’ll like them.

  • Feel free to add Finch to your Facebook. Yes, this is the right link. My real name is not actually Finch. Also follow me on Twitter

Classic Mistakes Of A Former Affiliate

The riches are so great in this industry that the virtues of patience are easily forgotten.

If you’re a new affiliate, trying to come to terms with the challenges ahead, there are two commodities you’re going to need in abundance – patience and vision. In the hope of having one successful campaign, many affiliates test a hundred of them. When they all fail miserably, the “testing” process is typically so sketchy that to find a golden nugget worth chasing would be like running your hands through elephant shit thrown at a wall.

Let’s take the newbie dating affiliate who calls this a working day:

He knows that a lot of affiliates are making money from dating offers. So he picks out the best dating offer, based on his AM’s recommendation, plugs a few ads in to Facebook, targets ages 35-45, and blows $50 on a handful of conversions that barely break even.

In the face of a loss, he realizes he doesn’t want to lose anymore money. So he rejigs his campaign.

He picks another dating offer, based on a recommendation he sees in one of Nick Throlson’s park video blogs, switches his ads over to Plentyoffish, targets ages 45-65, and blows $50 on zero conversions.

No conversions? Oh shit, it must be the advertiser scrubbing, right? So he chooses another dating offer and relaunches his Plentyoffish campaign. But not before completely overhauling his landing page, targeting a different country and launching at 6am in the morning when any singleton in said market has already whacked off for the night and signed out of POF.

Still no conversions.

He then thinks to himself…fuck this shit, there’s no money in affiliate marketing.

The ability to test variables methodically ranks right at the top of the list for “desired qualities” in an affiliate marketer. It’s no good to have the best ads, the best targeting or the best landing pages. They have to function as a system, cogs turning as one, slowly grinding towards the end goal of profitability.

If you’re still looking for your first taste of success, REGAIN CONTROL OF YOUR VARIABLES.

Once you know beyond reasonable doubt that an offer is converting well for other affiliates, stick with it. Hunt out the traffic source where ads appear most regularly for that offer. Now you have your two most important variables nailed down:

A good offer, and a profitable traffic source.

There are still a ton of variables, and it’s your responsibility to test them thoroughly and transparently. There is absolutely no point in split testing the performance of two different age brackets if one of those age brackets is being redirected through to a different landing page. Every variable matters. And until you regain control of your variables, you’ll never truly know what is working, what isn’t, and what money you’re leaving on the table.

I think most affiliates know and readily admit to the importance of split testing. But not many are patient enough to follow through in their execution. Usually because they either – a) find success and have little ambition to improve on it, or b) start to panic when their daily ROI drops below ballin’ status.

Patience is everything. Expecting miracle results overnight, or even just results, is the classic mistake of many a former affiliate.

In terms of why you’re most likely to fail, a lack of patience is second only to complete disregard for the challenges ahead.

I often use a metaphor that finding success in this industry is like climbing a mountain. Success is there at the peak, but you have to be patient. You have to build your base camps along the way and prove that you can overcome the inevitable challenges. Finding a profitable campaign might be your first step, but sustaining it is another. Surviving through the next FTC crackdown or dealing with a banned Facebook account might scupper your best laid plans along the way. Setting your eyes on the summit and ignoring the beast in front of you is called living in cloud cuckoo land.

Reaching the summit, discovering those riches and having your dream business, requires acclimatisation along the way. It can’t be achieved in one night’s work. If you have aspirations of rolling like Richard Branson, but reservations about spending $5, well let’s just say you’re going to be stuck at low altitude until you progress beyond those fears.

Most of us are aware of the challenges. But If you think your latest idea makes you Reinhold Messner, capable of scaling any peak without putting in the hard hours of acclimatisation and learning from your falls – you’re going to get blown off the mountain. There are many failed routes – tough challenges – before you ever find a way to the top.

Some are self-inflicted… the mistakes you will inevitably make along the way, never a bad thing if you learn from them.

Some are caused by others… everybody in this industry is hoping to use you as a stepping stone to their own summit.

Some are caused by fortune fucking with you… Suck it up and deal with it.

Whatever the reason, if you want to enjoy the riches on that summit, you need to respect what comes before it. There’s no such thing as a success formula in this business, but you can make life easier for yourself by methodically ruling out what doesn’t work.

This is what many of us have done over the years. We rarely have the foresight to know when a campaign will become profitable. But it’s having the patience to learn enough about what NOT to do. This comes with experience, patience and vision.

Every mistake you make needs to be another hazard avoided in the future. And every variable you test needs to be another factor eliminated from your monetary equation. Affiliate marketing is very simple if you take a methodical approach. The problem is that most newbie marketers have a love affair with the desired results rather than the consequences of their actual actions. They stare at the summit instead of concentrating on their next step. Most become former affiliates.

Recommended This Week:

  • If you’re working in the dating market, check out Adsimilis. Definitely one of the better networks with a wide range of dating offers, all on high payouts, including lots of stuff in Europe and South America. I think you’ll like them.

  • Feel free to add Finch to your Facebook. Yes, this is the right link. My real name is not actually Finch. Also follow me on Twitter

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