Think: Affiliate program fortunes are in your pockets

Jonathan Kraft 

Please allow me to explain.

You have a 9-5, which, with the commute and headaches, has turned into more like an 7:30-6:30. You maybe have kids, a spouse, a dog, a car to repair, and a leaky faucet. You have yard-work, housework, homework, and work-work.

However, you understand that people are making money online. You think that you could create a small fortune through affiliate programs, if only you could make it fit in your schedule. You understand some of the basic concepts of setting up a web site. You have an idea for a site focusing on something you know a lot about. You're pretty familiar with making sure your META tags match page content, and you've learned about getting traffic to your site. You know that you can get traffic, because you have a unique perspective or approach to the topic of your site. You might also at some point think about selling some of your own products alongside the affiliate links you have (or would like to) set up.

So, where will you find the time to run a site, find affiliate programs, give your visitors great content to read, and begin to create your Internet fortune?

The answer is in your thinking. Your thinking has to help you realize that the fortune is not yet in your wallet. The fortune is, however, already in your pockets. I'll say that again. The fortune is ALREADY sitting in your pockets.

How can your fortune be in your pockets? Your fortune is in the pockets of TIME you have. You have ten minutes here, and twenty minutes there. You have time while the pot is on the stove boiling water, and you have time while you're waiting for your kids at their soccer practice.

You have pockets of time, and if you ever want to have more than just pockets of time, you must learn to use the pockets you do have more effectively, starting today.

(This has as much to do with planning your life as it does building a successful and income-producing web site. You can take this skill and apply it all over the place for anything you want to accomplish.)

So how can you use your pockets effectively?

1. Decide

Make a decision that you are going to work on this project for at least 15 minutes each day, no matter what (you can take two days/week off). You can work more than that, but you must work at least 15 minutes every day on your site. Decide that you are going to make this site become reality within 6 months. (Be realistic with yourself. If you're only working 15 minutes/day, 6 months is a realistic goal.)

2. Take action in the right direction

Begin with the end in mind. You have heard this before, but maybe you've never applied it. I'm saying to you now that you should read this article, and then apply the principle. Begin with the end in mind. Take 15 minutes/day for the next 5 days. Get your plan on paper. Figure out what you want your site to look like. Look at the general layout. Keep it simple, so that you can design it, or explain to someone else how to design it. Lay out so that anyone can easily navigate to any page of the site from any other part of the site. Put it on paper first. Have friends (and even strangers if you like) review your site plan. Ask for their honest feedback. Don't be offended if they tell you that you might try changing some things. Take what works and leave out what doesn't. Decide on a color scheme. Color is very important in marketing products.

Here is the hazard of not beginning with the end in mind: You will spend hours of time working on completely unrelated projects, surfing the Internet, and reviewing affiliate programs which will not fit into the layout of your site. (Not having a layout for your site would be like climbing a ladder that you couldn't see the top of, but you thought would lead somewhere good, only to realize once you reached the top that your ladder wasn't even leaning against the right wall.) Start with the big picture of what you want your site to look like, and work from that plan.

3. 15 per day

Working on it 15 minutes/day, it probably will take 6 months to put together a quality site, so break down the larger project into 15 minute pieces. Work the plan and the design backwards. A good-sized site with lots of content could be about 100 pages. Let's say you're building a site about, oh, I don't know… let's say baseball bats. (It's an example for purposes of this article.)

Your site might be broken up into 4 sections like:

• History of Baseball bats
• Types of baseball bats
• The baseball bats of famous players
• Reviews and places to buy baseball bats online

Each of these sections might have 22-25 pages each. So here's how you break it down:

• Month 1:
  Every day, you're going to create the content for 1 page in the History section
• Month 2:
  Every day, you're going to create the content for 1 page in the Types section
• …and so on.

At this point, all you have done is taken 15 minutes/day to write a short article about some aspect of the larger section. Anyone can find or make 15 minutes of time every day, if this is truly something that they want to do.

At the end of four months, writing 1 page/day, you will have written between 80-100 pages worth of content for your site.

Now you might be thinking that you don't have 100 pages worth of content to write. That's fine. Take the first two months, develop a 35-50 page site, and then spend 15 minutes/day researching, finding affiliate programs, and getting relevant links into your site. Just use your pockets of time effectively.

4. Bring it all together

You're now in month 5, and you're realizing how valuable your pockets really are, because you've created a great site about baseball bats (or whatever you want to create a site about), and you've done it in the pockets of time you had. Now it's time to take 15 minutes/day, and make sure everything is working right, that your pages are aesthetically pleasing, and that people can get around easily on your site. You will also be using these 15 minutes/day to find affiliate programs for your chosen topic, add the links to your site, make sure everything is running well, and then get your site up online.

5. Continue the process

In month 6, getting traffic to your site will be where you spend your 15 minutes every day. (How to get links and what kinds of sites you trade links with will be reserved for another time, but continue the pocket principle.)

Use the pockets of time you have, and rather than watching someone else on TV build their dream, start building your own dream through online business. You can do it if you realize that you do have small pockets of time, and then use the time in your pockets. If you're willing to do the work to make it happen, and are disciplined enough to build pages and write content no matter what, you will be successful. In short, you have got to start making your pockets more valuable.

Thank-you for spending the fortune of your last 10 minute pocket reading my article. I hope it helps you be more effective at Internet affiliate marketing, and that you can apply these ideas and the process elsewhere in your life.