The earning potential of affiliate marketing has made the previously out-of-reach idea of working from home a reality for a lot of people in the last few years.

A successful affiliate marketer can earn a more-than-sufficient income to provide for his or her family. For that reason; more and more people in the prime of their earning life are seizing the opportunity offered by affiliate marketing.

Working at home isn’t quite as easy as it looks, though.

Here’s why:

• Our lives are divided into compartments. We have our “at home” compartment, our “at work” compartment, our “dinner with the in-laws” compartment, our “poker night with the boys” compartment, etc. We think, speak, act, react — LIVE — in each of our life’s compartments in different ways.
  

It’s natural and much easier to keep life’s compartments separated when they take place at different physical locations. Most people don’t realize just how “compartmentalized” their lives really are until they try blending the “at-work” compartment with the “at-home” compartment.

The following three work-at-home tips have been taken from personal experience. I’ve been there, and done that. And I didn’t learn this information in a classroom or from a book or at the feet of a marketing master.

This is experience speaking!

Tip #1 - Designate a Physical/Mental Workspace

You may have already tried working in the family room or at the kitchen table where family life is happening all around you. It doesn’t work very well, does it?

Designating “workspace” in your home is the basis of successfully working from home. The ultimate work-at-home space is a separate room designated as your “home office,” with a door that locks from the inside.

That’s not always possible.

Choose a corner of the room in your home that gets the least traffic. It doesn’t have to be huge. All you need is a space large enough to hold a table or desk, your computer, a telephone, and a chair.

Tip #2 - Set Work Hours and Work Rules

One of the reasons why you wanted to work from home in the first place was so you didn’t have to drag yourself out of your nice, warm bed at the crack of dawn so you could make it to work at a specified time. You still don’t.

But you DO need to establish regular work hours. The Internet stays open 24/7, so your regular work hours can happen at anytime you wish. But they do have to happen, and they must happen on a regular basis if you want to successfully work from home.

If you don’t work enough hours, your business suffers.

If you work too many hours, your personal life suffers.

Balance is needed. A 40-hour work week is reasonable. Establish your own work schedule. Include at least, but no more than, 40 hours of work in each 7-day period.

From the cradle to the grave, humans are expected to follow whatever set of rules are imposed upon us. If we don’t follow those rules, penalties of some kind are imposed upon us.

We’re geared to follow rules. So it’s important that you make work-at-home rules.

Tip #3 - Retrain Yourself, Your Friends, and Your Family

Now for the really hard part. You DO have a job! You DO have to work! Just because you don’t get up, get dressed, and leave home DOESN’T mean you’re unemployed.

• Train Yourself: Accept the fact that if you don’t get your work done, you won’t earn any money. Abide by your own work-at-home rules, and enforce those rules for yourself first. If you’re abiding by the rules, it’s easier to convince others to also abide by them.

• Train Your Friends: The answer to interruptions by neighbors and friends is: “I’m sorry. I can’t. I’m working. Maybe later.” Eventually, your friends will get the idea. Really.

• Train Your Family: If you think it’s tough to train yourself and tough to train your friends, you “ain’t seen nuttin’ yet.” Training your family is the toughest item on this list — maybe on any list.
  

Family relationships are difficult, to say the very least. They’re complicated, too. Saying, “I’m sorry, I can’t right now — I’m working” to your significant other or your child can and will produce all kinds of responses, including shouting and tears.

Still, families can be trained at least to the point of keeping interruptions to a minimum. Family training should be undertaken with a great deal of patience. After all, these people gave you a reason to live in the first place.

Put these three work-at-home tips into action. You’ll improve your work-at-home experience as well as your work-at-home productivity.

Your partner in success,

Phyllis Jordan
http://www.TimeMoneyAndSuccess.com