There are many positive aspects of being a content creator, but the job is not one without challenges. One biggie: you’re never really caught up. The vast variety of online channels and media formats means there are limitless opportunities to publish, not to mention the internet is a 24/7 place of unending conversation. And then of course you have all the strategic, logistical, and administrative responsibilities of running a business … it’s a lot! The key to staving off overwhelm is to set goals (and boundaries), and create processes and routines that streamline your to-dos. That includes your affiliate marketing efforts.

To maximize your earnings, there are a handful of metrics and measures you should be checking daily. It doesn’t have to be a huge undertaking, and much of it is stuff you’d look through anyway, just perhaps not in a systematic way. It’s all about streamlining!

Below is a daily to-do list of places and stats to check that will help you stay on top of your affiliate marketing. By implementing this routine (or a modified version to fit your needs), you can efficiently monitor and measure your affiliate efforts, and rid yourself of that nagging feeling that you could be earning more if only you were more organized

It’s a good idea to start checking in on your own site’s status. You want to ensure everything is up and running smoothly, and if not, troubleshoot any major issues. Web services can be finicky, and if pages are failing to load, ads are failing to display, links are suddenly broken, etc., it can have a big impact on your earnings.

Beyond issues, you should be looking for opportunities. Maybe a recent post is unexpectedly taking off — give it a quick review to be sure you’ve taken advantage of all natural linking opportunities. Maybe you got a mention elsewhere on the web and it’s driving lots of traffic to your homepage — time to re-confirm your ad choices and placements. Before you dive in and get lost in a big project, just pause to take notes for revisiting later. You’ll want to run through your whole checklist first, then make your plan of attack. We’ve created another checklist-style guide for monitoring daily website metrics that would be perfect for this step in the process — check it out here.

You’re looking for both problems and opportunities here, too. Are you seeing good engagement on certain posts — particularly ones with affiliate elements or links to your site — that you should consider boosting with paid promotion? On the contrary, was something you shared more controversial than you expected that now requires some damage control? You don’t want any brand boycotts on your hands. Check in on what’s happening and take note of what needs quick action.

While you’re looking through your social stats, take a peek through your comments and direct messages. It’s always important to stay engaged with your community, but for affiliate marketing purposes, you specifically want to be sure you’re answering related questions and fielding requests. For example, your followers may be looking for more details on a promotion you recently shared. Or perhaps they want your input on products you’d recommend for a certain concern or occasion. Whatever it is, be there and be of service!

Of course, you’ll want to check in on your actual affiliate earnings! The reporting features in Associates Central make it easy to quickly assess which products and promotions are generating the most income. Check out this video for a quick tutorial. By checking your reports regularly, you can also glean insight into individual factors that affect performance, like publish time and post format. With these learnings, you can tweak your plan to do more of what’s working and cut out what’s not.

Now in Associates Central you can view worldwide global reporting on one screen. Click Here to learn more about this feature.