5 Things I Love About the Affiliate Lifestyle
July 27th, 2007 by 
Amit
I remember the days of driving 30-45 minutes one way on I-90 in Boston to a job that I hated. In fact I hated it so much that I actually spend half my time surfing the web and the other half the time working on my Adwords campaigns. 
And I quit before they could fire me!
I know some people actually enjoy their day jobs, and if you’re in that small minority, then congratulations.
But honestly I can’t understand how someone can go to work to a job that they hate 5 days a week, 50 weeks a year (48 if you have 4 weeks of vacation time!), day after day, month after month, and YEAR after YEAR for 45 YEARS!
Is it any wonder that so many people drink excessively, smoke, watch 4 hours of television a day??
My life is so radically different now, so much better now, as a super affiliate, it’s hard to describe.
I honestly never thought life, at least my life, could be this AWESOME!
I’m not saying this to brag.
I want all of you affiliates out there that are struggling to make money, working full time, and trying to find time to spend with your family as well, to know that success in this business-if you build it right and build solid affiliate campaigns-is SO WORTH IT.
Here’s some things I really love about the affiliate lifestyle:
# 5 SHOCKING BANK TELLERS:
I love when I go to the bank and the bank teller, looks at me, half shaven, wearing a free T-shirt I scored at the Affiliate Summit, and flip flops, and then looks at my bank account!
Shock and Awe! LOL
My wife and I went to the bank the other day and the teller told us we have too much money in our saving account, and recommended that we transfer the money into a CD where we could get a higher interest rate.
I told the teller that I would think about it. Honestly I DON’T CARE! In the time it takes me to actually set a CD with the bank, I could start an affiliate promotion that will make me 10X whatever interest I would make off a stupid CD.
#4 NAP TIME
What can I say, I’m a lazy affiliate. On a hot summer’s day at around 2:00pm I love turning on the ceiling fan and taking a nice nap on the sofa.
When I was in kindergarten I hated taking afternoon naps, now I love it!
#3 REAL SECURITY
A lot of job people talk about having ‘job security’ as their excuse for not starting a business. “Because you never know, the business may not work, it may go under, blah, blah, blah.”
If you think you have ‘job security’ in this day and age, you are living in a dream world!
Real security is:
- Having the ability to launch an affiliate offer tomorrow that will cover all your living expenses.
- Having so much money in the bank you could literally live on it for YEARS. This is a GREAT feeling!
#2 WORLD TRAVEL/MOBILE INCOME
My wife and I love to travel, and it’s great traveling when you’ve got money, because then you can go first class all the way!
We’re going to Bermuda next month for 5 action packed days that include
- snorkeling
- parasailing
- sailing
- helmet diving
- swimming with dolphins
- snorkeling over a shipwreck/glass bottom boat ride
- horseback riding
- Bermuda Aquarium, Natural History & Zoo
- private tour of the island
- botanical garden
- perfumarie
- Fort Hamilton
While we’re in Bermuda, we’ll be staying at the Fairmont Hamilton Princess, the top hotel on the entire Island. The Amex Centurion Travel Counselor, that I get with my black card, cut us a nice deal: instead of $520/night, we’re only paying $450/night!
Oh, by the way, 4 days after we get back from Bermuda we’re off to a 10 day Alaskan Cruise, that includes multiple helicopter trips over glaciers and snow capped maintains, a dog sled ride over glaciers, and a bunch of other activities.
We have a suite on the Alaskan cruise with Celebrity Cruises, with a butler!
YES, a butler!
The Alaskan Cruise goes from Anchorage to Vancouver. Once we arrive in Vancouver, we’re spending two days there, and then taking a float plane over to Victoria where we’re spending a day with friends.
And that’s JUST August. We have other excursions planned for October, November, and December (we’re going to India in December).
Let’s not forget, you can do affiliate marketing from anywhere around the world. You can actually LIVE in different parts of the world and run your business.
How about spending a month on a Greek Island in the Mediterranean for 2 months?
Fields Marshall is an American who moved to Pucon, Chile where he lives on a resort spending his days whitewater rafting and working on his affiliate business.
He right now makes a modest income as an affiliate, but lives like a king in Chile since the cost of living is lower than the US.
You don’t need to make $30k/month as an affiliate to live your dream life. If you’re making a modest income right now as an affiliate you can still live your dream life, Fields is a great example of this!
#1 LIVING THE LIFE YOU CHOOSE
I love being able to work my affiliate business around my lifestyle and not the other way around.
Recently my wife and I have decided to play squash every morning (well at least 5 days a week) at the local gym before we do anything else. Not only is it a lot of fun, but it really gets your energy levels up for the whole day.
So far I’ve beat my wife at every game we’ve played, but she’s getting way better everyday. She going to beat me soon!
Here’s what cool: Being able to go the gym at 9:00am in the morning while the rest of the world is busy at work.
My wife and I like making a schedule of all the fun things we want to do in a given day, and I work in my 2-4 hours of productive time in between all of that. Let me give you an example…
On Monday my wife and I played several games of squash in the morning and did some weight training, we then went to see the new Harry Potter film in the afternoon, and had a nice dinner at a Chinese restaurant in the evening.
Between our morning trip to the gym (squash/weight training) I squeezed in two hours of productive work. Then after Harry Potter and dinner, I did another hour of work and caught up on email and wrote a blog post.
Don’t let your work dictate your lifestyle, let your lifestyle dictate your work.
Now I know some of you are thinking, “There’s no way would get anything done on a schedule like your’s Amit.”
Wrong!
If you actually set deadlines for yourself and focus your time on income producing activities, that is, stuff that directly impacts your income, such as adding keywords to your ppc campaigns, then you’ll be amazed at how much you actually get done.
It’s possible to get more productive stuff accomplished with 2 hours of focused concentrated effort then 8 hours of fumbling around trying to do 10 things at once: checking email, working on your campaigns, while your chatting with a friend on Googletalk, and on the phone with your affiliate manager.
And you KNOW what I’m talking about!
So if you’re not living the affiliate lifestyle yet, WHAT are you waiting for!
affiliate lifestyle job security myths
Posted in lifestyle | 
I can relate to the shocking the bank teller part. I once had more than 1 Million on a checking account (because i was soo lazy to transfer it to my fidelity account). When i went to deposit the check the teller told the manager and she tried to set me up with some stupid financial advisor!.
Yet another inspiring post, Amit. You really have a talent for inspiring would-be super affiliates. I hope you write a book or design a coaching program at some point. Hey, how about making those SuperAffiliateMindset t-shirts available for sale to your loyal readers and devotees?
I used to play a bit of squash myself but haven’t in years. It’s a great game that really gets your heart rate going. When you’re down in Bermuda you ought to look into establishing a Bermuda corporation. I’ve known a couple of people who it has really worked out for.
You’ve really got the right idea with lifestyle design and are an inspiration to us all.
“My wife and I went to the bank the other day and the teller told us we have TOO MUCH MONEY in our saving account, and recommended that we transfer the money into a CD where we could get a higher interest rate.”
I love this!
I like it when my banker says something will give a 5% return and if I’m lucky I’ll get 8%, and she is smiling and trying to impress me during all of this…
“What can I say, I’m a lazy affiliate. On a hot summer’s day at around 2:00pm I love turning on the ceiling fan and taking a nice nap on the sofa.”
Amen, bro!
My daughter takes 2 naps during the day and if she’s following nature’s path, we should do the same too.
If anyone’s been reading the BBC news, companies in the UK are building sleep pods and sleep rooms in offices now, so workers can take 15min naps…
I personally prefer my 150min naps…
PS: Hey Amit, you didn’t talk about all the weight you put on eating all that good food and sitting on our butts all day. It’s a constant struggle to keep the weight off.
Hi Andrew,
150min! Wow! I envy you! I do 45min-120min depending on the day.
As for the weight, yes, I noticed I started gaining weight staying at home. So now I go to the gym everyday and carefully watch what I eat. It’s definitely a battle staying slim.
My wife and I have noticed if we go to the gym in the morning before we eat breakfast we get the best results in terms of burning fat.
Hi Tim,
Selling Superaffiliatemindset T-shirts is a great idea! I need to look at how to get a shopping cart setup and find a drop ship company that will deliver the orders.
OO Amit I live in Chile, in Santiago, jejeje
your post is so inspirational
I read your blog everyday
> “150min! Wow! I envy you! I do 45min-120min depending on the day.”
It’s only because I live in Singapore which is 12hrs ahead of EST and I’m awake in the night and making my calls to my aff manager during that time.
> “Selling Superaffiliatemindset T-shirts is a great idea!”
Set it up at cafepress.com, drop ship and everything is done for you.
At the same time you can host any instructional videos you do over at metacafe.com or revver.com and get same rev share based on the page videos of the videos. [Plus it'd take the bandwidth load off your servers]
Knowing the quality of your stuff, I think the revenue would buy a nice dinner a couple of times a month…
Absolutely loved this post. Loved it.
I’m definitely on the bandwagon… this post makes me want to drop everything and begin affiliate marketing- but I know I have to work my way up to it instead
Good stuff, bro.
I regularly read your posts through Google Reader.I have no clue on how you make those AdWord campaigns which give you so much of financial freedom?
I mean for a newbie like me who wants to do something you do,what are your advices,step by step…this is like asking your trade secret…:-))
BTW you simply rock…
No need for a dropship company & shopping cart. You can get them done easily through CafePress, until of course until if you have some other plans.
Ahhh….. you’re so right. I only wish I could show my bank balance to some of the store clerks I have so much trouble getting to notice I exist.
They take one look at my shabby attire and ignore me. I’m considering having some kind of sign made including my annual income and current net worth. Maybe then I’ll finally be able to buy that Donna Karan dress!
Awesome Amit! That top paragraph? That is me right now, but I’m so close it hurts. One of your T’s would be cool. Ever spend any time golfing? I’m planning a world tour of the best golf courses I can find.
Hi Andrew and Ayush,
Thanks for the cafexpress tip. I’m sign up with them right now. Everyone will be able to purchase Superaffiliatemindset T-shirt soon.
Well done Amit.
I’m just starting out myself. I wish I had started the internet thing years ago. But at the time I was in “my 9-5 comfort zone” doing the paper chase. Certainly haven’t gotten rich or anywhere near it, I’m struggling. I guess its my “reward” for being the good worker. Burned out.
Now I’m trying to get in the game. You, Andrew, shoemoney and others really inspire us newbies, thank you.
And yeah I do spend a couple hours sometimes at work on ads and montoring-no real success yet, just starting. The hardest part for me so far is to find good programs to support. Is it good to narrow to a certain field or spread out in all directions.
Thanks for the mention Amit.
While my income is quite modest in comparison to many other affiliates, Im pretty happy with my lifestyle especially that I can be in any location of the world.
I live in a place where people vacation — Pucon, Chile — a paradise per my interests in whitewater rivers and I get a healthy 15 minute bike ride to my office instead of an long commute.
Only recently have I gotten more serious about making a bit more money online now that I have a daughter on the way.
I must say that when I stumbled onto my first successful adwords campaign it was a surreal experience.
I was in the middle of nowhere Patagonia, Argentina in a town called Alumine, Argentina. This is a remote place where the whole cybercafe of 10 people shared a “slower than dialup” satellie connection. I remember sitting there in the cybercafe working on my adwords campaign albeit slowly but I got it working and making money to support me that month …
The fact that I got to spend most of the day in the beautiful alumine river http://riversofchile.com/rivers/alumine-river-argentina.html and only 2 or 3 hours in the cybercafe that night and cover my living expenses — well that says it all.
hi amit,
thanks for posting this. it’s always good to be reminded how good the affiliate live is, cuz ppl usually forgot very fast- at least me.
you’re honest, and i don’t think your post is snooty.
greets
jahja
oh, I forgot.. I love nap times, too! =D
Amit,
Please, please, please continue your blog it is very inspirational. Right after I hit the “submit” button on this post I am going to spend a few minutes looking at my goals board, visualizing then get right on my keyword research!
Thank you very much for sharing your experiences. I am sure you are helping many people!
Hi, Amit.
Wow, it’s nice knowing that some people are making this kind of success on this type of marketing. I hope you have this success indefinitely, but how about posting a good case of study, you know, as if you were a mentor showing your pupils how you approach this or that phase of the entire process. This would be more valuable and inspirational, even more than tell us about how you live or travel, and I mean this in a good way.
Sincerely,
Charlie
Man, thats great, but maybe you can tell us what kind of offers you are promoting, everytime i read your blog i give aff marketing a try, and everytime i fail over adsense, i tried hoodia, dating, ringtones, what do you recommend, i just dont convert, or dont convert well enough.
I kinda like the way you post now. Its direct
and informative as it is, no more , no less.
I don’t want to spend too much time reading posts.
How would I ever getting working on my projects.
Some of those 5 minute podcasts would be great.