If you’re looking for a magic “productivity pill” this article is not for you.

These tips are based on my own personal battles working from home, slacking off, and finding ways to stay focused and accomplish more.

Here are ten tips I’ve learned that will make anyone, affiliate or otherwise, more productive.

1. Accept that you will never accomplish everything in one day that you want. Get comfortable with leaving your desk with work to do.

2. Set a start and stop time for working each day. You may not have set “work hours” like most of the world, but you cannot work 24 hours a day. Pick a time to start and end each work day and stick to them.

3. Put family, personal, and social time on your calendar. What’s more important to you: work or family and friends? If you said work, you’re weird. You’re in the 0.2% of Americans who say that. That 0.2% ends up with heart problems, no friends and dies a lonely death at an early age. So schedule the time with your friends and family. Put it on your calendar and stick to it.

4. Turn your email off for most of the day. Set three or four times on your calendar and check your email at those times. Meanwhile, you won’t be constantly distracted by emails all day.

5. Schedule frequent breaks. Get away from your work periodically throughout the day to refresh your mind and body.

6. Write out a to-do list each night. In my experience 15 minutes making a to-do list saves up to two hours the following day. Don’t make this a never-ending list though. Only list what you plan to do that day. Keep another list for long-term projects.

7. Schedule a monthly “Task Snowball Day.” A Task Snowball Day should be scheduled on a day when you have no deadlines. Simply take your long-term project list and list them in the order of time needed to do them, forgetting importance. Start with the shortest one, then the next, and so on. On Task Snowball Day, I’ll get through 10-25 projects! That’s encouraging.

8. Get more sleep.

9. Exercise. If all you do is 15 minutes daily it helps. Use your breaks to move around. If you’re on the phone, walk around. Do some pushups or bodyweight squats or walk up and down the stairs for two minutes. And don’t forget your diet, as well. What you eat plays a big role in how productive you are.

10. Use separate work areas. I do computer work on one desk and everything non-computer related at another desk. It keeps me more focused on the task at hand.

I wouldn’t try to do all of these things at once. Pick one, do that for a couple of weeks, then another one.

Do some research on your own. Read a book or two on the subject. I recommend Stephen Covey’s “The Seven Habits of Highly Successful People” and “Getting Things Done” by David Allen.

Matt McWilliams is the 2010 Affiliate Summit Pinnacle Awards Affiliate Manager of the Year.

Download the entire FeedFront issue 17 here – http://issuu.com/affiliatesummit/docs/feedfront-17

FeedFront issue 17 articles can be found here as well: http://feedfront.com/archives/article00date/2012/2

Do you find affiliate marketing to be overwhelming, and you feel like you could really benefit from some guidance?

Well, I’ve got great news for you.

The Affiliate Summit forum is free and there are lots of experienced affiliate marketers there who are happy to help.

Jump right in and start asking questions, and a bunch of affiliate marketers, including me, will be glad to steer you in the right direction.

Join the Affiliate Summit forum for free now at http://forum.affiliatesummit.com.

Check out the Affiliate Summit Forum Notices section for some advice and basics on getting started.

More Info: Click here

As a blogger, I’m interested in earning as much revenue as I can from the affiliate products and services I promote. With that in mind, I’ll explain how I maximize affiliate revenue on my blog.

Now, as tempting as it is to let the same affiliate ads run for months at a time, I don’t do this. If your experience is anything like mine, then you know not all products you promote will sell equally well. Some will sell better; some won’t sell at all; and occasionally an entire affiliate program will disappear.

The key is to monitor results on a regular basis. Track number of clicks, which indicate your blog readers’ level of interest, and number of sales for each affiliate product you promote. Cut the non-performers and promote the profit-makers.

Use an Ad Rotator to Minimize Placement Bias

Obviously, ads placed higher on the page will get more attention than those that are placed lower. So the best approach is to promote a variety of products using an ad rotator. I use a simple PHP script to rotate ads in between blog posts.

Since the ads are rotated randomly, each ad appears in a variety of positions on the page. This means the number of clicks and sales are a good indicator of what’s working and what’s not.

Check Number of Clicks and Sales Monthly

Every four to six weeks, I examine results. I’m able to do this fairly quickly because I use LinkTrackr to track all my affiliate links. This lets me see which products are getting the most attention during specific periods of time (the last 24 hours, 7 days, 30 days, or longer).

After checking number of clicks, I then login to each affiliate program to check sales results. I’m almost always surprised by what I find.

Some programs have produced far more than I expected: low number of clicks, but big commissions. Other programs are the opposite: high number of clicks, but no sales.

In the case of the former, I consider how I can increase the number of clicks to that product or program. With the latter, I try swapping out the non-performing product for something similar, but with a better sales process, or I may drop it altogether.

Most surprising of all are the affiliate programs that have been shut down. I remember one company let their 1ShoppingCart account expire. Neither the shopping cart nor the affiliate links worked any more. I stopped promoting them immediately.

Of course, I would never have known which affiliate programs were worthwhile if I hadn’t taken the trouble to find out.

Now, by closely monitoring my results, I’m able to shift traffic away from affiliate programs that don’t perform to affiliate programs that pay well. I strongly recommend that you do the same.

Ryan Healy is a freelance copywriter. He blogs about business and direct marketing at www.RyanHealy.com.

Download the entire FeedFront issue 17 here – http://issuu.com/affiliatesummit/docs/feedfront-17

FeedFront issue 17 articles can be found here as well: http://feedfront.com/archives/article00date/2012/2

Jim Kukral has started up a free service for fiction and non-fiction authors called the Author Marketing Club.

Author Marketing Club is a community of authors who are going through the same pains and successes, and who want to work together to help one other learn how to promote their books.

We just recently published a Kindle edition of Internet Marketing from the Real Experts, and from that experience I can say Jim is providing really useful tools and resources for anybody interested in publishing.

One of the useful resources available is a video on How To Upload Your Book To Amazon. You should really watch that if you want to publish to the Kindle.

More details at authormarketingclub.com.

More Info: Click here

This week on the Affiliate Thing podcast, Shawn Collins and Lisa Picarille talk about Pinterest and Skimlinks parting ways, affiliate marketing companies going public, and OneLoad.com being prejudiced towards affiliate marketers.

They also talked about Dell’s Maribel Sierra keynoting Affiliate Summit Central 2012, a free webinar on creating information products, February affiliate meetups, and New Jersey contemplating an affiliate tax nexus law.

Show Links

• Pinterest Drops Skimlinks, Might Try Ads; Says Copyright Issues Not A Significant Issue Yet
• Thinking Out Loud: Are Affiliate IPOs Right Around the Corner?
• Affiliate Marketing, Porn and Spam
• Maribel Sierra to Keynote Affiliate Summit Central 2012
• Affiliate Summit Webinar: Create Valuable and Financially Rewarding Information Products
• Affiliate Summit Meetups
• N.J. retailers balk at Amazon’s proposal to open two warehouses in exchange for sales tax holiday
• Learn More About Affiliate Marketing
• Loretta Lynn & Jack White: Portland, Oregon

Subscribe to the Affiliate Thing RSS feed or listen on iTunes. You can also send a blank e-mail to affiliatething@aweber.com to get each podcast delivered by e-mail.

More Info: Click here

Just nine years ago, when people thought about affiliate marketing conferences, it was generally a negative connotation. At the time, the reigning conference was Affiliate Force, an annual cruise around the Caribbean.

Shawn Collins and Missy Ward helped to coordinate those conferences, but they thought there were ways it could be done better. To make a long story short, Shawn and Missy offered their opinions and were dismissed. So they decided to create an alternative shortly after the April 2003 edition of Affiliate Force.

The first Affiliate Summit took place in November 2003 in New York City. The goal was to differentiate from other conferences by focusing on content and networking. The first Affiliate Summit introduced Speed Networking, as well as an agenda heavy on the hot issues of the day in affiliate marketing.

The first Affiliate Summit had 200 attendees, and it grew by about 15% for the next show in June 2004. Though skeptical of the cruise ship as a conference venue, they gave it a shot with their approach.

The cruise conference was a sell-out, but the venue was not scalable, so they went on land after that one. After two somewhat basic shows with a single educational track, they evolved to have two tracks and an exhibit hall in June 2005 in Las Vegas.

This time around, Shawn and Missy grew the attendance from 230 on the boat to a crowd of 550.

Following the momentum of the first Vegas show, the pair ran another one in January 2006, where the crowd doubled again. As Affiliate Summit was growing, Shawn and Missy remained the faces of the show and always encouraged feedback. With each successive conference, they tweaked elements to improve them even more.

As they led up to the July 2006 show in Orlando, they incorporated various value-adds, such as a social network and free video of the educational sessions to conference attendees. The Affiliate Summit 2006 East conference also featured the biggest crowd and exhibit hall to date.

In January 2007, Affiliate Summit returned to Las Vegas and surpassed the 2,000 attendee mark, as well as another increase in the size of the exhibit hall. This conference also marked the first time Affiliate Summit held an industry awards show.

Then in July 2007, Affiliate Summit took place in Miami, and this edition of the conference was the largest U.S. east coast Affiliate Summit to date.

Next up was the eighth overall and first international Affiliate Summit in London in September 2007, followed by a return to Las Vegas in a big way – over 2,900 attendees.

In the summer of 2008, FeedFront magazine, the official magazine of Affiliate Summit, was launched.

We headed to Boston on August 10-12, 2008 for another record-breaking east coast show that had 2,341 attendees, and we launched our first in a series of one day niche events in New York City on October 5, 2008, where we limited attendees to 300.

And Affiliate Summit continued the trend of growth in 2009 in both Las Vegas and New York City, despite the recession and overall fragile economic climate.

Then in January 2010, Affiliate Summit hit a new high for attendee numbers with 4,125.

Affiliate Summit East returned to New York City in August 2010 and this conference marked the biggest Affiliate Summit East with 3,527 attendees.

In September 2010, the first Affiliate Summit unConference took place in Orlando with a capacity crowd of 150.

This was followed by Affiliate Summit West 2011 in January 2011 at the Wynn Las Vegas. Once again, a new record crowd attended with 4,627 affiliate marketers at the conference.

As the economy has continued to struggle and unemployment has increased, Affiliate Summit East 2011 in August 2011 in
New York City marked another record for Affiliate Summit East with 3,943 attendees.

That brings us up to January 2012 in Las Vegas for Affiliate Summit West 2012, and the first time we’ve broken 5,000 attendees.

This is an exciting landmark for us and everybody in the affiliate marketing space.

Thank you for your past, present and future support.

Shawn is a Co-founder of Affiliate Summit and Co-Editor-in-Chief of FeedFront Magazine, and you can follow him @affiliatetip on Twitter.

Download the entire FeedFront issue 17 here – http://issuu.com/affiliatesummit/docs/feedfront-17

FeedFront issue 17 articles can be found here as well: http://feedfront.com/archives/article00date/2012/2

The speaker proposal period for Affiliate Summit Central 2012, taking place May 15-16, 2012 in Austin, TX, is about to end.

The submission deadline is February 29, 2012.

Accepted speakers will be notified no later than March 14, 2012. Due to the volume of submissions, we will not notify applicants if they have not been accepted.

Therefore, if you have not been contacted by March 14, 2012, your proposal was not accepted.

Submit your speaking proposal at http://www.affiliatesummit.com/12c-speakers/.

More Info: Click here

Affiliates were asked “Are you currently integrating video in your affiliate marketing plan?” for the 2011 Affiliate Summit AffStat Report.

A large majority of respondents, at 70%, said no, and the remaining 30% are currently dabbling in video for their affiliate marketing efforts.

I started playing around with video as an affiliate several years ago, and that was partly because there were not many affiliates doing it.

My Affiliate Summit partner, Missy Ward, and I ran a successful affiliate site for years called WeViews. We recently closed it down, due to time constraints.

We reviewed all sorts of gadgets and random items starting in 2007.

The video with the most views during that time was apparently popular because I had crazy eyes (I was trying not to blink for the whole thing).

What’s holding you back from trying video, whether you’re an affiliate or merchant?

Over fourteen-hundred affiliates were surveyed on their methods, preferences, and strategies for the 2011 Affiliate Summit AffStat Report.

More details on AffStat at http://affstat.com/.

More Info: Click here

Over the past ten years, advertisers using the CPA (cost-per-action) business model have dealt with countless headaches and spent significant resources dealing with fraud and poor quality. Recently, emerging technologies have made it easier for advertisers to tighten up their metrics and evaluate traffic on a much more granular level.

In the early days of CPA advertising, it was hard for advertisers to determine which affiliates were sending high quality or low quality traffic. So they would set the payout somewhere in the middle, thus penalizing those affiliates with quality traffic and rewarding affiliates sending bad traffic.

In some cases, the poor quality leads would outweigh the good quality leads and the advertiser would inactivate the offer all together. Advertisers would do their best to mitigate this bad traffic by putting restrictions on their campaigns, such as email only or search only, but by doing so they could potentially lose out on profitable and high quality traffic sources.

Now that advertisers are better able to measure their campaigns’ success on an affiliate by affiliate basis, it’s much easier for them to adjust their payouts accordingly. This is great news for all affiliates…at least high quality affiliates.

Working for a CPA Network, my job is to work with advertisers and affiliates to ensure both parties are profitable. Throughout my experience, producing high quality traffic is one of the best ways for affiliates to set themselves up for a long lasting high payout.

As a high quality affiliate, it is essential for you to find an affiliate manager that is willing to go to bat for you and negotiate those higher payouts.

First, get approval to run a sought after campaign. When working with your affiliate manager, don’t give away trade secrets, but be as transparent as possible when sharing how you plan to market the offer.

The better an advertiser understands how you plan to generate leads; the more willing they will be to test your traffic. Another advantage to disclosing this information is that the advertiser will sometimes suggest techniques that could help with your conversions.

Testing the offer is only half the battle, so don’t get caught up with getting the highest possible payout right away. Once the advertiser knows your traffic quality, that’s when the real payout negotiations usually begin. Researching the campaign you are running and understanding the products and services in the advertiser’s offer puts you in a far better position to negotiate the worth of a lead.

There have even been instances where an affiliate makes a suggestion to an advertiser about improving the flow of their offer, dramatically increasing profits for both parties.

In the end, we all want higher payouts and sustainable profits. The CPA marketplace is getting more competitive, so be sure to work with advertisers and promote campaigns that are catered to your marketing methods.

Working with an affiliate manager you trust and promoting a product or service you believe in will be paramount to your success.

Doug Davis is Director of Affiliate Relations at affiliate.com, a division of Media Breakaway, LLC.

Download the entire FeedFront issue 17 here – http://issuu.com/affiliatesummit/docs/feedfront-17

FeedFront issue 17 articles can be found here as well: http://feedfront.com/archives/article00date/2012/2

Affiliate marketers share their stories of starting their own businesses, leaving bad jobs, working from home, and finding financial freedom as they make money online.

Hear from real people who have found a way to do something they love for a living, so they’ve having fun, instead of working at a job.

Learn more about affiliate marketing and how it works.

If you’re looking for a place to point people that want a quick understanding of affiliate marketing, point them to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U_WIzSpN10I.

Video: Learn More About Affiliate Marketing

More Info: Click here