Playing to Your Strengths

Just something I’ve been thinking about lately and thought I would share.

One thing you eventually have to accept (or not) in affiliate marketing is that you most likely are not going to be everything. Some people are awesome programmers. Some are awesome designers. Some are awesome at Adwords. Some are awesome at media buying and bizdev. You have to realize your few strengths and let it ride. Or even better, use your strengths and hire out what your weaknesses are. I’ll go into detail about myself…

So it’s taken me 2 years to realize this, but I’m probably not going to be a programmer at the moment. I always thought I was decent at getting traffic and design, but I really wanted to be an awesome programmer like some guys I know. Eventually I realized that it just didn’t make sense to dedicate my time programming when I could be using my strengths to make more money.

Instead of trying to learn how to program a sweet automated tracking system that could do WHATEVER I wanted it to do, my job is to do some simple split testing and find out what’s profitable. I’ll use the Google Website Optimizer to split test a few landing pages…find the best one. I’ll track to the keyword level which is super easy…delete bad keywords. I’ll make a simple script to rotate offers and find the highest converting one…stick with that. Once I find what’s basically the most profitable, then I do what I’m best at – getting more traffic. So instead of trying to learn how to program and optimize and increase my margins, I keep my margins and work on making more profit by getting a lot more traffic in any way I can.

Now in comes my faithful employee. We’re actually pretty even on a design and coding level, so I can trust him to design me landing pages and banners. I was slow at design anyways so BOOM – I know have a lot more time to get more traffic. Uploading banners and creating ads is simple enough, just time consuming so BOOM – he does that and it frees up a lot more time for me to research different ways to get traffic.

In the 2 years I’ve been in the game, I’ve learned some very valuable information about affiliate marketing; but I’ve also learned very valuable information about myself. I’m good at getting traffic, and I’m good at managing things. I need to play to those strengths and right now work on getting more traffic to my offers and having Matt set them up. The next step is hiring a sweet programmer to come work for me too, I’ll probably try and snag one out of college this summer. It’ll step things up a notch if I do do that, as 3 people in 1 small office is kind of a lot so I’ll probably have to get an office.

Just some food for thought : play to your strengths boys and girls and make dat money.


7 Comments

  1. November 30, 2008

    Thanks Paul Your Posts Are Very Inspiring.

  2. December 1, 2008

    The best leaders know how to coordinate and pull resources together…

    Some of the top CEO’s have admitted that they only know just enough…the various department workers are the ones with the detailed knowledge. It’s the CEO’s ability to coordinate and inspire that counts the most ;)

  3. December 5, 2008

    I second that. Am a beginner internat marketer myself, been in below the line for many years. So one can also be a beginner, even if twice your age! Good luck on your journey! I

  4. December 7, 2008

    I have a lot of weakness and only have one strength. Just one bullet to kill all my weakness.

  5. December 7, 2008

    Excellent point. My friend and I are starting to see this and want to do a small JV so we can work out all the little things and then see what happens and try to grow from there.

  6. December 10, 2008

    I’m not good in getting traffic and designing site but I’m good in downloading stuff. But how suppose I use that for my strength?

    aFiq_Baker

  7. December 20, 2008

    Thanks for this mate, was a good help!

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