David Fiske Affiliate Marketing & Web Development

After a while of working in affiliate marketing, you'll soon find you have too much to do and not enough hands or time to do it. I'm there now with a to do list of 116 days (ish) which is around 700 hours or so work. Eek.

Reducing this down to something more manageable is impossible as it all needs doing. The answer is prioritising but how does an affiliate prioritise?
 
First we need the "to do" list, a list of projects that need doing along with a set of sub-tasks. Each task needs a time allocated to it. Here's an example:

• Set up a website about blue widgets:
  • Set up hosting - 1 hour
  • Install Wordpress and plugins - 1 hour
  • Develop or personalise a theme - 6 hours
  • Add 10 well-researched articles - 10 hours

You can quickly see that an innocent task like setting up a website can suddenly transform into a lot of work, even with a simple script like Wordpress. The timescales above are an example and for some it will be quicker and for others it will take considerably longer.

Once you've got this information laid out, you then need to prioritise. A lot of how I prioritise relates to importance, interest and potential reward.

Importance

Sometime time sensitive may take on a higher priority. For example, if you are setting up a Christmas toys site, the content you need (top toys list) is released in October / November. That gives you a short time frame to get your site built and/or the content added.

Other things of importance may include competitions and incentives. DFDS Seaways are offering an A4U Expo pass if you refer 15 sales in March. that doesn't give you a lot of time to build and promote your mini cruises website :-) As a side note, I'm hoping to blag a ticket and perhaps even a hotel next door to the Expo this year so if I do, I should be there to meet both avid readers (are there any?!) and account managers.

Interest

With most projects I do I have a great deal of enthusiasm to begin with and that usually fizzles out when the boring tasks are left. For example, I have to work through around 3,000 products in a data feed to complete 2 sites I have started. Each product needs standardising and whilst it's a one time only task, it's a tremendous bore.

Nevertheless, sometimes the boring tasks need to be done (as in this case) so no matter how long I leave it, I will have to do this at some stage. Yippee.

Potential Reward

Some affiliates look at statistic after statistic. Some use various acronyms such as EPC, EPI and ELC (no - wait, that's Early Learning Centre!).

I use a crystal ball. I use stats to a degree but I use a combination of gut feeling and experience to prioritise. I have a varying portfolio and the most successful sites are usually those that I've built based on gut feelings. After a few websites you start to develop an instinct for knowing whether an idea will work or not. I prefer quirky, practical and fun sites although content sites generally convert better.

Why Not Outsource?

With 116 days work to do, some might question why I don't just outsource. I'd love to do that but I'm picky and am loathed to pay for something I can do myself.

That said, my goal is to hire someone one day as I reckon it's a way of generating success. Just take a look at Mark Pearson who started as a one man band and now runs Markco Media, employing 50 folk across 3 offices.

Alicia Navarro and Joe Stepniewski are two names that follow the same sort of trend. They started off a tiny company called Skimlinks which has now grown into a global success story. I couldn't find staff numbers but they do have an office in London and they currently have 6 job vacancies open :-)

Why stop there? Husband and wife Paul and Jen Nikkel set up Quidco which is yet another success, now employing 37 staff, based in London, Sheffield and Canada.

All three businesses are inspirations in their own right.

Ultimately this is the plan. Two heads are much better than one and can effectively double productivity. This multiplies outwards. By employing suitably trained and specialised staff, you can fuse together a very successful team of coders, writers, developers and strategists together with SEO and PPC specialists. It takes time to develop a team of this size and calibre (unless you have the backing of an investment firm) but it doesn't hurt to have ambition.

For the meantime though, it's back to work with only Spotify for company :-)