Sunday Shares #14: Morning Routine to Boost Productivity

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I’m back with another Sunday Shares – three articles that I enjoyed and found so useful that I wanted to bookmark them and share them with my readers.

This week, I’m sharing three articles that may be useful if you run or plan to work from home like most full time affiliate marketers do.

The articles from three blogs that I regularly read will give you practical advice to boost your productivity, open your eyes to the truth about making money from home that no one tells you and if you’re doing this on the side, some advice on going full time.

As usual, I share my thoughts about what I got from each article and how it might be helpful to you. It would be nice if you could share your thoughts as well.

Here are three great marketing articles I read this week.

(1) 5 Things Nobody Tells You About Making Money In Your Underwear

It’s everyone’s dream to be able to work from the comfort of your own home, where the only commute you have to deal with is from the bed to your laptop and you can do it in your pajamas or your underwear.

Marketers make everything sound so appealing but there are some things they’ll never tell you. Jon Morrow at SmartBlogger reveals 5 of these secrets that you don’t hear about working from home.

Did you know that:

• you can’t do this in your spare time? Spare time is whatever time you have when you’re not working on your business
• being smart isn’t enough? You also need some type of skill but you can easily learn one – like writing proficiently.
• education is everything (and nothing)? It doesn’t matter how much formal education you have – you can make money online BUT you still need to spend time learning what you need to know.
• you don’t actually want freedom? You still want to be involved, what you really need is flexibility.
• it sucks to be an American? In a lot of cases, like mine, you benefit more if you work from outside the US.

Check out the full article to read what Jon has to say about these things.

That last one is so appealing to me because I’m in the Caribbean so that is something that I would have welcomed hearing.

(2) How To Create A Morning Routine to Boost Productivity

Oberlo is an ecommerce blog that I read regularly. They post a lot of stuff pertaining to running store type websites but they also post stuff that applies to working from home in general so it can be applied to affiliate marketing.

In this post, writer Andrew Roach, outlines 7 steps you can take to create a morning routine that will boost your productivity.

A morning routine is like a kickstart that revs your engine and gets you into the flow of things for the rest of the day.

I have my own morning routine and there are lots of variations that other successful marketers use to get things going. The one thing to note is that a morning routine works and if you’ve found yourself in a productivity rut lately, you might want to try getting into a morning routine.

I’ll give you one tip you might find useful – do not check your email first thing in the morning – check it after you’ve ticked off some (or all) of your completed tasks for the day.

(3) The “Quit Your Job” Checklist: 8 Boxes You Must Tick Before Flipping Off Your Boss

For this next share, it’s back to SmartBlogger again, this time from Miranda Hill.

If you’re doing this part time and still have a job, you might be thinking of quitting (your job, that is) at some point. In this case you want to be reassured that you’re making the right decision (it is!) But you’ll also need to know when is the right time to give your boss notice.

Miranda has an 8 item checklist that you can check off to see if you have everything in place. You don’t want to quit your job and then things don’t work out the way you envisioned it.

When I quit my job back in 2009 to do affiliate marketing full time, my boss asked me if I was sure I was doing the right thing, adding that it’s tough getting a job when things don’t work out.

Luckily for me, I was sure because, although at the time I didn’t have a checklist like this, I had most of these items checked off.

I had:

• a full years income saved up in the bank enough to cover monthly expenses and do other stuff.
• been earning thousands every month consistently from affiliate marketing for at least a year.
• the same excitement for affiliate marketing that I started out with.
• just hit a long term goal (I wanted to quit by August 2010 but quit a year ahead)
• made new long term goals.

I hadn’t thought of the last three items though but now you have this checklist, you can be better prepared for quitting your job than I was. Read the entire article and start planning on getting these items checked off.

There you have it – three awesome articles for you to read and hopefully learn something from that you can apply to your online business. I’ll be back next week with three more. If these weren’t enough, you can see previous Sunday Shares with more great articles.

Do you have a morning routine? How close are you to quitting your job? As usual, I would love you hear from you in the discussion area below.