Right now I’m sitting in an airplane.
I have the entire two seat row to myself (it’s a small plane). When I look to my left I see miles of land, hills and clouds. I just finished two episodes of season four of Suits and a cup of coffee.
And right now, I’m making money.
Let The Machines Do The Work
One of the coolest parts about online marketing is that you can work from anywhere. With a laptop or in some cases, just a smart phone you can be just as effective as you are from your home office.
And in some cases… more.
It’s one of the things you will realize over time. Once you get a system in place, you make more money while you’re out traveling, letting the system work than you do by working every day.
Whether you’re at an industry event, a conference, on vacation or visiting family at Christmas it seems to happen.
The less you monkey around with your work, the more money you’ll make.
It’s just one of many counter-intuitive lessons you learn along the way.
Do Less, Get More.
- Work out less, build more muscle. Most new weight lifters believe that to build muscle fast they need to work out 7 days a week. But in most cases resting between workouts allows muscle to rebuild and grow, giving you faster results over time.
- Eat more food, lose more weight. Most dieters believe that the way to lose weight is to starve themselves. I’ve found that starvation actually puts your body into survival mode and it stops burning fat completely. By eating more, you allow your body to begin burning fat again.
- Do fewer tasks per day, get more done over time. Trying to do too many things at once or too often can lead to burnout. By doing just a few important items from your todo list you can continue making progress for longer periods of time, ultimately getting more done.
- Work less, make more money. Obsessing over campaign progress hour by hour can lead to making bad decisions and incorrect adjustments that can kill a campaign. By setting things up and letting them run, sometimes for several days at a time without interruption you get better data and make better decisions that lead to profitability.
If you’re not seeing results at the gym, having trouble getting a campaign profitable or aren’t getting things done that you need to get done, try doing a little less.
Take a break. Give your project (and yourself) some time to breathe. If you want to try it on your next campaign do this:
- Start a new campaign.
- Set a weekly budget you can afford to lose.
- Check on it 7 days later.
Giving campaigns room to breathe makes them work better. You make better decisions that are made based on real data. It takes discipline but can be very effective in reducing incorrect decisions that are made based on emotion versus smart decisions based on data.
Tip: Before you setup a campaign, do your due diligence to make sure it has a chance to work. Never setup tests without doing your research first.
So What Do You Do?
So now what you’re letting things breathe, you’ll find you have a lot more free time on your hands. What can you do?
Everything:
- Have a social life.
- Spend the day outside.
- Go see your family.
- Hang out on an island.
- Mow your lawn.
Do anything other than what you think of as “work”.
You may find that the path to getting more accomplished, is doing a little less… And the only thing standing in your way…
Is you.
Hmm walking away from a campaign right away would be hard. I need to at least be watching closely for a day (not obsessively) to make sure data is coming in correctly (one keyword is not eating entire budget).
But I get your point, once things are set up correctly, leave it alone to run. Good advice Malan!
Hammad, yes of course make sure the campaign functions before you walk away. And be careful pausing a keyword because it doesn’t make money the first day.
I launched a new media buy campaign a week ago. Day 1 a single placement spent $250 and got no conversions. Over the next week it started doing better and by Friday it was profitable. If you make changes based on a single day’s data you risk making mistakes.
Thats a good point Malan. Unfortunately budget allocation plays a huge role in turning campaigns around. If my budget allowed $200/placement spend before killing it, I would never have found it to be profitable like you. Id love to hear your thoughts on traffic source vs. budget sometime.
Keep dropping the knowledge 🙂
yeah buddy. you do whatever makes you $$… that’s the name of the game 🙂
So insightful. Thank you for your e-mails, they are always a great pleasure to read.
thank YOU for reading Nejra. messages like this keep me going.
all things i’ve discovered over time but you’ve written it so clearly in this short essay. definitely true about dieting and weight lifting. most people eat way too little when I tell them to eat more I get a blank look. i’ve discovered its also true for Affiliate marketing. You just need to cut out the lower leverage tasks and focus on the few things each day that will create the most leverage for optimal results.
Ben, i know what you mean on the dieting. I’m helping a woman lose weight right now and she was eating 600 cals per day and not losing. I told her she had to start eating at least 1200/day. and BOOM weight started coming off. so backwards, but it works.
thanks malan, in the last days i think i had a life of a worm…sitting in my chair, checking my states every minute, making drastic decision not knowing if i am doing the right thing, because i wanna lose as little as possible.
I am too watching suits, i got to the last episode 😉
I live in NYC i hope one day i can meet you. Maybe at ASE?? i will be there guys for the first time.
the worm situation you just explained in my experience is about the worst way to work. Instead of setting budget low and trying not to lose anything, set your budget to an amount you can lose and walk away. see what happens a day or two later. it takes patience and balls (and won’t always mean profit) but at least you’ll have a shot at it.
and man. Suits is crazy, season 4. i’m on ep #6.
I just did it, thanks malan!
I need to risk more bit still what can i afford! Suits roks!!
What i meant anyway is that i am working hard, a worm meaning that i worked hard sitting in a chair for a long time, i did not mean to be a worm lol…i am working hard to achieve my goals! 50 dollars profit daily for one week!! I have to make it this month!!!
cool. just be sure that the campaign you setup and forget about is one that has a chance at working. don’t just test stuff blindly. do your research, like this: http://www.malandarras.com/insider-information
thanks, yes that campaign has a lot of potential.
Right on point. Thanks for another great post man.
Thanks for reading aaron
Nice article Malan! Einstein once said: if you do what you’ve always done you’ll get what you’ve always gotten and so it is with AM. Do something different and see what happens..
hey Mike, agree big time.
Great stuff.
thanks Tim.
Simplicity is the Key to Success in every aspect in your Life. And this post proves it again. Just keep it fucking Simple and everything will work out.
“keep it f#cking simple…” A+