Are you as dedicated to your Affiliate Marketing career as Pearl Jam is to their music?

If anyone knows me, they know I am a huge Pearl Jam fan. By huge, I mean I have been a fan since they debuted “Alive” back in 1992 and have nearly every CD, book and VHS tape the band has released over the years. I postponed our honeymoon because Pearl Jam was performing the day after our wedding. (The infamous “Ice Bowl” Show.)

In any case, I happened to be watching a YouTube video of a concert they performed in Amsterdam in 2012, and at the 42 min mark I noticed something that I hadn’t seen at other Pearl Jam concerts.

You can see that lead singer Eddie Vedder realizes something is wrong during the song and goes off in the direction of the audio guys to let them know. They apparently don’t get to it right away and you can see his anger and frustration as he raises his hands as if to say, “Get if fixed, whats the problem!?!” The issue gets worked out after a few seconds and the song goes on as expected.

The song they were playing, “Not for You” was released in 1995. Pearl Jam have probably performed this song hundreds of times in the 17 years since it was released. Yet, even after all those performances and repetitions, you can still see the passion and dedication to giving their best effort each and every time they sing it. They don’t “phone it in” nor go through the motions; even after performing that same song an untold number of times.

What could this little video clip possibly have to do with affiliate marketing?

As an affiliate marketing professional, your daily to-do list probably looks something similar to this:

1. Add new merchants to your website, along with their links and coupons.
2. Remove old merchant from your site.
3. Build keyword lists and update PPC campaigns.
4. Review sales stats.
5. Call on merchants
6. Etc, etc.

There are many things you need to do every day, and often they are the same things you did yesterday and will have to do again tomorrow. Repeating this routine, day after day, and you start to feel like Bill Murray in the movie, “Groundhog Day”!

But the important question is: After years of repeating the same activities, are you still bringing the same passion and commitment to your work every day as you did when you first started your career? Or do you find yourself “phoning it in” and going through the motions from time to time?

If you want to have a long and successful affiliate marketing career, you need to be as passionate and dedicated to your profession, just as Eddie Vedder shows in the video above. No matter how routine the tasks may seem, if you don’t bring a commitment to excellence every day, you won’t be successful.

For your enjoyment (ok, mine too!), here is the full concert video: