One of the biggest obstacles the Newbie Affiliate Marketer must overcome is not being focused. This may sound funny at first but as you read along you will begin to understand why it is absolutely critical that you remain focused on the task at hand or you will never succeed as an affiliate marketer.

Believe me when I say this will not be as easy as it sounds. I am not just saying this as I am talking from experience. When I first started out trying to make money online as an affiliate marketer I had a very difficult time staying focused. Sometimes I would sit down at my computer and just stare at the screen because I had so many things I wanted to accomplish but I didn't know where to start. This same thing is going to happen to you if you don't have a plan and stick to it.

The problem staying focused is a result of a lot of things. Depending where you are in your new business the distractions will be different. Let's just say you're pretty new at it and I'll walk you through what I think could be a typical day or night for you.

You sit down at your computer with good intentions of designing an opt-in page so you can get your list going. But before you get started you decide to read your emails from all the lists you have subscribed to. You go through the first few quickly deleting them but now there's one that has an interesting offer. You go to the sales page and it's one of those giveaway sites that are offering a ton of ebooks and software for free. You figure you're going to need something to give away on your opt-in page to entice people to give up their name and email address so you sign up for it.

Now you are trapped in the abyss of this giveaway site. You thought you were going to just go in and download a bunch of items and leave but this is not the case. You see an ebook that you really want that will help you on designing your opt-in page so you click on the download link and to your surprise you have to subscribe to a list in order to receive it. In fact you'll find out that you will have to do this for every item you want to download.

Next you find yourself going back to your email to confirm opting in. You click on the confirmation link and now staring you in the face is a one-time offer. It's a nice offer but you decide you don't want it so you click on No Thanks. If you're lucky you don't get sent to another offer for a little less money. Now you've just finished reading a very long salesletter and you still don't have your ebook. You must go back to open another email that has the download link to get your free item.

Well now you have your ebook that you wanted but the whole process to get it took 15 minutes. There were a few more ebooks you wanted so you go through the process again but you've smartened up and go through it quickly just to get them and get out. Now you head back to reading the rest of your emails and there's another great one telling you to go watch a video for free on how to start building your list. You can't pass this up so off you go.

Yep you guessed it, another opt-in form. You watch this excellent video but it was 20 minutes long and you finally realize you're not getting anything done. You head back to your email and your best friend just sent you this message telling you to go watch this really funny video on YouTube so you do. After watching it you reply to your friend telling them how funny it was. Now you've waisted another 10 minutes.

You see how easy it is to get off course from where you started. About an hour ago you sat down to design an opt-in page and you haven't even started it yet. Believe me there are going to be a few more detours before the night is over and if you only have two hours a night alloted to your affiliate marketing business you're not going to get far.

Before you start your next night of work you need to sit down and lay out a plan and stick to it. I can just hear all the experienced affiliate marketers out there laughing out loud because they have all been in your shoes, whether they want to admit it or not is another story.

Focus, Focus, Focus.