Speed – The Second Most Important Quality for an Affiliate Marketer

First of all, if you haven’t read the first post in this two-post mini-series, go do that now.  In that post you’ll find what I consider to be the single most important quality for an affiliate marketer.  Now let’s talk about the second most important quality — speed.

Let me give you some reasons why speed is critically important for the successful affiliate marketer…

When you’re not conciously trying to work quickly, it’s easy to spend too much time on what I like to call “secondary tasks”.  What’s a secondary task?  Anything that does not directly contribute to increasing your revenue.  This would certainly include things like web server setup and software installation, but to a lesser extent can even include things like design and layout.  You can have the nicest looking website in the world, but if you aren’t getting eyeballs in front of it, you won’t make any money.  By contrast, working speedily helps you establish a rhythm…a “groove” if you will…which in turn keeps you motivated and focused. 

Working quickly also helps minimize risk.  In any new campaign, there is always a certain amount of risk involved.  For instance, it’s not always clear if the offer you’re promoting is going to convert.  The best way to find out?  Yup…test it!  And if it ends up *not* converting, the sooner you test it (and fail), the sooner you’ll *know* that and cut your losses.

So how do you operate with speed?  Here are some practical tips…

1) Get the most important things done first and then do everything else.  Basically, you need to prioritize your tasks.  I recommend making a list of tasks that you want to accomplish the night before.  That way, when morning hits, it’s not a question of what you’ll be spending your time on.

2) Automation is your friend.  I have so many things to share with you in terms of automation, as I consider it an important part of my business (and quite underused industry-wide).  There are many ways to automate tasks, and you don’t have to be a programmer to do it.  Ever want to keep a number of text phrases in your clipboard and assign a hotkey to each one for easy pasting?  No problem, have a look at this.  Want to automate a repeitive and user-defined sequence of keystrokes?  No problem, have a look at this.

3) Outsourcing is your friend.  This gets back to the point above about secondary tasks.  You really need to ensure you’re not spending your time (often the most precious commodity of all) on secondary tasks.  But please hear this too – there is a balance…  In other words, don’t be foolish with your money.  If you don’t have any income coming in and you can’t afford to outsource, then don’t do it!  Outsourcing is a great way to grow your business, but there should be a business there to begin with.