When I first began to make a good deal of money working online my grandfather asked me what my time was worth per hour.  Honestly, I never even thought about what my “hourly rate” was, I was more concerned on the overall numbers at the end of each month.  That day he asked the question, I did the math and figured out what my time was worth per hour.  I then applied this to my overall working schedule and was greatly able to improve my productivity.

In affiliate marketing there are certain tasks that can be very time consuming and are better left to be outsourced.  For example, I’m pretty good at creating designs in photoshop and coding them into HTML.  The bad thing about this, it can be very time consuming especially when you’re a perfectionist (like me).  I’ve spent countless hours working on designs, and while they do come out looking good, sometimes my time could have been better spent researching other campaigns or working on other business.

My father and grandfather owned a business together.  He use to reference many times that some people “work with their back” while others “work with their head.”  This is another interesting way to evaluate time/your daily duties.  While the person that spends all day using a shovel to dig out a ditch works extremely hard, the executive that owns the construction company is making a lot more money sitting in his air-conditioned office pasted to a leather seat.

The next campaign you setup, evaluate the amount of time you spend on the entire process.  How long does it take you to setup your landing pages (if you don’t split test at least 5 you’re more-than-likely missing out on a lot of money), create ads, install tracking software, get the offers together, etc.  If you find that you’re spending more time creating a nice looking landing page than you are using your creativity to discover converting sources/unique ideas, you may want to begin to outsource.

You can find designers, coders, and other employees to help you out on numerous websites around the Internet.  One of my personal favorite ones is oDesk.com.  While the entire outsourcing process can be an entire series of blog posts alone, you want to keep your hourly rate in mind.  It wouldn’t make much sense to pay someone more than your hourly rate (duh)!

In conclusion, I was once asked by a family friend to design them a website and put it online.  I spent HOURS getting everything from logo design to flashy mouse over navigation.  At the end of the project I sent the customer (and family friend) a bill for a VERY modest $900.  He called and the tone of his voice was almost like he was shocked it cost that much for a website design.  After I went back and looked at the time I spent on the project, I realized I should have charged him at least $5,000.  Valuable time wasted.  Now enough reading about time management, get to work on your campaign and remember to evaluate your tasks!