Wednesday, December 13, 2006

Taking a Vacation from Affiliate Marketing...

Three weeks in Australia! It was a nice three week pre-cursor for the holidays that are fast approaching...and frankly, it was a well needed BREAK! Back (many months ago), I wrote a blog about being obsessed with affiliate marketing (Click Here). Over the last few months, I kind of forgot my own advice and this trip away really shed some light on my situation.

For the first few days of my trip, I found myself on an island in the middle of the Whitsunday Islands. Beautiful place! Great Weather! No internet! YIKES! I honestly have to admit that I was truly freaking out. How was my home business going to function without me? What if someone emails me and I don't respond promptly? Will people stop reading my blog if I do not keep writing in it? I must have spent three full days worrying about this stuff. Finally, on the fourth day, we left the island and to much of the displeasure of my wife, I raced for the closest internet cafe that I could find. At the end, my sales were still there. I did get a few emails, but my autoresponder seemed to take care of that (and some even wrote a second letter telling me that there was no rush and enjoy the holiday). Sure, my blog was not updated, but really, did that really matter?

I realized a few things:

1) Choosing a business like affiliate marketing makes it fairly easy to leave without it affecting too much.

2) We (you) my readers are just people, and very understanding people.

3) I need to get over myself a little bit. My blog is fine but people are certainly not waiting by their computer to read it.

4) Again, YOU NEED TO TAKE BREAKS ONCE IN AWHILE!

I cannot tell you how long of a task list I have of things to do for my online ventures. On top of this, I still have my day job and family to take care of. Super-Dad? Super-Affiliate-Marketer? Super-Employee?...

Super-Stupid is what I was becoming. I have said it before and I will say it again...Online Marketing is very fun, but there is always something that can be done to improve your money making ventures. Whether it is write another review, SEO, PPC optimization, write an article, respond to an email, read a new forum, etc. etc. etc. And I was trying to do this all.

The great thing about online marketing is that everything does NOT need to be done today. Further, everything does not need to be done by you. At the beginning when resources (aka, money) is limited, then yes, you need to do a lot yourself. But as the business grows, you need to be willing to give up some of your handle to other people. (We'll talk about this in another blog).

So I did end up enjoying the rest of my vacation without worrying and have made a bit of an oath to myself to chill out, take a couple of nights off from my money making campaigns and veg in front of the TV for an episode of LOS, and put down the laptop during a Chargers game (L.T. is awesome, by the way!).

- Matthew Bredel