Effective Time Management? The Two Biggies For Affiliate Marketers

Only recently, I truly started thinking about my time management. Now, one thing that any online marketer will have to learn (and many of us learn the hard way,) is how to manage our time so that we can have the lifestyle we cherish, (isn't that why we started affiliate marketing in the first place) and yet have a profitable business.

I really don't believe in many of the rigid systems the guru-managers are churning out as models to the public, but as affiliate marketers, we should be aware that time is also money. Effictive time management is really not an option!

Let us take this situation. You wake up having a vague idea of what you want to do. You need to do some keyword research, update your website, write a few articles, and you make the mistake of opening your e.mail as soon as you have your second cup of coffee in hand and you sit down at your desk.

Despite that inner warning voice, you are lured by those first-line teasers. Yes, let us admit it, just the kind of first lines you are trying to write in your newsletters! Gosh, they really work don't they! There is really such a thing as psychological strategies in marketing. (I often used to explain this to my advertising class at the University.) They are very effective. So effective, that we find ourselves doing what we are aiming to get other people to do!

Yes, we open the email and click on the link and more often than not, we buy something. Often, we buy another program that doesn't tell us much more than the last one we bought, another program that promises that you will be able to leave your cranky boss, and travel to far distant climes and laze on white washed sands while your business is running on automatic!

Clue number one to stopping wasted time and towards effective time management is this. Do not look at your incoming mail till after 12.a.m or (if your biorhythms are like mine,) till after a good chunk of working time has elapsed even though you started at 10. You still can achieve effective time management even if you get up late!

Don't just start your day off either with a hazy idea of what you want to get done. That is so easy, but,if you do, you surely will be side-tracked. Let's look at our friend Bob. He has had his morning coffee, and opened up his emails, bought a fantastic new program that is going to surge his online business way ahead of all competition and also checked out the really useful video on Search Engine Optimization, and then read the 16 page pdf file on article writing that came along with it.

The phone goes and his married daughter needs a lift to the super-market, because her car is at the mechanics. After he takes her there,she insists he stop in for lunch at her house, as she has made tuna fish and potato pie which he loves.

All the time, he has that nagging feeling at the back of his head somewhere. His wife rings on his cell-phone and asks him to pick up the dry-cleaning. She needs the dress for a lunch date with the girls tomorrow. He glances at his watch and sees that it is 3.30 p.m. He decides on a little nap before he gets stuck into things again. Moral of this? Friend Bob has let yet another day, slip by and that nagging thing at the back of his head, will pop up again tomorrow.

There are so many time-management tips that it is easy to get overwhelmed. My advice is just to be aware of and eliminate, these two time-absorbers first.

I just want you to get two things out of reading this article which will really take you strides towards effective time management. Take the time to write a list of what you want. You can even get this done the night before while watching your favourite television program (commercial time, of course) and, after you sit down at your desk in the morning, do not open up that fascinating in-box of your e- mail until after you have finished your morning block of work.

Your home business will profit, Your family will respect you more, and you will be able to enjoy your free time without that nagging voice spoiling it.