Have you ever seen a duck in a pond? It goes this way and that, without any real purpose. And at the end of the day, all its accomplished is hours of treading water and its still in the same pond.

A lot of us are like this. We’ll throw up a website, write a couple articles, maybe even get an opt-in or a sale. But at the end of the day we feel like we’re just doing things aimlessly, without purpose. Wasting precious time.

I was the king of “time-wasting” and have finally learned my lesson. So if you want to avoid throwing away your time, and work S.M.A.R.T – er not harder, you’ll enjoy these tips.

S.M.A.R.T Goals:

(S)pecific

Setting specific goals is the first step to success. I remember when I first started out with affiliate marketing the goal I set was “I want to be rich before I’m 25”. What’s wrong with this goal?

• What’s rich? Being rich is measured differently by different people

• It didn’t give me any direction or ideas of specific actions that would need to be taken to succeed
  

A better goal would have been “I want to make “X” amount of dollars a month by April 2012”. This goal is much more specific and gives me an aiming point with specific actions that I’ll need to take to obtain it.

(M)easurable

You must be able to measure the success of your goals. When 2012 rolls around, I can measure “I want to make “X” amount of dollars a month by April 2012” a lot better than I can measure “I want to be rich before I’m 25”.

(A)ttainable

I’ll admit, when I first started out I had to adjust my goals a couple times because the goals I set for myself weren’t realistic. I love aiming high, and you should to, but there’s a difference between aiming at the achievable, and preparing yourself for a letdown.

(R)elevant

Here’s what I mean by a relevant goal. I remember when I first started doing affiliate marketing. The thing that appealed to me most was being able to work for myself and not ever have to work a day job again. So, do you think “being rich” was a very relevant goal to why I started affiliate marketing? Probably not.

For example, let’s pretend that you decided to do affiliate marketing because you wanted to quit your day job. You need to make $2,000 dollars a month to do this and live comfortably.

Your goal might look something like this, “I want to make $2,000 dollars a month consistently by “X” date so that I can quit my day job and be my own boss”.

This goal is specific to your needs, measurable, definitely attainable, relevant to you, and its…

(T)imely

I’ve set a date in which my goal needs to be met. Have you ever had a goal, but never put a date in which you wanted to achieve it by? Those are the “wouldn’t it be nice if” goals that never happen.

So, set a realistic date for the goal to be accomplished by.

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