Complete Transcript – Episode 5

Time Management: Balancing Affiliate Marketing with Your Day Job & Maximising Productivity

Hi and welcome back to the smart affiliate marketing podcast.

My name is Paul – and in this episode, we’ll be looking at time management and discussing the challenges of balancing affiliate marketing with your day job.

Ok. Let’s talk about time management and the challenges of balancing affiliate marketing with your day job. In this podcast, I’ll be explaining time management and how to balance this with your other commitments.

The first point, we all have limited time. So you’re going to need to be able to find the time to do your affiliate marketing work on top of your existing commitments. I strongly suggest keeping a diary and a planner so that you know what you need to do and when you need to do it.

Block out chunks of time during the days that you’re available.

Perhaps you’re doing this evenings and weekends, make sure you have chunks of time that you can prioritize your internet marketing tasks during these times. And each day when you finish what you’re doing, write down what you’re going to do during your next time block.

You’re going to have competing priorities and you’re going to need to prioritize between work responsibilities, family life, other responsibilities and your affiliate marketing activities.

How you do this is a matter of personal preference and I’m not here to tell you how you should prioritize your life. I’m only here to help guide you. The ultimate decision is yours. But you do need to set aside as much time as possible to work on your affiliate marketing business each week.

It could be that you’re too tired in the evenings after a day’s work to do any of this. In which case, the weekend will be your key time to be productive. The other thing is you have to make sure you don’t reach burnout. So it can be tempting to overdo this. It can be tempting to spend every goddamn hour doing this because you need the money, but you could end up burning yourself out, going off sick and that will not help you in the long run. So make sure you have a healthy work-life balance.

Make sure you look after yourself in terms of your own health. Make sure you eat, sleep and take exercise. Because if you’re not in good condition, you’re not going to do well.

We’ve discussed time blocking. This is super effective because you dedicate specific time slots for your affiliate marketing tasks. You should let your family know when these time slots are and ask for their understanding in that they do not contact you during these slots and let them know that you will be able to give them your attention as soon as you’ve done that particular task or completed that time slot.

Don’t let them feel that they’re not important but do make sure they understand you have other priorities in addition to looking after them.

But, whatever you do, do not let affiliate marketing hamper your relationships, particularly with family.

So, prioritizing your work is something you need to take account of and you need to know what your next important step is – and you will hopefully diarise that, so that when you have your next time slot, you know what you’re going to be doing in that slot.

Now, there are all sorts of methods to prioritize your work such as the Eisenhower matrix focusing on high impact activities, but only you will know what your next step is, what you need to do next. So make sure you keep track of this and prioritize accordingly.

You’re also going to need to develop the power of being able to say “no”, there will be people who will offer other commitments to you, but you do need to safeguard your time for affiliate marketing. For example, you could be offered some overtime.

Well, you have to decide if you need that money or if you want to work on your business.

Maximizing productivity is something you need to do, to identify your peak productivity hours. So if you know when you’re most productive, for me, for example, it’s during the morning, then you could prioritize your tasks so that you do them in the morning. Obviously, this is not possible if you are at work all day.

But you could, for example, prioritize your weekend mornings for your affiliate marketing business.

You have to minimize the distractions, so that when you are working on your affiliate business, your phone isn’t constantly pinging, social media isn’t calling you, people aren’t disturbing you and the phone isn’t ringing. So one tip is to let your family or whoever you’re living with know when you’re working on your business and either turn your phones or devices off or better still leave them in another room altogether.

Another tip for maximizing your productivity is to batch similar tasks together. For example, if your plan is to produce one video a week, then perhaps you would record all of your videos for a month in one go and then you would edit them all in one go and then upload them all in one go, but scheduling them so that they land weekly with your audience.

For example, for me, it makes no sense to record one podcast episode and then pack all my equipment away for a week and set it all up again and record another episode, take my equipment all down, wait another week, set it all up again… No, I will batch my podcasts and I will do a number of them at each sitting – that makes me more effective, more productive and makes the best use of my time.

If social media is part of your strategy, then you could spend some time planning out your social media posts for the next week or the next month. And again, this will improve your efficiency. You can also use software to help with scheduling your social media posts and again, that will improve your time management and productivity.

In fact, there are many tools and resources that can help you manage your time more effectively will help you schedule your task, track your progress and keep focused. You could use, for example, project management tools, time tracking apps, for example.

Personally, I like to keep it old school and I keep a diary and a list of things to do on paper so that it’s always to hand and I can see it and work on it at any time without the need for any device to be turned on.

Another tip for making your time slot effective is – how often should you take breaks? Well, only you will know this. There is something called the Pomodoro technique, which basically means you have focused work intervals with short breaks in between. Some people suggest working for say 15 to 20 minutes solidly – be focused and then take a very short break, perhaps a few minutes to get a drink, use the bathroom and then get back to work.

Now, only you will know what works best for you. So I would suggest you test this out. If you can work solid for one or two hours and not feel any decline in your energy, then great. Otherwise, you may need to look at taking some short breaks to help keep you energized and focused. You also need to make the best use of the schedule you have available for your internet marketing. For example, if you have some very long tasks to do occasionally and you have a 9 to 5 job, I would recommend saving these big tasks for your weekend time slots when you have more time and when you’re not tired from doing a day’s work in the evening.

By doing this, you’re more likely to complete the tasks and not burn yourself out during the week.

Another tip is if you have a 9 to 5, or any other job for that matter, you should utilize your commute time effectively. So you could, for example, listen to podcasts, listen to audio books. You could potentially be reading books or doing anything that helps you work towards your goals.

Always keep a device or pen and paper to hand so that you can write down any inspiration you may get when doing this.

It could be that you find your job very demanding and that you’re too tired in the evenings to work. Ok. Become a weekend warrior. Have your dedicated time slots at the weekends to avoid burning yourself out during the week and having low energy at the weekends. Keep your evenings free instead. Sleep well and be energized at the weekend when your slots occur.

Ok. I’ve given you a lot of data on this podcast. Afterwards, I encourage you to implement these strategies, create your personal time schedule and have a “to do list” of the next things you need to do for your internet marketing journey and incorporate these actions into your schedule.

If you have any questions, you can email me at service@SmartAffiliatePodcast.com .

Thank you for joining me – and to keep listening for free, click the follow or subscribe button on this podcast.

In the next episode, we’ll be diving deep into the all-important task of finding your nitch or niche – and it’s called “Nitches for Riches”.

See you next time!