I just came off my first real vacation in the year that I’ve been making money through affiliate marketing. I’ve gone to a few seminars but that’s not a vacation and I spent a couple hours every night on my laptop still. This time the goal was all out relaxation and I wanted to spend as little time as possible working. That worked out even better when for the second half of the week I had no internet connection (only my iPhone). Here’s a quick collection of tips that come to mind when I take a look back at my first vacation :

• Prepare before you leave. Answer all your emails, write up your blog posts, make the phone calls you need to make, etc. The goal of the vacation is to spend as little time possible working, although you still probably will work anyways. We want to limit this, and preparation is the best way.
• Don’t start testing new campaigns. New campaigns and testing requires a ton of attention and time. You’ll either blow away your vacation working on your laptop, or forget about it and lose a ton of money. Your choice, I’ll just stick with not testing.
• Still get on for 15 minutes a day to just make sure nothing insanely bad has happened. If something bad has happened, just pause it for a few days and worry about it when you get home. I actually did this.
• Limit business phone calls as much as possible, but I made probably about four of them on my trip. I had to check the progress of things (offers) to make sure everybody back home was doing their job and working still. The calls were only about 10 minutes each.
• Re-lax. I know it’s hard, but just forget about all the stressful campaigns that you can’t get to work, or the money you just lost in the past week. Leave that all behind, trust me it’ll be there when you get back. Taking this vacation is supposed to psych you up to work hard when you get back, and if you’re crying about your campaigns the whole time you’ll still be crying when you get home.
• Spend some money. Who cares, it’s your vacation do what you want. It was my first vacation since I’ve made money online, so I didn’t care about spending money. Take your dame out to an expensive dinner and get appetizers galore and huge desserts. Find a watch you really like and buy it. Go get a massage.
• Appreciate your industry. Seriously, what other job lets you go on vacation and still make a shitload of money while on it? If you think about it that way, you’re probably getting paid to go on the vacation. Just that thought should make you enjoy things all the much more.
• Expect insanity when you return. Taking a load off on vacation is really nice and made me not want to leave, because I knew what I’d be coming home to. My advice is : wait until you’re all unpacked and all that jazz before you sign online. IMs and phonecalls galore. I was talking to like 20 people, unpacking, working on campaigns, making phonecalls, all at the same time. That’s how it was for the last 48 hours, but it’s cooled down some now.

Just a few of the tips I can give while trying to balance a solid vacation with affiliate marketing. If it’s been a year since you’ve gone on vacation - take one!

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