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Everyone knows that working hard pays off, but it pays off more when you work smarter! The list below is a quick collection of tips that took me from working really hard to make some money online, to working smarted to make even more money!

Outsource as Much as You Can

The number one thing that took me from $100 a day to $1000+ a day was getting rid of tasks that others could do for me. This allowed me to focus on creative work, while others do menial tasks like create ads, design landing pages, and work on business development. If you can’t afford to hire a full team of staff, I don’t blame you, but having at least one person help you out can help you get done 3x the work you would normally only be able to do alone. That’s how helpful my first employee was. Then I added another and another when the money came in, and I’m getting more done in less time than ever. Hire a freelancer out of Malaysia or the Philippines for $100 or so a week, and watch how much you can get done.

Research as Much as You Can

One of the big things for you to do as an affiliate marketer is risk mitigation. We’re putting our money on the line here, so why not do due diligence and sacrifice a little time into researching your campaign, traffic sources, demographics and more before you actually start running a campaign. Know what your competitors are doing. Know what is working before you start running your own ads. Improve off the competition. Find new traffic sources other affiliates aren’t running your offers are on yet and find out if it is exploitable or not. I find it surprising how many affiliate marketers skip this step, and would rather just waste money when they could save a few hundred or even thousand dollars with a couple hours of insight on different offers and traffic sources.

Maintain Good Relationships with Others

Many people think being an affiliate marketer means you have to kick it all alone. The reality is that without your account reps, a good social circle of other affiliate marketers around you, affiliate managers, network owners, employees, freelancers, etc – you will not make big strides in the industry. Talk to as many people as you can. Become personal friends with as many people in this industry as you can. It does not matter if they make $1 a day or 100,000. Everyone can become a booster to your personal business. The more people you know on a personal level, the higher level of success you are likely to achieve!

Make Use of Tools That Make Your Job Easier

There are hundreds of tools out there for affiliate marketers to use. One of my absolute favorites is AffPortal. It allows me to cut down immensely on tasks like demographic research, target research, competitive analysis, and its even got a landing page builder and some spy tools to boot. Other tools I use on a daily basis are the Google Ad Planner, Quantcast, CPVLab, and some of the mobile tools at OfferMobi. The great thing about many affiliate assistance tools coming out these days is that they come up with trials of some sort. Find them, try them out, and try to calculate how much time they save you. If they save you enough time to build an extra few campaigns per week, take the offer up full time. This allows you more potential to push existing campaigns further, and test new campaigns without using any extra time.

Block Out Distraction

This one is a huge issue for me. As a kid growing up, I played a lot of games. Sitting in front of a computer loaded to the brim with games can be difficult, but if you are easily distracted, you’ve got to teach yourself to get away from it all. I keep myself off games and time-wasting sites by inducing blocks on my browser, as well as using a second profile specifically for work with no games accessible from it. Get yourself into a shared workspace, work at the coffee shop or the part. Make someone watch you as you work and punch your face if you get distracted. This one is up to you to figure out on your own as everyone is different and gets motivation from different sources in life. Just think about all the money you could be making if you constantly work on improving your affiliate game. That’s always been a good pusher for me.