I recently heard an interview with a russian billionaire, Michael Friedman. He said "For a long time i couldn't understand what business is, and just recently it came to me that business is a separate living organism, that grows and develops and at some point it kind of shows itself what it needs from you."
I do affiliate marketing for a few years now, but i never treated it like a separate business. It was just me every day buying ads, making profit or not making profit, but i never looked at it as a separate system... that is supposed to have it's own working procedures. I worked by habits and intuition.
And the profits i made, i never looked at it as a business profit, i looked at it as my personal profit, and that was a HUGE mistake. Why? cars, clubs, girls.. you name it..
I understand it now, but i wish i understood it earlier.
What makes a businessman a businessman? His care for his business. If you want to be a businessmen you must create a WORKING SYSTEM, an ORGANISM and take care of it, NURTURE it, so it works nice and smooth. If you don't have a system, then you are just a whore that work for the networks. (no offense)
You must create procedures for everthying.
How and how often you create ads
How you optimize
How you make a Research for new offers and etc
And constantly improve these procedures.
And when you make money, don't forget IT"S NOT YOUR MONEY!!! This money belongs to your business, not to you, and your business will need it, when the times are tough.
Goodluck.
Yep, if you don't have systems in place, you'll never be able to train somebody to do your job because it will only ever be inside your head.
Systems are the key to scaling.
I'd recommend The Personal MBA as an excellent resource to get affiliates thinking more 'professionally' about their work:
http://www.amazon.com/The-Personal-M...qid=1377084618
This is good thread on the topic of setting up your affiliate dealings as a business.
@Rafael awesome post man. Thanks!