Affiliate Marketing Tips and Tricks: Daily Task Checklist

Becoming an affiliate marketer is an exciting time and I’m sure you will have a lot of great times as you learn your trade and apply the knowledge you have learned to build up a successful online business. Looking online for affiliate marketing tips and tricks helped me enormously.  One thing that most newbie website owners want to know is how to use their precious time effectively. There is a lot to learn and adding content to your site has to be one of the most important things that you can do in order to build up trust with the search engines and to create a site that is well-ranked and considered an authority. This applies whatever niche you are in or whatever stage you are at in your online marketing career.
But what else should be on your list of things to do each day? How can you decide where to use your time so that your site gets ranked well and your traffic increases? Here are my top 10 things to do – in the form of a daily task checklist (and a few to avoid) to help newbies navigate through the minefield when they first start.

Before I start anything, I recommend you do this

I believe that positive thinking has a place in everyone’s life. If you subscribe to some of the business thinking as laid down by people such as Anthony Robbins, Wayne Dyer, Zig Zigler and other like-minded people, one thing they all have in common, is knowing how much a positive attitude and the right mindset can have on your day;

In a recent interview, Wayne Dyer was quoted as saying:

“One of the important principles I live by is the idea that you have to contemplate yourself as surrounded by the conditions you intend to produce. The difference between highly functioning people—the people Maslow called self-actualizers—and people who live with ordinary levels of consciousness is that the self-actualizers never put their intention on what they don’t want. They know that what you think about is what expands.”

Therefore, I always make sure that before I do anything, I get into the right mindset which means finding a positive place in both my thinking, but more importantly with my feelings. The law of attraction states that like attracts like so the more of a positive outlook I have, the more positively I expect the outcome to be. Spending a few minutes at the start of the day finding a quiet mind state, reviewing my goals, meditating on them and setting my intentions for that day is a must. It allows me to be clear, focus only on the things I want and to know that, whatever I do, I am leveraging the power of the universe to help me. Whatever else I have to do in the day, getting into the right mindset is the most important part of the day because it will enhance the outcome enormously.

Mindset done, when I sit down to work on my business, here are the top 10 ‘things to do’ that I recommend:

1. WORK ON YOUR CONTENT

Spend some time either writing a post/article for your website or doing some in-depth research for one. This will depend on the kind of site you have, whether it is based on facts, reviews or personal experience. What’s important is that you spend sometime everyday working towards publishing some engaging content for your site. It may be that you don’t finish is all in one day but that is OK – some articles take 2-3 days or more, and some even longer than that. Just make sure that the majority of your time is spent on creating content.

2. LEARN SOMETHING NEW

You are never too old to learn and you will never, ever have learned all the there is to know about this business. Don’t stress about that, just embrace it. Things change all the time, search engine algorithms, writing platforms, social media opportunities – the list is endless. Therefore, it is important to spend some time each day enhancing your knowledge and engaging in some kind of training. If you are a member of a training company like me, such as Wealthy Affiliate, then there is a whole host of training you will find that is constantly being added to and updated. Other companies may have similar training which you should keep up-to-date with. This is vital as changes in things such as search engine algorithms can serious affect your business. It’s also a good idea to go back over training you have previously completed because you will always get a different perspective on things as your knowledge increases. Some training you need to do two or even three times to truly get an expert handle on the concept of ideas presented.

3. CHECK AND ANSWER EMAILS

When I was a child, if you wanted to communicate with someone, you had to write a letter or make a phone call. Many important things could not be done on the phone and so writing a letter was the only way. ‘Snail mail’ as it later became called could take 2-3 days to arrive, a couple of days to be dealt with, and you would wait another 2-3 days to receive the other person’s response. Life was slower and we all accepted that pace of life. Nowadays, things are infinitely faster and people often get annoyed if their emails are now replied to or at the very least, acknowledged, instantaneously. The pace of life is very different. Now whether this is a good or a bad thing, I will leave to you to decide, but one thing you need to understand is the expectation of your customers. Most of your customers will expect timely responses – either the same day or within 24 hours of them sending an email. Many online business owners will set up auto-responders so that even if a human response is not possible in that time frame, the customer will at least get an automated ‘thank you for your email’ type of response.

After that, you should decide which of your emails deserve your time today and which you can leave till later. This will depend on the urgency and importance of the email.

4. CHECK YOUR SITE IS NOT OUT-OF-DATE

This need not take a long time in your day and you could decide to check 1-2 posts per day so that over a month, you get through a fair number. Revisiting your older posts and checking that your affiliate links are still working and relevant is an important task. In many cases, there are newer links, banners and/or products to link to and the last thing you want is to build up trust in your readers through some amazing content, only to have this destroyed because all your links don’t work. You will also need to revise your time-limited links too, such as those which promote a product or service at a particular time such as Valentine’s day, Christmas or Black Friday.

5. ATTEND TO YOUR COMMENTS

There are a few reasons why you should keep up-to-date with your website comments. Firstly, people will expect you to reply to comments in the same way as you do email so managing your reader’s expectations is important. Secondly, and perhaps more importantly, the comments on your site will count as content in the eyes of the search engines and so by having useful, engaging comments and replies will help your site rank higher.

When you allow or disallow comments you should be mindful of this and try to apply the same rules as for your content – is the comment (and more importantly, your reply) adding to the uniqueness of your content, and are you really solving the reader’s problem or answering their questions? Trying to engage people in conversation rather than having just a cursory ‘thank you’ is what you should be aiming for.

6. KEYWORD RESEARCH

Doing keyword research is one of the backbones of being an affiliate marketer or blogger. It is no good spending hours writing a wonderful post or blog if you cannot get it ranked in the search engines and no one ever reads it. Spending some time doing your keyword research will not only ensure your find the best keywords but can also give you lots of new ideas for your next article. I often spend time just browsing or doing an alphabet search on Google to help with ideas. This can also give you some ways to help you improve your old posts too. There are many ways to do keyword research but I use Jaaxy as it is is one of the best keyword research tools available online.

7. CHECK IN WITH SOCIAL MEDIA FOR BUSINESS PURPOSES

Social media is a great tool for affiliate marketers but you need to use it in the correct way which is in order to grow and promote your business, at least during your working hours. It’s great to catch up with friends and invite colleagues to your next social event but be careful not to do this in your business time – save that for your social time.

Things to do when working on your business means:

• Checking on social media sites and replying to comments
• Posting new content
• Using share, +1, re-pinning and retweeting to grow your followers and build your networks
• Check the performance of your posts and pages

Above all, use social media as a business tool during your working business hours and allocate everything else to time you may have set aside for social things, friends, family and hobbies.

8. CHECK YOUR STATS …….. DO THIS WITH CAUTION

Checking your statistics related to your pages and websites is a dual-edged sword: it can be a source of great encouragement or great disappointment. The trick it to be understanding and discerning about the statistics you are looking at and when you are looking. If you are new to affiliate marketing, then it is likely that your site will be building trust and just be getting started, in which case, tracking your number of visitors every day can be discouraging, especially in the early stages. So don’t! It’s OK to look and you need to set up your analytics programs such as Google Search Console but don’t spend hours pouring over the results.

When your sites have become more established (usually 6-12 months after set-up) then you will find looking at the stats more helpful because you can track your visitors, see which posts are doing well and fix anything that needs fixing. Until then, look at your stats with caution.

9. GIVE SOMETHING BACK

This task might only be for those who use an affiliate marketing training program such as Wealthy Affiliate but the principle is the same whatever training you use. At Wealthy Affiliate there is an opportunity to help other people out and give back to the community either by posting on the WA website, spending time on live chat helping other people or offering feedback on sites or leaving constructive comments. Paying it forward in this way not only helps other people but it gives you an opportunity to see what others do and how they do it. Learning from people who are successful is a great way to improve your own sites which can directly benefit when you spend a bit of time feeding back. However, be careful again here and make sure you use your time effectively as it could turn into a distraction if you are not careful.

10. TAKE A BREAK

“All work and no play…..” as the saying goes. Make sure that your day is balanced. If you followed the advice in this article, you will have started your day in a great place and set your intentions. Following the steps here will also make you make progress towards your goals but it is also important to give yourself some time-off and take a break. There is nothing to be gained from stress or burn out. Take some time and allow yourself to be inspired and your energy to flow. You could do this by going for a walk, petting your cat or doing your favourite hobby – whatever you find that relaxes you.

And remember, here are a few things to avoid

I’ve mentioned some of these above, but I think they are worth reiterating here again:

1) Be careful not to put too much emphasis on your statistics in the first months of being an affiliate marketer. Look at them if you must but don’t pay them too much attention until you have given your sites time to mature and be trusted. Make sure you keep working on the things that will create this trust – and that’s CONTENT. Only analyse your statistics when you can analyse them with more understanding and clarity gained from more experience.

2) Everyone loves social media but use it wisely – don’t let it become a distraction in your day. Keep in mind what your true goal is.

3) And finally – there may other people in your life who question your sanity and reasons for trying to make your online business work, but be careful not to take too much notice of people who may have a negative effect on your outlook. If you can stay focused and work hard, then you will make progress and achieve the success you are seeking.

What is on your daily list and what do you consider the most important?

Please add a comment if you have other things on your to do list.

And then, give yourself a pat-on-the-back for a job well done!

 

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