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Wow it's Thursday already and I really don't know where the week has gone. I do know that none of the days this week have gone exactly as I had planned and I do like to have my days go somewhat according to plan. Just to add to the confusion here, one of Steve's son's has decided that the lifestyle in sub-tropical Queensland really suits him and so we're trying to help him organize an apartment, a removalist and a whole heap of other things an put him up till everything is organized.

Now you're days might not have been unsettled as ours have been this week but that doesn't mean that you've been able to achieve anymore than we have. The very bleak economic news that's out there on the news bulletins is enough to unsettle anyone and when that economic news begins to impact on your bottom line then it can become very hard to work and worry at the same time.

It's also very hard to stay focused on your business plan and to concentrate only on the things that are really going to make you money. There are always going to be people emailing you and out on the message boards at times like these with supposedly easy ways of making money and it's very tempting to follow some of those guys and try whatever it is that they're pushing.

In better times you probably wouldn't even give some of their offers and schemes a second look but at times like these when the imperative is to make money then those schemes can sound very tempting. In fact they can sound so tempting that many webmasters get sidetracked and waste a lot of time and even some money, that they can't really afford to waste, on these schemes.

So in times like these ... perhaps more than ever ... you need to be able to critically analyze every offer and be prepared to think things through before rushing in to try and make a buck from some crazy scheme that is never going to make you a cent.

And that can be hard because these days we're taught to react rather than stop and think. All those computer games that we love to play don't encourage us to think ... they just encourage us to shoot first and then go on shooting till the game is over and that can 'train' us to do that in real life too.

Those games are visual and so we start looking for the visual stimulus rather than the clear facts that we need when we want to think things through. Pretty pictures and diagrams that end in pots of gold, fast cars or bags of money encourage us to leap in without stopping to think ... and who wants to read a whole bunch of stodgy facts or stop and think when we could simply leap into action and make that money that's on offer.

Even when we do stop and read what little text might be associated with an offer that's too good to be true we're going to be encouraged to 'act now!', 'don't leave money on the table', 'make money today', 'achieve your dreams', 'never be broke again', 'limited time only' etc. etc.

And when you're short on cash and the affiliate checks aren't as fat as they once were it's hard to resist good sales text like that when it's surrounded by images of people enjoying a great lifestyle and obviously making lots of money.

But these days, if you want to survive and come out the other end of this recession in better shape than most other affiliate marketers, the one thing you have to do is resist all those pretty pictures and emotive text. You have to stop and think things through ... you have to develop the ability to critically analyze the offers that you're going to see and decide which ones are genuine and which ones aren't.

You will also have to decide which of the genuine offers will work for you and which ones won't. Not every genuine offer will be right for you and it's important to be able to identify which offers really will make you money. It could be that your traffic is all wrong for some of the genuine offers ... you may not have worked in a particular niche before and so you will struggle to understand the best way to sell to your surfers.

There are many reasons why an offer ... no matter how genuine ... might not be right for you so even though you've identified an offer as being genuine you still need to work out whether it really is going to work for you.

So start thinking before you leap ... don't react instantly but spend time looking at how you might take advantage of a genuine offer ... draw a mind map and explore all the possibilities and follow every branch that you come to in your mind map.

Sure the offer might be for a limited time only and you're going to spend some time ... maybe hours ... maybe even days ... analyzing the offer but spending that time thinking things through is a far better use of your time than wasting time on an offer that seemed so good but was almost obviously never going to work for you.