How To Stay Motivated As an Affiliate in 09

Staying motivated is one of the biggest challenges that I personally feel every single day. The affiliate marketing world is very competitive, and the work can be tough. The results however can defer from one month to another. One months you are clearing 6 figures, and another month you are barely making it to five. With all the things going around us, including Google slaps, it’s easy to get wiped out by market changes.

I don’t know about you, but I have the tendency to get attached to my work. I work hard on my landing pages and treat them like my babies. I keep testing and testing until I find the landing pages that bring me the best conversion rates. But here is the catch. Sometimes, no matter how hard you try, folks won’t sign up for your offer at a rate that you expect them to. That in itself can be very discouraging. But the bigger challenge is to stay disciplined as a small business owner. It’s not that difficult to get too happy with results and relax. As soon as you relax a bit, you are going to lose ground. That’s just a fact of life.

I realized before I got into this business that I wasn’t the most disciplined person for this business. Some people know that fact but don’t want to admit it. I don’t have any trouble admitting that. I like to be lazy. I like to watch TV all day long. I like to don’t work at all and still get paid. But, that’s not how business works. You work hard, and you get paid for your efforts. You watch “General Hospital” Soap and you go bankrupt.

So here are the steps that I have taken to keep myself motivated:

• hang out with the best: the people you hang out with determines your future. I hang out with all kinds of people, but my close friends are not affiliate marketers, and I don’t expect to get business ideas from hanging out with them. But my business friends who are in the affiliate marketing world always encourage me to be my best, and that means working long hours to get to the top (my goal is not to be a top affiliate marketer if you are asking .
• listen to the best: not everyone gets a chance to hang out with Ed Dales and Jone Reeses of this world. But that doesn’t mean you can’t get inspired by them. I have Underachiever Life and Traffic Secrets and podcasts from these guys that I listen to every time  I feel like relaxing.
• motivated by naysayers: no matter how successful you are in your life, there are always going to be people who love to play the role of a naysayer. I have personally taken pictures from these folks in my life and put them above my bed. Every day that I get up, I am forced to take a look and try to prove these folks wrong.
• take action: no matter how much money I make with a campaign, I constantly remind myself that there is more work to be done. I keep scheduling projects in advance to make sure I don’t have time to relax. I’ll relax when I am old
• tracking my peers: I don’t care if you are a successful actor or just a smart young scientist. If you are in my age range (give or take 5 years), I want to know how successful you are. I don’t wish anyone any ill, but at the same time, I’ll use your success to tell myself there is a lot of work to be done.

There are a lot of other things you can do to motivate yourself. Some folks listen to motivational lectures in their sleep, while others starve themselves to get the feeling of what it means to be poor. Whatever works for you, more power to you. But the day you fail to motivate yourself to grow your business is the day you can start looking for a new job. I recommend hotjobs