Have you ever felt completely overwhelmed by some element of your online business?

Image by Stephan Poff

I’ve felt that way many times, both in the early days and even now. For me it usually comes when I’m working on a new venture or expanding something that I’m already doing into something bigger. For example:

• When I started my first blog and had no idea how to make decisions about blog platforms, didn’t know where I’d find readers, or if they’d like me when they found me, felt inadequate in making my blog look good, worried what other bloggers might think of me writing about topics that they wrote about etc.
• When I did redesigns of my blogs (numerous occassions). Not knowing who to hire to design them, feeling confused about how to best lay them out etc.
• When I decided to launch my first eBook – unsure if people who buy it, overwhelmed by the task of writing it, at a loss as to how to put it together technically, confused as to how to promote and deliver it.

The list could go on – you could say that I’m a repeat offender when it comes to feeling overwhelmed and panicking about projects!

Having said that – I’ve also got a history of working through the overwhelming feelings and getting stuff done (at least most of the time). I think the key is not to let the feelings overwhelm you but to work through them. Here’s how I do it:

1. Focus upon the things you can control

One of the factors that used to hold me back was that I would spend a lot of time worrying about factors that I had little or no control over rather than focusing upon the things I could control.

Of course this is not just applicable to blogging – we all can fall into the temptation about spending a lot of energy worrying about things that we have no ultimate control over. It is easy to do but the reality is that focusing upon things we can’t really control takes a lot of time and energy away from doing the things we can control.

So if I’m feeling overwhelmed by a project now I will (after a little panic) make a list of the things that are stopping me or worrying me about the project and then identify things on the list that I have some control over and those that I don’t have control over – I’ll then put aside or delete the external worries so that I can focus on things I can do!

So when it comes to starting a blog:

• Some of the things I can control include things like coming up with topics to write about, registering a domain, researching and choosing a blog platform etc
• Some of the things I don’t have ultimate control over are things like what other bloggers will think about me, whether people will like what I write etc

Of course I might be able to influence the outcomes of some of these external worries – but in the end they’re ultimately in the hands of others so are not my #1 priority. I generally will put them lower on my list of things to think about and get started on things I can do.

2. Break it down into bite sized tasks

The key for me to get things done and not become paralysed by overwhelming projects is to break them down into smaller tasks that I can achieve.

For example writing the ProBlogger book was a daunting thing to be asked to do by Wiley. In fact other publishers had previously asked and I’d always put it off because it was too big. But once Chris and I started breaking it down it became much more achievable. We started with an outline which in itself became a list of smaller tasks to do. I then broke each of the chapters I had to write into smaller sections and tasks until they were bite sized enough for me to feel I could achieve.

I once spoke with an Hawaii Ironman who told me that this is how he got through his events. He had three larger segments of the day (swimming, running and bike riding) and then he’d further break the day into kilometre segments. In his planning and on race day he wouldn’t think about the whole day – but he’d be constantly asking himself what he needed to achieve to complete the the next kilometre.

If it’s helpful put the tasks you identify into some kind of timeline so that you can see the order of what needs to be achieved and so that you can tick them off as you go.

3. Talk to others

A trap that I often fall into when faced with massive projects is allowing myself to wallow in my own desperation and fear of the things that I need to achieve. Perhaps it is my introverted personality – but I tend to take on the burdens that I face alone and don’t naturally share them.

However I know that when I do externalise what I’m feeling that it helps a lot. Even if I simply verbalise the feeling to my wife who has no real comprehension of what I’m doing – just the act of speaking the problems can somehow put them in perspective.

Similarly (and even better) – seeking out people who have already done what you’re trying to achieve to hear how they did it can be helpful. I remember when writing the ProBlogger book seeking out 3 other authors to get their advice on how they wrote their books. They all gave different answers but helped me to shape my own approach to it.

Also consider not only talking with others but collaborating with them. It may be that part of the problem you face is simply not having the skills to do the task at hand so partnering with someone else (or at the least outsourcing to them) might be a good solution.

4. Start

There comes a time when you just need to roll up your sleeves and start working. You can dream and worry about a project forever and never do anything – the key is to start.

Start with one of those bite sized bits that you identified earlier. Choose something you know you can achieve and that will lead you naturally to the next bite sized bit. You’ll find that once you start knocking off tasks that momentum will build and that it’ll get easier to keep things moving – the hardest part is often taking the first step.

How do you tackle overwhelming tasks?

The above is how I approach it – but I’d love to hear your thoughts and experiences too. What overwhelming projects have you worked on and how did you get them done?

A Guest Post by Chris Birk from Write Short Live Long and GrowthPartner.com.

Blogging is neither dead nor for losers. Google Suggest would perhaps prefer to play devil’s advocate:

The search engine’s auto-suggest feature has evolved into a key marketing and online reputation tool, providing users with suggestions shaped by both global and local search patterns.

It also has the potential to produce headaches for bloggers and business owners.

Negative, misleading and even outright defamatory Google Suggest terms have cropped up for an array of companies and individual entrepreneurs. Turns out it doesn’t take much for “scam” or “is a rip off” to get appended to your company name in the Google Suggest box. And those are two of the tamer ones — search “BP is” for a look at how British Petroleum tends to fare these days in the land of Google Suggest.

To be sure, this has remained a concern primarily for larger companies and public personas. But the increasing integration of local search combined with the sweeping reach of social media is starting to bring these troubles a bit closer to home.

Blogging isn’t “so last year,” as Google Suggest might have you believe. But not paying closer attention to ORM certainly is.

Suggest and the Scam

Google Suggest culls its results from several sources. As with most things Google, the explicit recipe is a house secret, but it’s safe to say the major factors probably include page content from other sites, search frequency and a recent stream of content emanating from blogs and news sources.

What’s scary for bloggers is the search tool’s potential to become a negative echo chamber. It’s natural, if not a bit healthy, for a handful of readers to take issue with a post or express dissatisfaction with an info product or business practice. But negative comments and keywords in online reviews and other user-generated content can coalesce, gather stream and finally snowball until it’s picked by Google Suggest. A couple readers griping about your “scam” or “rip-off”— on your site or elsewhere — can spur a feedback loop that ties unsavory characteristics to your blog and brand in the formerly clean slate that is a Google search field.

Having “Blog X scam” as a top-tier Google Suggest result for your site isn’t the most desirable first impression.

Even more maddening is that innocuous comments and the regular flow of content and reader interaction can contribute to similar problems. For example, Copyblogger is one of the best run and most respected sites on the web (full disclosure: I’ve written for them). Yet here’s a look at recent Google Suggest results for the esteemed site:

Toward the bottom, sandwiched between “seo” and “tagline” is “scam.” Dig a bit deeper and you’ll see that most of the top-tier search results for the phrase link back to legit, contextually appropriate uses and not hot-headed screeds. Then again, perhaps you should hold off — the double-edged sword here is that searching the phrase only reinforces its validity.

In other words, investigating whether Blog X really is a scam might only serve to further popularize the phrase in Google Suggest.

For now, some of this seems simply inevitable. Bloggers aren’t likely to curtail their use of words or crack down on reader commentary for the sake of the search engines. But info products, writing services and the copywriting sphere as a whole is a competitive space, and there’s certainly potential here for others to knowingly exploit Google Suggest for their own ends.

Combating Suggest

For years, online reputation experts advised companies to start a blog as a proactive measure to disseminate good news and counteract complaints and criticism.

But what about when your business is your blog?

To an extent, the old rules still apply. Bloggers who sell info products or provide other commercial services should be quick to respond to consumer problems aired in public. The same goes for incendiary posts or comments, no matter their origin. Setting up Google Alerts for your blog name, your byline and any other business handles is a good first step.

Self-promotion is another important measure. Bloggers should embrace the power of positive press while striking a balance between arrogant and authoritative. Customer testimonials and spotlights can add a significant degree of comfort and credibility. You can even shell out some cash on Google AdWords that highlight those testimonials or your accomplishments.

Bloggers concerned about competitive wrangling can go a step further and defensively purchase domains — think BlogXreviews, BlogXsucks, BlogXcomplaints and the like. Park some, and turn others into separate entities that tout your service or showcase your responsiveness.

You can’t spend all day peppering the search engines with bloated press releases and fluffy blog posts. Nor can you require colleagues, contributors and readers to abstain from using words that might come back to haunt you.

But you sure as heck need to start doing something. Carve out a middle ground that fits and get to it — before someone else does it for you.

Chris Birk works with GrowthPartner.com, a unique firm that provides angel investment and online marketing expertise to emerging companies. A former newspaper and magazine writer, he teaches journalism and media writing at a private Midwestern university. He blogs at Write Short Live Long“>Write Short Live Long.

Over the last couple of years a number of fairly prominent bloggers have decided to shut down their blogs and move their communications to subscription only email newsletters. Bloggers such as Jason Calacanis, Joel Spolsky and Sam Lessin were three (all mentioned in this post on Gigaom).

Some of these have moved to a free email subscription while others have gone to a paid model.

I’ve had a number of readers ask for my response to this and asking:

• is blogging dead?
• do I have to choose between email and blogging?
• should those starting out start with a blog or email?

Side note: In some ways I think that this post is pretty funny. Only a year or two back we were debating whether RSS had killed email and now people are debating whether email has killed blogging!

Today I thought I’d jot down a few random thoughts on the topic – I hope they add something useful for those pondering the topic:

1. It’s not an either or choice

My own experience over the last few years has been that things have really taken off for me when I’ve taken a dual approach. While I initially put all my eggs in the blogging (with an RSS subscription) model – I discovered a couple of years back that when I developed a newsletter along side a blog that my business really took off.

Over at digital photography school we are approaching half a million subscribers (combined total of RSS and email) – less than a quarter of these are RSS subscribers. Adding email as an option has expanded our potential reach incredibly.

2. Blogs build profile

One of the reflections that I’d have on the above 3 people who have abandoned blogs is that they’ve each used blogging to build their profiles. They have all done other worthwhile things to build their authority, credibility and reach – but part of what has enabled them to make their email subscription model work is that they had an established audience (partly from their blogging).

To start out with just an email subscription service and make it successful is not impossible – but I suspect some other kind of web presence (whether it be blogging, life streaming, Twitter etc) will help.

I guess it comes down partly to the stage you’re at as an online entrepreneur and how established your network is. If you’re well known, have a network already in some way and have the ability to pull numbers of email subscribers then it’s probably something to consider. But if you’re starting out online – you’ll probably need some kind of site or other presence online to help get the ball rolling.

3. Homebases

One of the things that I find useful about having a blog is that it gives me a ‘home base’. I’ve written about the importance of having a place that you control and that readers can find you (a home base) before and for me a blog is the ideal way to do this.

Email has become increasingly powerful in my own business over the last few years but part of the success for me has been that I’ve had a homebase.

For me having a blog alongside email does two things.

Firstly the blog helps me to drive people to sign up for the newsletter. We try to write the most useful content that we can – content that not only helps our existing readers but also the kind of content that they share and that leads new people to us via social media, search engines and word of mouth. Any new person landing on our site almost always finds us through the blog (a few do it via the forum but the blog is #1).

As a result we’re able to grow our email newsletter subscribers by around 800 new people per day.

Secondly – the email drives people back to the blog. In some ways our emails are like a condensed version of our RSS feed. So every week our email readers are being driven back to our blog in massive numbers.

It might seem a little silly to have a blog that drives people to email which drives people back to the blog – but without the email first time readers would arrive on our blog and never return.

Of course being able to drive people back to the blog in large numbers allows us to monetize it – through advertising, some affiliate stuff, selling our own products etc.

I guess my main concern with only going with email is where the growth will come from in new subscribers if its not out there for people to see, taste and be drawn into. Interestingly some of those who do emails then post their emails on the web in an archive – which in some ways isn’t that dissimilar to a blog.

4. It’s all about your business ‘model’

I guess ultimately it’s about the business model you’re using. I monetize in a variety of ways including advertising (ad networks and direct ad sales), affiliate marketing, selling my own products and more. Some of these could certainly be done purely through an email model but others could not.

For example running ad network ads is something you can’t do via email (at least not the major ones). I could certainly sell ads directly to advertisers, do affiliate marketing or sell my own products via email – but the markets I’m working in seem to respond best when I take a multi-pronged approach (communicating in email, on blogs and via social media).

For me targeting multiple mediums increases the reach significantly.

5. Other factors to consider

The more I think about the more I realise that there are many other factors at play in these kinds of decisions. They would include:

• audience – who are you writing for and what mediums are they familiar with and a part of their workflow?
• style - your own style of communication is going to definitely play a part here. The differences between email and blogging are subtle but you’ll find that your style will lend itself to different mediums. Some people just have a knack with email while others are much more engaging on a blog, in video or in short form like Twitter.
• interaction - emails don’t have a comments section. This will be attractive to some (no more moderation) or unattractive to others. Of course people will comment (replying to emails, on social media etc) but one of the great things that happens on some blogs is the public discussion that happens after a post goes live – a communal experience that often adds a lot to a post. I guess it depends whether what you’re doing lends itself to communal interaction.

6. Will it end up looking like a blog?

I’ve had a number of conversations with people about this lately and about ideas to develop email subscription services. One conversation with someone pitching the idea of an email subscription was that he’d post his emails on a website so that new people could see what he was sending, get indexed in Google and so people could share them with friends.

When I asked whether he’d miss the comments people give he agreed and said he’d add a comments section to that website.

My reflection was simply that it was starting to look like a blog with the option to subscribe via email.

Final reflections

I’m certainly not anti the idea of email or even focusing solely upon email subscriptions instead of blogging – however I guess it comes down to what you want to achieve, who you want to speak to, what your current situation, and profile is, whether you’ve got time to do multiple mediums and what kind of medium best suits your style.

What other factors would need to be considered in making such a decision?