In our previous article we learned that the first things a part-time affiliate needs to do to be successful are set realistic goals and understand how success should be defined. Generally speaking, gaming affiliates with full-time jobs do their affiliate work during nights, weekends, and other spare time they may have. In this article, we’ll examine some good practices for making best use of your available time to move forward with your gaming affiliate sites.
Plan Ahead
In my experience running a poker website, I’ve found that making a weekly plan almost always results in my getting more solid work done than “winging it” one day at a time. A webmaster’s work has many facets, including but not limited to:
- content writing
- keyword research
- on-site and off-site link building
- studying and learning from your website’s analytics
- maintaining an active social media presence
With “so much to do and so little time” at your disposal, one proven strategy calls for compartmentalizing and prioritizing each task. For example, you could choose to work on a different one of the five bulleted items above, on a rotating basis, each night of the workweek. That way, you’ll have ensured that none of the main essential work areas will have been neglected for too long.
Making a monthly work plan is a natural extension of this tip. The hour or two each month you dedicate to filling in your calendar with assignments and goals makes you that much more likely to make significant progress towards them. It also helps you maintain a grand vision for where you’d like your website to be in a month’s time, rather than remain bogged down in day-to-day tasks.
Sticking to your pre-planned work schedule is a different matter entirely. Often, after a long day’s work you might not have the energy to put work into your site. That’s entirely understandable. However, the likelihood of you actually sitting down to do work is greatly increased if you at least have a plan.
Maintaining a Healthy Work–Life Balance
Part-time gaming affiliates are very likely to face the constant struggle of maintaining a healthy work–life balance. On the one hand, especially if you’re passionate about your site and your affiliate work, you’ll likely have an intense desire to plow forward and try to make progress with your site; to burn the midnight oil and strive for increased traffic and revenues. On the other hand, constantly attempting to use every moment of your spare time for the benefit of your site(s) is likely to burn you out.
It’s important to remember that there are only so many hours in a week. You already devote most of them to your full-time job. Nights and weekends are meant to be time off for you. Aside from dedicating time to your gaming affiliate side business, be sure to actually take some of that time off. Whether it’s to exercise, watch TV, get together with friends, engage in family activities, or even just catch up on sleep, you’ve got to also give yourself time to indulge in life’s pleasures.
Next Time…
In our next article, we’ll explore how part-time gaming affiliates can best take advantage of crowdsourcing and gain from the previous experiences of other affiliates in the industry.
About The Author
Robbie Strazynski is the Founder of Cardplayer Lifestyle, the go-to news and information source for recreational poker players and fans. He has worked full-time in the gaming industry for two years and is currently the Content Editor for the Euro Partners family of online casinos. Robbie has been a part-time gaming affiliate for three years.