If you are in the process of building your home business or an internet business of any sort, you might have encountered information overload. Here is my story of how I got out of it.
5 YEARS AGO...
Five years ago it started with a dream. I had read in a relationship book that was giving advice to women that if a guy didn't figure out what he wanted to do in life by age 25, that he probably never will.
I was 25 back then and it hit me like a ton of brick. Until then, I was a drifter, always looking for the next shining thing. I traveled to and fro, doing odd jobs and sometimes sleeping on park benches.
It is then that I decided that I would dream up a lifestyle that I would enjoy and that I would then look for a path to attain that lifestyle. I wanted to have a mobile lifestyle, I wanted to be able to pick up my stuff and go whenever and wherever I wanted to. The only path I could imagine for someone like me who only had a post-secondary education in cabinet making was...learning how to make money with the internet.
THE INFORMATION OVERLOAD BEGAN
I'll be honest with you, I struggled a LOT the first 2 years. I kept a full-time job and worked on my online business at night. I truly wanted this lifestyle.
I didn't know HOW I would make money so I started with the affiliate marketing gigs online. I had to learn about blogging, SEO, advertising, wordpress, branding, sales copy, mindset, etc.
All of it at the same time.
Needless to say that I could feel my head throbbing at night before bed. I would even go to bed with audio recording that would teach stuff about goal setting or conversion tracking.
HOW I GOT OUT OF IT
There is a very steep learning curve at the beginning and I wish I had learned to pace myself. But I really started having a breakthrough when I started implementing the strategy I am outlining below.
Fundamentally, the issue is an imbalance in the input to output ratio. There is too much information coming in and not enough coming out. I discovered that knowledge are "tool like" and having a lot of knowledge without them being used is tough on the system.
Learn, Do, Teach
This is where blogging saved my sanity. A guy online I was listening to proposed this strategy and when I started implementing it, I felt the confusion dissipate. Basically, when you learn something new, implement it as soon as possible. If you can't implement it, don't bother with it or store it somewhere for later.
When I learned something about SEO, I started implementing on it my blog. Then, I turned around and started writing about what I did as if I was trying to explain it to someone who was brand new to internet marketing.
If you can't teach something, it's because you don't understand well enough. Writing and teaching what I had just learned forced me to truly wrap my mind and deepen my understanding of what I had just learned.
HOW I WISH I HAD STEEMIT BACK THEN
I blogged almost everyday, sometimes twice a day, for almost a year without making any money. But looking back, it was totally worth it.
I gained the ability to write a 500 words article in less than 45min in a second language, I learned to persevere, I learned how to persuade and write in a way that is engaging and finally, I learned how to network online and get allies.
I believe that most people here have no idea how lucky they are to be blogging on this platform. Not only do they get crazy good SEO built into their blogs but they also have monetization built-in.
Even if you were to make only $1 on your post, you are 1000x more successful then when I got started on my first year of internet marketing. So please, don't complain in the comment section of my post about how you don't get any upvote. It just doesn't sit well with me as you can imagine.
Last remark...
One big trap I fell in is that I confused learning with action. Learning became an excuse not to take action at some point. So make sure that you balance what you learn and what you do with what you learn. Knowledge is power only if it is applied after all.