Every now and again I’m asked how I cope with working in the home office with all the added distractions that occur, well one of the things that I find most helpful is to prioritise my workload.

Firstly I make a list of all the tasks that need doing then I go through them and mark each one as to whether it is important or urgent.

Anything marked both important and urgent I transfer to my white board, this is the immediate to-do list.

Next come the important and not urgent tasks, these are where ideally most of the workload should be that way we keep as many tasks as possible out of the more stressful important and urgent area, these are also added to the whiteboard and hopefully I can get many of them cleared before they move up the scale.

Urgent but not important cut out these tasks and you are well on the way to freeing up more time for the tasks above.

Finally not urgent and not important don’t even consider doing these they quiet simply a waste of valuable time, often the tasks in this group are things you do day in day out from sheer habit.

By cutting out non important tasks I have found that more time is freed up for the important things in life, not just work but family, friends, lifestyle and recreation, try it you may just end up getting through the day with a little less stress.

Popularity: 19% [?]

OK so you have cornered the niche market for ‘green imitation plastic mp3 fascia’s’ and things are looking rosy, now consider this

What would you do if the bottom fell out of your niche?

Do you have another income stream to fall back on? if not why not.

“It’s never going to happen” I hear you all yell in unison, well nothing is forever so it is always wise to have a plan B.

Just looking back at my affiliate marketing statistics for the past twelve months shows an enlightening picture, of my 3 top earners a year ago, only one is still in the top 3, the top earner of all has disappeared off the earnings map, if it had been my only income source I may well have gone with it :(.

The only thing that doesn’t change is the fact that everything changes

That statement is especially true in affiliate marketing, merchants come and go, customer buying habits alter as fashions and fads float in and out, program terms alter any number of other things change.

Basically look after your current income stream (s) nurture them and milk them while you can but be sure to keep an eye on the future, build up second and third income sources (and more), not necessarily in affiliate marketing, who knows what may happen in this sphere, the great god of search engines is already putting plans into operation which could effect the whole way we work in the future.

Oh and most important of all keep evolving, embrace new technology and media and find ways to use them to your advantage.

Popularity: 22% [?]

You can always tell by from the content of the email when commission has been reduced as the merchant or network never (or hardly ever) puts the old rates and you have to scoot off and find out what they were paying and then decide whether to continue promoting or not. Oh and they are usually signed by the faceless ‘Affiliate Team’

Come on guys give us a bit more info, let us know old rates and reasons behind the change anything is better than the standard

Dear Affiliate,

The commission rate for Merchant X affiliate program
will be changing to x% from XX/XX/2007

Best Regards,

The Affiliate Network Team

I’d much rather have a

Dear Keith,

It is with regret that the commission rate for Merchant X affiliate program
will be changing from x % to x% from XX/XX/2007, this decision has not been made lightly however due to blah blah blah, when circumstances return to a more favourable position we will endeavour to raise commissions again.

Best Regards,

Joe (or Jane) Bloggs - Affiliate Manager

A nice simple explanation can make a world of difference.

Popularity: 23% [?]

When browsing the blogs every now and then I think

“wow that’s inspired, I wish I’d written that”

Well today there are two articles that gave me the “wow” feeling.

Firstly on the Screen Glare Blog:-
Building an Affiliate Program Through A Blog is a fantastic piece aimed at affiliate managers and merchants outlining a very cost effective and easy way of building an affiliate programme, with emphasis on what to do and what to avoid.

The other inspired post that I read this morning is by Dan Morley - affiliate manager of Alpharooms - the article is aimed at the newbie or wannabe affiliate:-
I want to be an affiliate! is a structured approach to getting started in affiliate marketing, and one which should be heeded if the affiliate wants to avoid being just another failure, the article touches on choosing a subject and building a quality website, rather than just chucking up a few links and hoping for the best.

Popularity: 19% [?]

There are several methods of Redirecting or Cloaking Affiliate Links and this article while not being comprehensive does attempt to address some of the more common ones.

Method 1 Using Meta Refresh

Create a file such as redirect.html and include in the header the line below replacing youraffiliatelink.com with the link you require, upload to your root directory.

meta http-equiv=”refresh” content=”0;url=http://youraffiliatelink.com?a=1234″

Optionally you can also include a title tag.

Call up the redirect with this link http://www.yoursite.com/redirect.html

The main disadvantage of this method is you need a separate file for every redirect.

Method 2 Using PHP

Create a file for example redirect.php and upload to your root directory

php

$links = array(
“link1″ => “http://youraffiliatelink.com?a=1234″,
);
header(”Location:”.$links[$_GET['site']]);
exit;

?

You can replace link1 & http://youraffiliatelink.com?a=1234 with whatever you want. You may also add as many other affiliate links below this one as you want.

Call up this redirect using this link http://www.yoursite.com/redirect.php?site=link1

Method 3 Using .htaccess

My personal favorite method for redirection is using a .htaccess file.

Place the following in your .htaccess file and upload to the root directory

Redirect 301 /link1 http://youraffiliatelink.com?a=1234

You may add other links below the first as required

To call up this redirect use the following syntax

http://www.yoursite.com/link1

Popularity: 30% [?]