What is the most time consuming part of affiliate marketing ? (12)
What is the most time consuming part of affiliate marketing ?
We are all in some degree began affiliate marketing to have a "do what you want when you want and where you want lifestyle". I'm a noob and notice all the successful affiliate marketers usually spend 12h+/day in front of the computer, I might be wrong but that's what I've noticed so far.
My question is what is the most time consuming part about affiliate marketing? Finding good offers ? building Landing pages ? Spying ? Optimizing ?
What are some of your daily tasks that takes up majority of affiliate marketing life ?
It's definitely not the case that all affiliates spend 12+ hours a day in front of their PCs. Some people do - and that works for them - but many others don't.
Just like in the startup industry, very long hours sometimes get thrown around as a sign of dedication (which isn't necessarily good). Also, if you're currently in a "bloody hell, I'm working 14 hours a day on this trying to crack it" phase, you're more likely to talk about it than if you're in a "my campaigns are on autopilot, my outsourcers are managing them, and I'm off windsurfing" phase, because in the latter case ... you're off windsurfing, not posting on STM 
(Others do spurts of very long days, then take it easy for a period of time, then repeat.)
Most of the time is spent on optimising and launching new campaigns.
First off, not all computer time is productive - very guilty of that myself, especially at certain times when you just are waiting for something. You might have
In terms of what is time consuming - optimizing takes quite some time usually. It's not something that takes too much time at once but if you add it up over the course of an affiliate's life, it's probably the most time consuming.
Then, depending on what vertical you are in, it could be copywriting (which is part of the optimization process anyway).
The ideal scenario is that you outsource or automate some of these tasks both so you can focus on higher leverage activities and just to free up some time for you to enjoy your previous hard work.
Working long hours is great at the beginning to learn as fast as possible.
There are many many things to learn.
You should however quickly realize that not all tasks are equal.
Working 16h/day on landing pages and placements would be a wasted life.
Working 8h/day on your competitive edge, industry relationships and systems would be a great time investment.
Once you have figured things out and found a framework that works for you, I would immediatelly move to outsourcing or automating all repetitive work to free your time for the important tasks.
That's the great thing about affiliate marketing, the most time consuming tasks are at the same the easiest to automate or outsource.
Originally Posted by sebastian_r
@sebastian_r - that's a great point and one I should have mentioned.
In the beginning, you'll end up working very hard. However, once you know what you're doing, you can start focusing on outsourcing and reducing the time you spend.
@lijunyu - banner creation, landing page creation or cleaning, optimisation, statistics gathering and reporting are probably top of the list, but more advanced affiliates have employees doing virtually everything in the process aside from high-level strategy and networking.
Finding good images 60%
Translations 10%
Finding good offers 10%
Launching campaigns 20%
As an affiliate, the thing I would say took the most time was chasing payments and negotiating deals with new buyers that I worked with directly. That and VAT returns.
Luckily nowadays landing page creation has become much easier by making use of spy tools like Adplexity where very little work has to be done.
On time consuming: keeping track of accurate cost/revenue and watching out camps like a gatekeeper for money draining placements (a killer process for time and overall productivity). All of these end up with sleepless nights, followed by erratic decisions the next day as well.
I find proper RESEARCH+LAUNCH (what to launch, so I'm not shooting with my eyes closed) and OPTIMISATION (proper decision making, sometimes its not just following simple rules) the most time-consuming.
A lot of time spent doing "intellectual masturbation", seemingly pointless tasks that might end up paying off one day.
- manual spying (new niches, clean site styles, warmup methods, cloaking methods)
- chatting in masterminds and to other affiliates
- chatting with affiliate managers about what offers are hot
- split testing
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