Less is more.
Yet, most of the time, if we get a new business idea, we want to go all in instantly. We will gladly spend the next 60 hours working towards this goal. And sometimes it works.
Often it fails, though.
Not because we did not work enough towards it. Not because we did not believe in it. But for two other reasons.
Impatience and burn-out.
It is almost as if the more work we put into a goal, the faster we expect to receive it.
This can be true, at least theoretically. If you set out to knit a sweater, you will finish faster if you knit six hours day rather than 15 minutes. If you want to write a novel, then writing for five hours per day should get you to “The End” faster than 15 minutes per day.
Logically, we therefore deduce that if we work 60 hours on a money goal, we will also reach it faster than if we just spent 15 minutes at a time.
We want it to come right after we have spent the 60 hours. And when it does not, because making money online is more than just doing the work, then we get disappointed and give up.
This is just part of the reason, though.
It is easy to get inspired by someone who makes a lot of money with affiliate marketing.
Maybe they share their working day in a YouTube video. You learn that after their morning routine, they review products thoroughly for three hours. After that, they sit down to write focused for another three hours.
Then they stop working to check their income and admire the six figures that go daily to their Stripe and PayPal accounts.
You can do that, too, you think. Sure, it is a simple formula: Go through affiliate products and write reviews. This sounds like fun.
But after your first day of putting six hours into this, you are exhausted.
Still, this YouTuber could do it, so surely you can too. So, you start off on day two with the best intentions. Strangely, though, you get distracted all the time today.
After six hours of procrastination, feeling guilt and overall feeling bad about yourself, you call it a day.
And the following day, you decide you need a break and never really get back to your plan.
There is a better method.
First, I am going to remind you of the parable of the tortoise and the hare. While that is only a fairy tale with a lesson, you may have seen this for yourself.
Do you drive a car?
Have you ever been driving on a route with lots of traffic lights? You have the eager driver of a black, sporty car behind you and the light turns green. He honks the horn loudly and gives you his middle-finger.
Once he can, he flies past you…
Only to arrive first at the next red light.
Or worse. Those drivers often end up in accidents and arrive much later than the driver who does not accelerate to above speed limits and brakes hard for every red light.
Bite-sized affiliate marketing relies on slow and steady.
When you only do a little every day, you know that you need to be patient. You do not expect overnight results. And ironically, you may see results a lot faster than the affiliate marketer who goes all in for 60 hours in a week.
When you know that you only need to spend the next 15 minutes on a task, it does not feel overwhelming.
You will not need to bribe yourself to get started. You will not need nearly as much motivation. Just stick to working for the next 15 minutes and you are good.
In affiliate marketing, your job is to help your audience make the best possible decision about the product you promote.
Therefore, you need to review the product. You become the eyes and ears of the consumer. And that means you need to go through the product and find details about it that are not shown on the sales page.
This takes time.
You will get to appreciate the digital products that are written and delivered as text over videos. But whether the product you consider promoting is text based or video, take notes while you go through it. This will save you a lot of time when it comes to writing the review.
How much can you consume in 15-minute blocks?
This depends on your reading speed or the videos.
Later, I will share tips with you to be far more effective at this.
For now, I will just ask you a question. Have you ever noticed that if you read or watch something for a prolonged period of time, then you lose focus? You may need to read back a whole page to get back into the text. Or watch an entire video again because you forgot what it was about.
When you only read or watch for 15 minutes at a time, you can give it your full focus.
You will not waste time and you will not experience fatigue while going through it.
You have decided to promote a digital video course with six hours of videos.
If you do not use this bite-sized method, you will likely wait until you have a full day you can dedicate to watching the videos. And even if you manage to schedule such a day, it does not take much to ruin it.
An unexpected phone call will set you 20 minutes back, the time to get back into the flow. Your pet who decides to throw up on your carpet. Or your best friend just happened to be in the neighborhood and wanted to pay you a visit.
All these things can happen easily, and they do.
They would ruin your progress if you wanted to do it all in one sitting. But if you had it split out over 24 times 15 minutes, no big harm would be done.
You could just push one of your 15-minute blocks to a later time.