Well, I am back in the office today recharged and ready to go after a nice vacation. Below is a guest post from one our PAP members (ThePokerBank) from NewPokerAffiliate.com. I think the topic of procrastination is one that is very pertinent in the world of affiliate marketing. Nice article ThePokerBank.

Stop Reading This Blog

Whoa, for a guest post we can safely say that that is a pretty ballsy title. You would think I might want to be a little sweeter when being handed the privilege to write a post on J’s blog. But hey, it’s caught your attention and it has a lot of relevance to what this post is about. So without further ado, let me explain why you should stop reading this blog right now. (Well, maybe wait until after reading this article).

The problem that plagues many a poker affiliate is procrastination. If there were never any distractions whilst sitting down at your computer, you could churn out boat loads of articles every day, as well as avidly develop your site(s) to build them into big money making machines. However, it’s always a lot easier to just throw on some music and browse YouTube amongst other things, rather than open up your word processor and start typing.

In fact, I can safely assume that many of you that are reading this very post right now are procrastinating, and simply putting off ‘proper’ work that will be more beneficial in the long run. I’m sure many of you might be thinking “shit, he’s hit the nail on the head there”, and you can think of a great list of things that you could be doing right now instead of reading this post. I know this, because I can be a pro-procrastinator at times as well.

In fact, I’m lucky to have this post on Jeremy’s blog, because it’s at the end of the week that he allocated readers to send in guest posts. When I first noticed that Jeremy was accepting guest posts, I thought “great! I’ll get on it right away”. But here I am on a Sunday afternoon hoping that this post is going to make it onto the blog, and that I haven’t missed the bus. It’s terrible I know, but it just shows how easily things can be put on the back-burner, even for great affiliates like me *cough*.

There are always those stats that could do with an extra look-over, just so you can try and look for something interesting or useful. There are always those marketing blogs that you enjoy reading, which you can comb through for a good hour or so. There are always forums that you can browse in an attempt to pick up a new gem of information to help you make more money. However, all of this stuff simply distances you from the work you could be doing that will actually make you money.

It’s obviously a good idea to do all of the things mentioned above, but you have to do them in moderation. Looking at forums, stats and blogs is great, but they are only going to get you so far. You have to be able to distinguish between the times spent doing these things that actually help you in the long run, and when the time you spend doing them is just an excuse for procrastination. It’s not hard to know when you are actually procrastinating, but actually getting around to doing work is a completely different story.

If I can give you one tip, it would be to have a list of things to do placed prominently somewhere on your desk or wall. As Jeremy mentioned in one of his posts, having a whiteboard is a great way to list all of the things that you need to do each day, or over the coming weeks. You can get them for a few dollars (small ones), and they really make a difference when it comes to getting organised. Alternatively, a simple pen and paper is an equally effective way of getting yourself organised and putting your work into focus.

So there we go. I’m not going to drag on and keep you from your work, so I’m going to wrap up this post quickly. Plus its an excuse to write a shorter article and give my fingers a rest . So start focusing on what really benefits your site, and actually get down to work when you sit at your computer. Turn off all distractions, and start writing content and developing your sites. You can procrastinate as much as you like and dress it up as ‘work’, but it’s not going to bring in the money at the end of the day.

Greg Walker is an active poker affiliate and is known by many on PAP as ThePokerBank. Greg also operates NewPokerAffiliate.com which is a great resource for new poker affiliates.

This entry was posted on Monday, March 24th, 2008 at 8:28 am and is filed under Motivation. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.