Beware These 4 Vanity Metrics of Misguided Progress
Affiliates are taught to optimise religiously, to track relentlessly, and to always, always swear by their data.
We rely on metrics to guide us in the right direction.
That’s great.
But there are also several ‘vanity metrics’ that can indicate progress where you’ve actually made none.
Relying on them can blind you from the real task and provide a comfort blanket where you probably need a kick up the arse.
That’s what I wanted to touch on in this post:
Four Vanity Metrics of Misguided Progress.
See if any of them sound familiar to your work.
1. Profit Per Day
There’s nothing wrong with counting profits.
When it becomes a problem, as an affiliate, is if you start to project your profits.
Just because you’re earning $500/day from a successful campaign, that doesn’t mean you should start taking out mortgages quoting $182K as your annual salary.
Campaigns can tank at a moment’s notice.
And campaigns will tank at a moment’s notice.
There are two things you should be doing with your profits:
- Investing them back in to your business, preferably by developing a competitive advantage.
- Banking them and building up your capital safeguard for any nasty storms on the horizon.
Worst thing you can do is create a business plan that relies on the vanity metric of ‘projected profit per day’ to drive the business forward.
If you are making decisions on the basis that you will have happy $X/days waiting for you in the future, you need to calmly collect your marbles, find the box titled ‘Affiliate Marketing’, and re-read the instructions.
Consistency is the name of the game.
The affiliate who is capable of replicating his $200/day profits will outlast the guy who gets lucky with a $1000/day winner.
You need only search ‘Affiliate Marketing 2009’ to see the naivety of assumed profit per day.
2. Number of Campaigns Launched Per Day
Have you had a day where you destroy your To Do list by 1pm and still feel unsatisfied?
The temptation with To Do lists is to do them as fast as you can, without really considering the strategy, and without stopping to think about execution along the way.
Some might call that a good habit.
Automation is good, right?
No — we’re not working on a factory line.
A creative spark doesn’t arrive by mindlessly executing the steps of a To Do list as a Pomodoro timer counts down in the background.
‘Campaign cramming’ — the art of launching lots of shit at the wall in rapid-fire motion — is one of the ultimate vanity meas ...