What’s the most important strategy of getting your blog to the number 1 spot in both Google and Yahoo and keep all the search traffic to yourself? Definitely the ideal answer is proper keyword research and building authoritative backlinks.

In this blog post you will learn how I used Google Insight tool and press release service (webwire.com) to accelerate my Google rankings to top 4 within 3 days.

The use of Google Insight Tool was to generate highly profitable keyword with considerable search traffic and the purpose of using press release was to generate authoritative backlinks to my blog site.

How I nailed down the top 4 spot in Google within 3 days

The main reason why i decided to push my blog site to be on the top spot in Google and Yahoo, was to generate highly targeted long tail keyword with commercial intent.

The reason why I am advocating for long tail keyword, it’s because they can convert results into sales and hence generate more business for your service or product.

How did I use this strategy to be on top 4 spot in Google?

It’s simple and clear: I used both Google Keyword tool and Google insight Tool to generate narrower long tail keywords.

Below is a step by step procedure of what I did:

Step 1:

I went to Google Keyword tool and I started with the main keyword and I selected a narrower search term which had a global traffic of 300,000 monthly search volume. The niche I selected was ”Greek Yogurt” as below:

Step 2:

I took the narrower search term from step 1 and I put it on Google Insight tool. The results were as per below screen shot:

Some of the example of narrower keywords that I found were:

• Recipes with Greek yogurt (Monthly search 22,000)

• How to make Greek Yogurt (Monthly search 9,900)

• Greek Yogurt nutritional facts (Monthly search 4000)

Based from the above keyword analysis I managed to settle with recipes with Greek yogurt as my main keyword.

Link building strategy that accelerated my Google rankings

As we all know quality content and authoritative backlinks will make Google deliver results to your business. One of the strategies that I used to build high authoritative links was with the help of press release service.

I took 3 good months to learn how to write a press release that will be of high interest to the media and journalist. My first objective was to make sure that my blog site has all the required information such as high quality content, resources and links.

I wrote a powerful top notch news release that I distributed via press release service (webwire.com) and after 3 days my blog site sky rocketed to top 4 in Google and it was as a result of high quality links that I received from the press release service.

Below is a screenshot of the news release that was distributed with the help of webwire.com

After 3 days I managed to get the below results:

From the above results my blog site started to get more attention from the major search engine and other referral sites. If you plan early with the right mind set, i can really assure you that will achieve the same results that I did.

From my own experience, I really don’t think you need any Degree or Masters or any special software. The real truth is that you can follow the above simple steps and then replicate my results.

Do you have any results that you have achieved based on the above case study?

Back at the beginning of February, I announced that I was going to challenge myself to post an article each day to my dating review site, 101Date.com — a site that had been sadly neglected in terms of content publishing for a very long time.

Well, here’s what happened over the month with my blogging challenge.

To produce the content, I:

• Created 6 new articles
• Resused 2 old articles
• Re-used 2 polls, created 6 new polls
• Used 2 merchant articles
• Used 3 press releases / news articles
• Used 2 posts generated by a shopping plugin
• Used 3 PLR articles

And contrary to my original plan, I used no spun articles.

Did I post every day of the month?

If you added the numbers above together, you know the answer is “NO”.

My general excuse is that my brain was addled by allergies here in Arizona, and somehow I missed publishing on the 11th, 26th and 29th. For the last day of the month, I totally forgot it was a leap year.

To make up for the leap day ommission, I posted on March 1st.

Were the results benefical?

According to my Aweber stats, the overall results were mixed. Readership declined by almost 2% over the month. On the other hand, subscriber complaints declined from .12% from the original broadcast on the 1st of February to a mere .04% by the last broadcast.

My take on that was that “they’re getting to know me again” and “it’s GOOD to cull the non-responsive”, especially when one pays for each subscriber!

Traffic Generation results were very positive.

Increases / decreases from month-to-month were as follows:

• 12.05% increase in visitors
• 10.47% increase in unique visitors
• 5.81% decrease in pageviews
• 5.57% increase in time on site
• 19.68% decrease in the Bounce Rate
• 2.71% increase in New Visits

Overall REAL Results

The best results by far, however, were in terms of affiliate commission gains.

I more than doubled my average monthly earnings from the site.

Woohoo!

What did I learn?

Creating a challenge for oneself is good for increasing both productivity and earnings.

It makes you much more aware of how people respond to what you publish, and to produce more of that to which they respond positively.

Not only that, but the positive results energize you to do more of the same!

I also asked you to join me in the challenge and a few of you responded.

So… how did your February blogging challenge work out for you? Please leave a comment below!

Cheers,

The end of the year is a fabulous time to set goals that will help you make more money online in the new year (and beyond).

Here are a few New Year’s business resolutions you might want to consider adopting:

1. Ask for help

   We often fail to achieve our goals because we don’t ask for help. Don’t let ‘not knowing’ or ‘not understanding’ undermine your potential for success. Reach out and ask for mentoring, guidance and support when you need it. Join a membership site that teaches what you want to learn and has a community forum in which you can get answers to your questions.

2. Cultivate a positive mindset

   Success is nearly impossible to achieve when we focus on our failures, doubts and worries. View mistakes as part of the process. Learn from them and be grateful that no one died. Derive motivation and inspiration from the success of others.

3. Be realistic

   Making a million dollars in the next 30 days is unlikely (despite what scam marketers tell you) unless you win the lottery or your rich uncle croaks and leaves you his fortune. Recognize that reward is in direct correlation to effort made.

4. Learn something new

   Do some reading or take a course to improve your writing skills. Read a book to improve your self-confidence or your self-discipline.

5. Adopt new methods

   Investigate different strategies that you can adopt to grow your business. Add product sales to your Adsense site. Add Adsense to your affiliate blog. Offer one-on-one coaching to your repertoire. Turn your blog into an exclusive membership site. And for Pete’s sake, quit relying on Feedburner alone and install that Aweber code!!

6. Focus on your target market

   If you sell medical and health products to boomers, spend more time where they hang out online and less time tweeting about Kim Kardashian’s antics.

7. Know your numbers

   Analyze your best traffic sources, best-selling products and blog posts from the previous year. Focus on those to make additional recommendations and sales to your existing audience.

8. Get more social

   Social media marketing will continue to explode in 2012 and is clearly the best way to get free traffic to your blog. Ramp up your Facebook and Twitter activities to grow your reader and customer base.

9. Respect your time

   Learn to automate every process that can be automated. For example, use Aweber’s blog broadcasting to automatically deliver your latest blog posts to your subscriber list and Twitter. Be sure that each of your blog posts, Flickr and YouTube uploads also get posted automatically to Facebook. Increase your productivity with simple and inexpensive webmaster tools.

10. Celebrate your accomplishments

    Savor and enjoy every step you take, no matter how small it seems. Give yourself a pat on the back or reward yourself in some way. Success isn’t really success unless we enjoy it.

I hope those suggestions help you make more money online during the year(s) to come. My best wishes to you and yours for a happy, healthy and Prosperous New Year!

P.S. Please help out a fellow blogger and add your suggestions in the comments section below.

Note: This post was originally published in 2010 and has been updated for 2012.

Most Super Affiliate Handbook readers and Rosalind Gardner’s Academy members will be familiar with a personal blog of mine that was used as an example of an affiliate site until about a year ago.

The blog was called Roamsters and I had a lot of fun building and working on it.

It was the only one of my blogs where I could write about whatever I wanted… whenever I wanted. I posted mostly about my adventures near and afar, but the blog didn’t really have a defined niche.

As a professional blogger / Super Affiliate, that removal of pressure to post regularly about a specific topic is a welcome change of pace.

It also introduced me to a whole new audience of people who shared my personal interests in travel, cool gadgets and shoes.

So, why did I kill it? Here are my reasons:

1. Roamsters began life in 2006 as a joint project with my friend, Ed, who had recently retired and wanted to supplement his retirement income. Ed, however, never really ‘took’ to blogging, so I soon found myself as the only contributor.
2. Using the site as an an affiliate site example required that I maintain and upgrade the core and theme components when necessary. Not a big deal, but around the same time, StudioPress moved to the new Genesis Framework, so changing over to that and a new theme involved a bit of a learning curve.
3. I also had to regularly check to make sure that the affiliate links were still valid and working. On a non-niched site where you are dealing with many different merchants and product types, checking and changing affiliate links and products can get time consuming.
4. Attracting free search engine traffic to a blog without a specific topic is much more difficult than if all your posts are within the same niche. And because it was a hobby blog, I wasn’t keen to use pay per click advertising to generate traffic.
5. Another reason I didn’t want to use PPC was because it got to the point where I didn’t care if the site made money or not. Hmmmm… can you see a decided lack of motivation?

I already RosalindGardner.com, which at the time was being used as a business card site. Redirecting visitors from Roamsters would not only boost traffic, rankings and sales; but personal brand awareness as well.

That realization alone cinched the deal to kill the blog.

Combining the blogs would save time (time is money) and make more money — which is exactly what I did. I moved all relevant posts over to RosalindGardner.com.

Nowadays, if you try to visit Roamsters.com, it redirects to RosalindGardner.com.

The lesson?

Don’t work on sites that don’t serve a real purpose or for which monetization is difficult. Kill it or combine it. Just do whatever is necessary to keep your blogging business and brand growing.

Scarcity marketing is a strategy used by sellers to create a sense of urgency in the prospect to buy a product immediately.

This is most often accomplished by stating that the product is available for a limited time or in limited quantities, e.g. “Offer ends March 31st” or “Only 36 copies left”.

The latter tactic works especially well when the prospective buyer knows that there were only a couple hundred units originally and now there are only 36 available.

For example, take a look at the screenshot below which shows the order page for a Clickbank product that I looked at this morning.

“WOW!, that is selling like hotcakes – I’d better buy it now!” you might think.

That’s almost what I did until I stopped and thought harder for a moment.

The text under Item Description, “… WARNING: ONLY 36 COPIES LEFT…” is the description that the vendor supplies to Clickbank when they post the product in the Marketplace.

Smell a rat?

Wait, it gets stinkier still.

A seller might want to limit sales if they have a training program to which they attend to students personally (like I do at Rosalind Gardner’s Academy) and therefore more sales means more work.

But no Clickbank vendor in their right mind would limit sales of an ebook to 215 copies. It just doesn’t make sense. Maybe if they were doing a deeply discounted offer – but not for the full price of $47.

Nor would that Clickbank vendor get hundreds of affiliates to promote the product. Seriously, would YOU bother to promote a product where there were only 215 copies available and you knew that all the so-called ‘Top Guns’ were promoting it as well?

I hope not!

Don’t get me wrong.

I’m not saying that scarcity marketing is not an ethical strategy – it IS, when used in an honest and upright manner.

But I sure as heck wouldn’t even consider buying a product from someone who so blatantly lies to (tries to scam) their prospects.

Anyway, check out the sales page (it’s great copy although I wish he’d stop yelling at some point) and then click through to the order page and see if there aren’t still just 36 copies left. LOL

By the way, if you really want to buy the product – that is my affiliate link – feel free to use it.

As always, stop and think before you click “Order”.

In the 10 Resolutions for Better Online Business in 2011 article, the very first tip was to “ask for help”.

In this article, you will learn how to get the help you need – when you need it – by asking better questions.

Here are 2 examples of how NOT to write questions.

how do i get started with cpa? is affiliate marketing hard? when can i start earning some income? can 250k my first year? can i earn millions? do you work alot?

Could you point me to an article that explains step by step how to get started with blogging from beginning to end? I need every detail of the process. Thanks for sharing your experiences and advice for success.

Yes, those were real questions that were posted to the NPT blog and guess what? You won’t see those questions posted anywhere, because my eyes were rolled too far back into my head that I couldn’t see to answer them.

To avoid frustrating your expert to the point of blindness, here are 8 tips for asking better questions.

1. Do your homework. Between topic and product research, writing blog posts, tending to social media marketing and responding to comments on their blogs; most professional bloggers are very busy people.

   Respect their time.

   Before asking “what is affiliate marketing?” or “what is a blog?“, try Googling your query or look for a Glossary or a FAQ on your expert’s blog.

2. Ask the right expert. As much as I’d like to help everyone all the time, there’s not much point in asking me how to improve your golf swing or get rid of belly fat.

   Those clearly aren’t my areas of expertise.

3. Be concise. Although I really enjoy learning about my readers’ lives and interests, I don’t have time to read through a book’s worth of anecdotes while trying to field and answer 10 questions.

   Share personal stories in private member forums where such information is encouraged, welcomed and enjoyed.

4. Ask precise questions. “I don’t know how” and “I can’t” are the basis for statements, not questions.

   Well-formed questions make the “I don’t know’s” obvious.

   Preface questions with “what, who, when, where, how or why”, eg. “How do I change my H1 font colors?”

5. Ask just one question. Peppering a comment form with several unrelated questions is just poor form.

   Look for posts relavent to each question and post them separately.

   This approach is much more helpful to other readers of the blog and will serve you better in SEO terms as well — providing more backlinks to your site.

6. Be literate. Native English speakers could (and should) use what they learned about punctuation and grammar in Grade 2 if they want their questions taken seriously — especially those posed by aspiring bloggers!

   Using ALL CAPS is only slightly more annoying than using none.

   Missing commas can completely change the meaning of a sentence, causing confusion and wasted time during clarification. Eats, Shoots & Leaves is an excellent resource for the comma-challenged.

7. Be patient. Unlike my tech guy who apparently gets a wakeup call everytime a tech support request arrives by email, I cherish my sleep. I also value my time off and the ability to go to lunch with a friend at the drop of a hat without communication devices at hand. Those are some of the biggest benefits to having an online business.

   So, if you don’t get a reply to your question within 2 minutes of posting it, consider the many reasons your expert may not immediately respond. They may live halfway around the world, be offline (on an airplane or hiking in Alaska) or attending their godson’s birthday party.

   Be patient. Allow 24 – 72 hours for a response. If after 72 hours you still haven’t heard anything, revisit the question to determine whether it follows the recommondations above.

   Most of all, don’t badger for a response. Sending 5 followup emails is a sure way to get ignored and your address blocked.

8. Be courteous. Courtesy might not help get your question answered, but it certainly won’t hurt. “Please”, “Thank you” and acknowledging effort go a long way to cultivating goodwill.

In a nutshell, all of the recommendations above boil down to a single element – Respect others’ time to gain respect (and help) in return.

Any questions?

Comments, questions or suggestions? Please leave a comment below!

Cheers,

Do you want to become really successful? Then start with gratitude.

That might sound counter-intuitive when the bills are coming in faster than you can pay them, you don’t know if you’ll still have a job tomorrow or if you’ll find work this week.

But trust me, gratitude is THE place to start if you really want to move forward. When you focus on what you are grateful for, you get more of what you want through the power of attraction. Gratitude eliminates negativity and energizes the spirit.

And no matter what your situation, there is always something for which you can feel grateful.

Start with the obvious – your good health, family, friends and food on the table. If your health isn’t the best, be grateful for the fact that you opened your eyes this morning. If your mother-in-law is a pest, be grateful that she doesn’t live with you. If you’re a lousy cook, be grateful to Chef Boyardee.

Think those are strange? Well, here is my A to Z Gratitude list.

You’ve probably heard of the old housewives’ system for managing housework and other chores.

It went like this:

Wash on Monday,
Iron on Tuesday,
Mend on Wednesday,
Churn on Thursday,
Clean on Friday,
Bake on Saturday,
Rest on Sunday.

That routine helped those women stay organized and focused on their chores so that they could get everything done — and they had a LOT to do!

As bloggers, we too have many different things to accomplish, and although I typically hate the thought of following a schedule, I do find it helpful to have some sort of plan to help me stay focused and on task.

Take blog post writing for example.

I prefer to write two or more blog posts in a sitting to queue up for later delivery. The day of the week and time of day I write depends primarily on the time of year. In the winter, I write first thing in the morning; while in the summer I like to write in mid-afternoon when it’s too hot to be outside. I also like to group article topics by season and will start working on my Christmas season posts as early as July.

Granted, that doesn’t look much like a daily writing schedule, but it works for me.

Create your own schedule.

Consider what works for you and your current schedule. Here are some points to ponder as you create your own blogging routine.

• At what time of day do you feel most alert and motivated? That’s probably the best time to write articles.
• On which day of the week do you have the most time to write?
• Does your job allow you time during the day to write? This can be a great escape from the drudgery of work too!
• Do you work nights? I used to write my best University essays while on midnight shifts.
• Can your partner take the kids to a weekly class to free up time for you to write?

Figure out what schedule suits you best and set that day and time to write.

You should also consider that the day you publish your articles will be busier than others with reader responses to your post, so make sure you can set some time aside for comment moderation on those days. The days you publish are also good days to comment on other blogs with links to your new post.

Provided you don’t work in the online business opportunites market which is rife with weekly product launches and ‘extra’ writing, you should schedule a separate session for product research and review writing. You can do this bi-weekly or even monthly when you have sufficient products to promote on your site.

Avoid distractions.

I tend to be easily distracted, so I’ve set things up to make sure that I’m not (usually) interrupted when I write.

I go into my office prepared to write, so I bring a beverage  and clean my desk of paperwork that might change my focus. I refrain from checking my email, Google Reader and other sites by keeping programs and browser windows closed. I prefer a quiet room for writing, so I’ll shut my office door and/or the windows depending on the noise levels inside and out.

My affiliate managers know that I prefer to be contacted by email – not phone. If the phone does ring while I’m writing, I just don’t answer it.

Make your schedule and your environment as distraction-free as possible to minimize work interruptions.

Now commit to your blogging schedule.

You won’t need to work your schedule for too long before you notice that your workload becomes both easier and more fluid.

The key to getting to the point where it is easy is committing to your plan.

For example, when you know that you’re going to sit down between 9AM and 11AM every Tuesday to write a few blog posts, you’ll start thinking about your topic ideas and article flow well in advance. Maybe you’ll jot down a few ideas  on paper or create a rough draft on your blog when you have a few spare minutes during the previous week. In that way, you’re already prepared to write and you can get the job done faster.

Once the writing gets easier and faster, you might also be inclined to write more posts which always makes the search engines happier and more productive on your behalf.

Try working a blogging schedule for even just a month and see how good you feel about what you’ve accomplished in terms of content creation and increased revenues!

Don’t feel that you have the self-discipline to set a schedule?

Then check out Brian Tracy’s “No Excuses! The Power of Self-Discipline”.

Learn how to apply Self-Discipline to: Goal Setting; Time Management; Health Habits; Relationships; Sales; Business Operations; Physical Fitness; Personal Development; Negotiating; Communications; Character Development; and many other areas.

With Brian’s training, you’ll accomplish more in a month than most people accomplish in a year and take complete control of your life.

So, do you have a blogging schedule or a strategy that you to stay motivated as a blogger? Please share your tips and ideas with us in a comment below.

Have you been trying to start an Internet business and find yourself broke, desperate and coming to the end of your tether?

Well, you’re not alone.

Here are samples of correspondence that I’ve received from folks who are in exactly that situation.

” …I have bought so many books I have lost count and am now so totally confused (and broke) about what to do I’m just about to give up.”

” …I am twenty years old and entirely dependent on myself. I have no parents and I am out on my own trying to make my way in this cruel world. I struggle to get by with my current job as a bus boy and I am tired of living from paycheck to paycheck. I am currently out of school and wish to go back but I do not have the time nor the money. I have dreams but do not have the time nor the money to pursue them.”

” …I am a parent, divorced and am struggling to make ends meet. I cannot quit my job.”

” …I desperately need more income.”

” …bill collectors hounding…”

” …I am a mom of six children and I have tried and spent thousands of dollars on trying to make money.”

” …as a two month veteran on the Internet I don’t know if I can take another hit. I feel like I’ve been 10 rounds with Mike Tyson and I’m really thinking about staying on the canvas. Thousands of dollars later and I’m still on the starting line!”

” …invested thousands of dollars of my savings in the last two years in home business that I could not afford.”

” …burned really bad within the last two years for alot of money.”

Do those statements ring any bells for you?

Yes?

OK…I want you to pinch yourself to confirm that you’re still among the living.

Still here?

Good!

Where there’s life, there’s hope.

(My mother taught me that.)

Now take a long, deep breath. Make that 10 deep breaths.

No, seriously. Close your eyes, breathe deeply and feel your body relax.

Relaxed? OK, here are some suggestions.

• Don’t Focus on Loss

  Let go of the past. What’s done is done. Unless you can recoup some of your money, learn the lesson, chalk it up to experience and move on.

• Build a mental image of yourself as an extraordinarily happy and successful Internet entrepreneur

  Trust me, this works.

  Failing my first attempt at air traffic control training, I felt defeated, depressed and stupid. When given a second training opportunity, I was reluctant to try, fearful of failing again.

  Then the little voice inside my head told me how much I really WANTED that job. I also wanted to prove that those who cast me aside the first time were wrong – that I COULD do that job.

  But could I really?

  It was time for some honest self-evaluation. What stumbling blocks had I put in my path? Was it lack of knowledge? Lack of effort? Not at all. I didn’t honestly BELIEVE I could do it, AND I was intensely AFRAID of failing.

  Yikes! What a great recipe for failure that was. I got exactly what I focused on most.

  However, believing you can be successful at something when you’ve failed before is a bit of a trick.

  It CAN be done, however. I adopted a ‘B.S. baffles brains’ or ‘Fake it ’til you make it’ approach. Every step of the way I asked myself what a REAL air traffic controller would do in that situation, and then did that. Even when I wasn’t completely confident, I forced my voice to at least sound confident. I acted the part until it became my reality.

• Eliminate as Much Debt as Possible

  Because it’s impossible to think clearly while worried about how to pay this month’s rent, REAL entrepreneurs don’t spend their last dime on an business opportunity.

  If you’re currently in serious debt, then consider talking to a financial planner to help rework your finances.

  Leo Quinn’s ‘Own Your Own PayCheck Again‘ is a terrific resource for those who are serious about debt relief. He prescribes uncommon methods that I know from first-hand experience really work.

  His book is a bit pricey, but it’s a far better investment than buying an information manual that instructs you to go out and spend even more to build your business, when you don’t have it to spend. Why not learn some techniques on how to pay off your debt quicker and keep a little more in your pocket?

  If you can afford to pay the bills but not much else, focus your energy on saving and earning the amount you’ll need to build your business without worry. Invest small amounts on things that will bring real returns in the short term.

  For example, scour your basement and your friends’ basements for things to sell on eBay. The insertion fee for items listed at less than a buck is 25 cents US. If the item sells for under 25 bucks, you’ll pay a 5.25% ‘final value fee’ to eBay. Do that enough times and pretty soon you’ll have five hundred or a thousand bucks to invest in your business… but only if you SAVE what you make.

  Vist eBay now to see what’s hot and selling.

• Be Savvy about how you spend your money.

  I’ve talked to far too many folks who invest in expensive coaching programs, believing that somehow their business will magically appear once they’ve completed the course.

  In reality, whether you buy a $27.00 dollar, or a $5,000 Internet business coaching program, in most cases you’re buying information on how to build a business, not a service that will do the work for you.

  If that’s what you want, then you may want to consider buying an existing business. However, it may be hard to find someone who has invested the time, effort and money to build a profitable online business, who is willing to sell. Basically, at that stage, the business should generate revenue automatically without a whole lot of input from the creator… so they’d be a little daft to sell, don’t you think?

• Do your due diligence

  Read the fine print, ask questions and understand exactly what you’re getting. And with regard to those coaching programs…. get a written contract, and search the forums for at least five people who have taken the program and were really happy with it… i.e. aren’t just saying good things because they’re trying to sell you the program through their link.

  If you choose to go the information manual route, plan to follow ALL the instructions, or fail otherwise.

  For everyone who ever told me “I bought this, that or the other book (or DVD, course, program, coaching package) and it didn’t work”, it was easy to prove that it wasn’t the book that didn’t work – it was THEY that didn’t work.

  We can’t expect to be successful with ugly websites, little or poor content, not building a list or not building a relationship with our visitors and subscribers.

The truth of the matter is that there are no shortcuts.

Each and every step is essential, and every successful netpreneur has paid his or her dues to get to where they are today. They did their homework, made mistakes, and learned the lessons – always believing in their ability to succeed.

Starting an internet business is still easier, faster and less expensive (by far) than starting an offline business. If you want to do it bad enough, you WILL find a way to make it work.

By goodness, I think I’ve finally licked overwhelm!

Six days into 2010 and my year-end is done, reconciled and ready for the accountant. Not only that, but I’m making great headway on a number of other projects that combined had me overwhelmed to the point of complete inertia.

In addition to the books, I’m juggling home renovations, the AffiliateBloggerPro project, a new book, Affiliate Summit preparations (Jan 16-19), a surprise birthday party (Jan 20th), winter vacation planning (Jan 23 – Feb 10), workup to Valentine’s Day for 101Date.com, and queuing up posts for all my sites while I’m unavailable for almost 4 weeks…not to mention eating, sleeping, snow shoveling and other forms of exercise.

Phew.

Under normal circumstances my brain would seize at the prospect of all those tasks and you’d find me on the couch in the afternoon watching something inane like a Real Housewives of Orange County marathon for hours on end, trying to relieve the stress.

Let me tell you, that form of ‘stress-relief’ doesn’t work.

Instead, I lie there thinking about everything I have to do and berate myself for having accomplished absolutely nothing, while the real housewives go about spending $18,000 on a 10 year old’s birthday party and buying $5000 handbags (for which I berate them even more).

But I finally discovered how to overcome the overwhelm and it was actually easy to do.

Take for instance the year-end. I have always been accounting phobic and to make matters worse, I changed from Quicken to QuickBooks this year, the multi-currency version, no less.

On January 2nd, I realized that it would be easier to do my GST (Goods and Services tax) submission for January 30th, if my books were up-to-date. Then I realized that (despite good intentions) I’d made no entries since firing my useless bookeeper in June.

Ugh.

Six months of entries. Considering I’m leaving on January 16th, talk about overwhelm!

But… when I looked at it positively, I realized that I had 13 days.

13 days, 6 months, half a month per day… … hmmmm.

I thought I could chunk the process down and spend an hour per day doing entries and have it done before I left for Affiliate Summit, and still have time to work on other projects.

Turned out that I was wrong.

The data entry went far faster than I expected — especially after I figured out what I was supposed to do with those multi-currency options.

Here’s the crux…

Just deciding to start by doing a little bit and limit the time I spent per day got me off the couch.

And once I started to see the results, I got on a roll. I discovered that the work wasn’t nearly so heinous as I presumed.

It never really is.

So, there’s the big tip for overcoming overwhelm.

Don’t fret over having to do the WHOLE darned thing at once. Nothing ever happens that way. Just as a book is written page by page and houses are built board by board, your project too will be completed step by step.

Give yourself a time limit during which you’ll only focus on one aspect of your project. That way you won’t get fatigued by doing one thing for too long. Best of all, you’ll feel great that you’ve made some progress as opposed to none.

Now all you have to do is get off the couch and start.