How You Can Save Countless Hours of Time

This is a guest post by Miles Baker.

Yesterday I noticed someone asking a question on a forum about how to organize all their affiliate login information. It reminded me of years ago, how I used to set up file folders and I would actually print out each page of login information and attempt to keep all my affiliate information in a giant filing cabinet. Of course, that was 10 years ago and much has changed since then, I hardly print out anything anymore. In fact, over the years I’ve been constantly refining my process of getting organized and keeping track of everything, and if you were to see my office you would be astounded how quickly I can find anything I could possibly need within less than a minute or two tops and how quickly I can get things done.

No matter who you are, even for a part-time affiliate there’s so much login information, passwords, bookmarks, todo-lists, receipts, emails, and other things to keep track of it can be completely overwhelming. Therefore, I thought I would share some of my best productivity tricks, tools, and methods with you that will help you get organized, keep everything in order, and save you countless hours and headaches!

First, you must have Roboform, if you aren’t using Roboform get it now! It keeps track of all your sites, all your login information, and you can also use it to store your address, credit card, and other information so when you go to buy something you click one button and the entire checkout form is filled out for you. I have over 400 logins in mine, and it definitely beats my old file folders and mountain of paper! I can’t even imagine how much time this one tool has saved me over the years.

Another program I’ve recently feel in love with is called Linkman. It’s a bookmarking tool that resides on your own PC. I used to love and recommend FURL, which did a lot of what Linkman does online, but after they were acquired by another company the site got so sloppy and slow, it’s now more trouble than it’s worth to bookmark something or find what you are looking for with it. So let me give you the rundown on Linkman. I use this tool to build my own Google essentially. I bookmark any site I think I may want to return to in the future, then I give that bookmark a quick set of tags. Let’s say I am going to bookmark SuperAffiliateMindset.com. I would bookmark the site, throw it into a category I’ve created, and then tag it with “amit, mehta, affiliate, marketing, super affiliate, mindset, blog, tips, adwords, ppc, lifetyle”. Now whenever I want to find something I can type in any one of those terms and my bookmarked site comes right up! It’s my own, ever-growing personal database of sites, and whenever I want to find something I click on the little icon in my system tray, type in a couple of words and it’s instantaneously ready for me!

So now that you’ve got your bookmarks in order, and all your passwords and login information, let’s talk about email. This is probably one of the largest, most unorganized messes people have on their PC. I use Thunderbird and by itself it’s a great email client, but it’s the add-ons that give this program possibilities and flexibility beyond any other email client I’ve ever used. Without getting into too much detail and writing 5 other articles, here’s a quick list of the add-ons I use to help productivity and organization…

• XNote – This is an awesome add-on as it allows you to add sticky notes to your emails. I use my email inbox as a partial todo/action box. What I do is I archive/filter all emails out of my inbox and leave only emails that require action. Then I use XNote to add any notes to either help remind me or add information to the email. I used to forget that certain emails were waiting on a reply or what an email was regarding, not anymore with Xnote.
• Archive – Since I get rid of everything in my inbox as fast as I can, anything I want to keep I archive. I use this add-on to add a button to the top of Firefox and then when I get an email I don’t need to do anything with but would like to keep I click the ‘Archive’ button. Much like Gmail works, however an added benefit is if you have multiple accounts you can archive to different folders.
• QuickText Pro – This is the Big Daddy of Thunderbird Add-ons when it comes to productivity. Use this to create email templates that you can use with the click of a button. What’s REALLY cool about QuickText Pro is that you can create a template with variables. For example, you can click a button, it will bring up a prompt for any variable, you fill in the information like a name or something, then it creates the rest of the email. For more details check out their site, I highly recommend this time saving tool.
• Tags – Thunderbird comes with Tags that you can customize so techincally this isn’t an add-on but an existing feature. Anyway, a good example of how I use tags is for my affiliate sales. I am an affiliate for tons of affiliate programs, ebooks, software, etc. that only make me sales sporadically. I filter all those sale notification emails into a separate folder called “Affiliate Sales”, and then when they come in I tag them with an ‘Unpaid’ tag so I know I should be expecting a payment for that. I also use tags for emails that I am waiting for on a reply on, among other things.

These add-ons are all fantastic, but don’t forget, no matter what email client you use, you should be sorting emails into folders and using filters to put email into its proper place. Also, turn off any features that notify you of new messages, either sounds or pop-ups, they are only distractions.

So now let’s talk about organizing your business. I personally love to write/type everything down that’s in my head, anything that I want or need to do. I even have a list of future blog posts that I keep so whenever an idea comes to me I write it down, then forget about it until I’m going to write on my blog. I find by getting everything out of my mind and into the computer let’s my mind relax and focus, and I never have to try and remember anything.

I use an AWESOME program for organizing everything I need to do. It’s called Swift ToDo List Pro, and it’s incredible. You can organize different todo lists, I organize mine by site or project. In addition to that, you can add notes to each task, attach files, include links with it, etc. You can organize your lists in a variety of ways, but what I find important is just having everything that needs to be done organized and remembered for me. It’s by far the most productive and time-saving tool I use, and it’s helped me to remember so many things I normally would have forgotten about it.

So there you have it. Use these tools to save time, be more productive, and get organized. I guarantee that using these tools will make your business move faster, and you’ll find yourself getting much more accomplished in less time.

Miles Baker is a 10 year Internet marketing veteran and full-time affiliate marketer. For more information on him visit his website MarketingWithMiles.com