In this post, you’ll get 6 Productivity Tips that’ll help you as a beginning affiliate marketer inspired by the book the power of less and my experience applying these principles to my own journey as an affiliate marketer.
This post is structured through the 6 principles they use in the book. I’ll talk about:
- The benefits of applying minimalism to your affiliate journey
- The 6 productivity improvement tips based on principles of the power of less
- My own experiences with the 6 principles and affiliate marketing
- A Bonus tip that makes sure you won’t fail
So let’s start off with:
The benefits of applying minimalism to your affiliate journey
Minimalism in its core is focusing on the things that are important to you. This way of thinking can be a valuable tool for an entrepreneur including affiliate marketers. There’s so much information online about affiliate marketing that it can be overwhelming so instead of going through it all why not focus on the things you’ll benefit from the most.
Incorporating minimalism will:
- Relieve stress
- Reduce the chance of feeling overwhelmed
- save you a loooot of time
- save you energy
- make it possible to have a life next to promoting affiliate products.
Now let’s look at…
7 Productivity Improvement Tips For Affiliate Marketers [ Inspired By The Power Of Less ]
Apply limits To Every Area Of Your Life Not Just Work
Principle #1 Setting Limits
According to Leo Babauta limits can be applied to every area of your life and he sees being limitless as an invitation to weakness and vulnerability.
I believe the areas outside of work can influence your work. For example, if you don’t prioritize your health you can get sick and this can affect your work and the money you earn.
I see every area in my life as a domino brick and if one falls over the others fall over too.
- How many hours do you sleep
- What kind of food are you eating
- How many times per week do you work out
- What tasks do you prioritize when it comes to work
They all matter.
Choose What You Want To Focus On And Simplify it
Principle #2 Choose the essential and simplify
The moment you start to do some research on affiliate marketing you’ll notice that you’ll have to do a lot of things to create a successful website on which you can promote affiliate offers. Not every task has the same amount of importance though.
Personally, for the most part, I use the 20/80 rule. When using the 20/80 rule you focus on the 20 of tasks that’ll give you 80% of the results. You’ll notice that I don’t have a really fancy website but it gets the job done.
Looking for your 20% ask yourself these questions.
- Which actions will have the biggest impact on your affiliate marketing endeavor?
- What is your end goal?
- Where is the long-term impact?
- What do I need to make my first sale?
- Of the things, I need to make my first sale which is the most important?
The first of course will be creating a website but after that, I’d advise as a starting entrepreneur to focus on:
- creating quality content
- driving quality traffic to your website.
There are multiple ways of doing that. I chose to go with search engine optimization because the financial risk is lower and once you rank Google directs traffic to your website without you needing to do anything.
Tip #3 Identify What you’re not going to focus on
Principle #3 Simplifying and Eliminating the nonessentials
Just as important as deciding what you focus on are the things you choose not to focus on. There are so many ways to reach your goal.
- Drive traffic by uploading YouTube content
- paid advertising on social media
- paid advertising on search engines
- search engine marketing with the help of SEO
Choose beforehand on which methods you’re not going to focus. I’m not saying you should put all your eggs in one basket but don’t spread yourself out to thin either. Your most precious asset is time so use it wisely.
Tip #4 Eliminate distractions with the Pomodoro technique
Principle #4 Focus
As I said before time is your most precious asset but if you don’t use it wisely having all the time in the world is meaningless. This makes focus very important because it allows us to make the most out of the time we have.
It’s easy to get distracted by all the surrounding things while we work so I would like to introduce something called the Pomodoro technique.
According to the website of brainscience, there have been experiments done that tell us the average attention span of American Adults is around the 20 minutes after this we need a break to recharge if want to be able to be fully focused on something.
The results of these experiments have been used in what is called the Pomodoro technique. When using the Pomodoro technique you:
- Set a timer of which you can hear it ticking for 20 minutes
- Focus on one task for 20 minutes straight
- Take a break for 10 minutes
- and repeats that cycle multiple times
Hearing the ticking will remind you to keep focusing on the task at hand. This technique has helped me so many times when I was in college and if you try it out I’m sure it’ll help you too.
If Google the keyword Pomodoro clock you’ll find multiple websites dedicated to this technique with timers you can use.
Tip #5 Don’t depend on motivation, create habits
Principle #5 Create new habits to make long-lasting improvements
Motivation is a bit overrated. If everybody only took action when they had the motivation they probably wouldn’t amount to anything. In contrary to what people believe motivation isn’t something you can have 24/7.
I remember trying multiple BS methods people come up with that were supposed to help with getting more motivation but it’s only after I accepted that emotions will always come in waves I could truly work with it.
I purposefully started creating habits. It takes less mental energy to start doing something once it’s a habit because you’re basically running on autopilot.
I remember quitting online marketing multiple times in my head when I was just starting out but I kept working. I wouldn’t be where I am today if I never developed the habits to support me.
Motivation will set you on the path but habits will keep you on it.
Tip #6 Sustainability is key
Principle #6 Start new habits in small increments to ensure success.
When you learn something new that can help you get to the next step on your journey it’s easy to become enthusiastic and go overboard but you have to think about the long term. Going overboard will and overexerting yourself will only have negative consequences.
In the power of less Leo Babauta advises starting new habits in small increments. I made the same mistake by trying to put the perfect routine together. I lasted three days and after that everything became a mess. Follow the principles presented here and identify the habit you’re going to get the most out of and temporarily eliminate the others.
The moment you become comfortable with that habit you add the next one. Over time, you’ll have a full routine you can perform on a daily basis without overexerting yourself.
Tip #7 A bonus
This has nothing to do with improving your productivity but still is one the most important things you’ll need to do to succeed as an affiliate marketer.
Stop making result oriented goals!
Having result oriented goals will only make it harder for you to succeed as an affiliate marketer. When I started out I made all these goals based on results I had no control over. The moment I was in the third month I didn’t achieve any of these goals and started beating myself up over things that weren’t in my control.
If you’re going to make goals make them process oriented.
- How many posts will you write on a weekly basis
- How many posts will you upload on a daily basis
- How many hours will you spend on getting better in your craft.
- How many people in your niche are you going to try to contact so you can learn from them on a weekly basis
These are goals that you have control over and set you up to win.
That’s all for now.
Got any question feel free to leave a comment below.
If you’re by any chance interested in learning how to write blogs in less time I’ve written a post about which you can read by clicking right here.
See you at the next post!
